Accomplished television and film writer Walter Bernstein '40 will visit Dartmouth tomorrow to lecture and see a screening of his 1964 movie "Fail-Safe."
Bernstein was blacklisted in the 1950s in the McCarthy-era red scare, according to Dartmouth Film Professor Joanna Rapf. He had joined the communist party in 1946.
He has worked in television ever since its early days in the 1940s. As a result, he has the unique perspective of someone who has lived and worked through much of television history, and especially the blacklist.
The writer is a long-time acquaintance of Rapf. Rapf's father, Professor Emeritus Maurice Rapf, was blacklisted around the same time as Bernstein, when Rapf was a teenager. Bernstein and Rapf lived in the same New York apartment building.
During the McCarthy era, artists suspected of communism were kept from working on films or television shows, and were often subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
"It was a period of tremendous tension and fear," said Rapf.
The blacklist also had a huge effect on the movie industry. "Hollywood lost some of its best writers, and also didn't deal with controversial subjects," Rapf said. Just before the blacklist hit, Hollywood had been producing interesting movies on racism and anti-Semitism.
She compared this to the current Hollywood era. "We're in a time of real repression of speech," she commented. "I think that any movie that even smacked of anti-American sentiment would have problems getting made."
Rapf said Bernstein's favorites of his own movies were those that dealt with social issues.
Bernstein wrote a movie about his experiences during the McCarthy era, "The Front," (1976) a black comedy which starred Woody Allen as a cashier who passed off blacklisted writers' work as his own. Bernstein was nominated for an Academy Award for the script.
Bernstein also wrote a memoir, "Inside Out," about movies, the black list, and his days as a soldier and war correspondent in the second world war.
He is visiting primarily for a screening yesterday of "Fail-Safe," a drama about an American plane that is accidentally sent to drop nuclear bombs on Moscow directed by Sidney Lumet.
"One of the interesting things about a movie as old as 'Fail-Safe' is that it's still very timely," said Rapf. "It's about being afraid to stand up for peace. It's a pro-peace movie, and it doesn't have to be about nuclear war. It could be about terrorism."
"Fail-Safe" was remade in 2000 into a live, feature-length television broadcast co-produced by Bernstein. The program was the first live, feature-length broadcast on CBS since 1961.
Bernstein will speak in a Film 1 class from ten to noon on Thursday in Loew Auditorium. The lecture is open to the public.
