He died of pneumonia, said Loomis.
Bernstein was best known for being blacklisted during Hollywood’s “Red Scare” in the 1950s. Caught in the anti-communist movement punctuated by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s notorious allegations against the US State Department, Bernstein wrote under pseudonyms for years.
He also published with the help of friends and associates known as “fronts”, who listed their names as the alleged authors of Bernstein’s work.
He resurfaced as a screenwriter for the 1959 film “That Kind of Woman”, starring Sophia Loren and directed by Sidney Lumet.
His career recovering, Bernstein’s works highlighted throughout the 1960s and 70s include “Fail Safe”, “Paris Blues”, “The Molly Maguires” and “Yanks”. Bernstein also worked on “Something’s Got to Give”, Marilyn Monroe’s ill-fated film that was never completed due to her death in August 1962.
He won an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for “The Front”, a 1976 film starring Woody Allen that lampooned the impact of the Macarthian era on industry writers.
In 1997, Bernstein was nominated for an Emmy Award for “Miss Evers’ Boys”, an HBO film about Tuskegee’s infamous syphilis experiments.
Prior to his success as a screenwriter, Bernstein attended Dartmouth College, served in World War II as a correspondent for the military newspaper Yank, and wrote for The New Yorker.
Bernstein was a long-time member of the Writers Guild of America, East, who nominated an award in his honor in 2017, with the aim of “honoring writers who demonstrated with creativity, grace and bravery the willingness to face social injustice in the face of adversity. “