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      Jerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostJerry Brandt, Whose Music Clubs Captured a Moment, Dies at 82Energizing Manhattan night life, he opened the Electric Circus in 1967 and the Ritz 13 years later. He died of Covid-19.The promoter Jerry Brandt, right, with Tina Turner and Keith Richards in 1984 at the Ritz, the East Village club Mr. Brandt opened in 1980.Credit…Bob GruenJan. 28, 2021Updated 5:52 p.m. ETJerry Brandt, a promoter and entrepreneur who owned two nightclubs, the Electric Circus and the Ritz, that were attention-getting parts of New York’s music scene in their day, died on Jan. 16 in Miami Beach. He was 82.His family said in a statement that the cause was Covid-19.Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967 on St. Marks Place in the East Village, it was psychedelia. With the Ritz, opened in 1980 a few blocks away, it was the exploding music scene of the MTV decade, with the shows he staged there — Parliament-Funkadelic, U2, Tina Turner, Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Zappa and countless others — reflecting the exploratory energy of the time.Not all his big bets paid off. Perhaps his best-known debacle was Jobriath, a gay performer whom Mr. Brandt backed with a lavish promotional campaign in 1973 and ’74, hoping to create an American version of David Bowie’s androgynous Ziggy Stardust persona. The concertgoing and record-buying public soundly rejected the attempt to manufacture a star, and Jobriath, whose real name was Bruce Campbell, faded quickly.But Mr. Brandt’s successes, especially with the Ritz, caught their cultural moment and propelled it forward. At the Ritz, he not only booked an expansive range of bands; he also brought new technologies into the mix.“The Ritz opened May 14, 1980, with a video screen the size of the proscenium arch it hung from,” the WFUV disc jockey Delphine Blue, who was a Ritz D.J. for five years, said by email. “On it were projected cartoons, movie bits, psychedelic montages, while the D.J.s played records and jockeyed back and forth with the V.J., who played music videos. This was over a year before the debut of MTV in August of 1981.”There was, she said, a rope dancer who was lowered from the ceiling. There was a cameraman lugging a huge video camera around the dance floor, capturing the dancers and projecting the images on the big screen. The club was often packed and the chaos barely controlled. Sometimes it was not controlled at all.“A full house at the Ritz began throwing bottles at the club’s video screen two weeks ago when the British band Public Image Ltd. performed behind the screen, refused to come out from behind it and taunted the audience,” The New York Times reported in the spring of 1981. “Several fans then stormed the stage, ripping down the screen and destroying equipment. There was a moment of near-panic on the crowded dance floor, though apparently no one was hurt.”Mr. Brandt was the center of it all.“Jerry,” Ms. Blue said simply, “was the P.T. Barnum of nightclubs.”Mr. Brandt made a career of trying to catch whatever wave was cresting on the pop-culture scene. With the Electric Circus, which he opened in 1967, it was psychedelia.Credit…Larry C. Morris/The New York TimesJerome Jack Mair was born on Jan. 29, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to Jack and Anna (Cohen) Mair. His father, Mr. Brandt wrote in his memoir, “It’s a Short Walk From Brooklyn, if You Run” (2014), left when he was 5. When his mother subsequently married Harold Brandt, Jerry took his stepfather’s name.After graduating from Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, he served in the Army from 1956 to 1958. Back in New York, he eventually got a job as a waiter at the Town Hill, a Brooklyn club that featured top Black performers like Sam Cooke and Dinah Washington.“It was a dream come true,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could see great performers and make money at the same time. It made me realize that I wanted to be in the music business.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Jonas Gwangwa, Trombonist and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies at 83

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJonas Gwangwa, Trombonist and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies at 83He became a leading light on the South African jazz scene at a young age, and went on to lead the African National Congress’s flagship ensemble.Jonas Gwangwa in concert in Johannesburg in 2007. The president of South Africa called him “a giant of our revolutionary cultural movement.”Credit…Lefty Shivambu/Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 4:12 p.m. ETJonas Gwangwa, a pre-eminent South African trombonist, vocalist and composer who became a leading artistic ambassador for the anti-apartheid resistance, died on Sunday. He was 83.The office of President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the death in a statement, but did not say where he died or what the cause was. Mr. Gwangwa had been in poor health for some time.Calling him “a giant of our revolutionary cultural movement,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote, “Jonas Gwangwa ascends to our great orchestra of musical ancestors, whose creative genius and dedication to the freedom of all South Africans inspired millions in our country and mobilized the international community against the apartheid system.”Mr. Gwangwa died exactly three years to the day after the death of the trumpeter Hugh Masekela — Mr. Gwangwa’s classmate as a youngster, his bandmate as a young adult and his fellow national hero in later years.Mr. Gwangwa’s crisp and graceful trombone playing was marked by its tightly slurred notes and peppery rhythm. By his early 20s, he had become known as the leading trombonist on the Johannesburg jazz scene: He was in the ensemble of the smash hit musical “King Kong,” South Africa’s first jazz opera, composed by the musician and writer Todd Matshikiza and based on the life of a boxing champion; and with Mr. Masekela, he helped found the Jazz Epistles, a sextet of young all-stars whose 1959 LP, “Jazz Epistle: Verse 1,” signaled a turning point in modern South African jazz.He left the country in 1961, on tour with “King Kong,” and remained in exile for 30 years. But he stayed closely involved with the anti-apartheid struggle being led by the African National Congress. In 1980, at the request of the A.N.C.’s leaders, he assembled the Amandla Cultural Ensemble, the party’s official artistic group, which toured the world, helping to build support for the movement.“It was something exciting, because everybody was ready for the gun — but this was a different gun,” Mr. Gwangwa said in a 2016 interview on South African television.“O.R. Tambo had said it: We’d been here for 20-some-odd years and everything, trying to talk to the international community about our struggle, but here Amandla does it in two hours,” he added. “Because we’re talking about the life of the people. We’re putting that onstage.”Together with George Fenton, Mr. Gwangwa composed the music for “Cry Freedom,” Richard Attenborough’s 1987 film about the South African revolutionary leader Steve Biko. The soundtrack was nominated for an Academy Award, and the film’s theme song earned both Oscar and Grammy nods.Mr. Gwangwa left South Africa in 1961 and did not return for 30 years. But he stayed closely involved with the anti-apartheid struggle being led by the African National Congress.Credit…Lefty Shivambu/Gallo ImagesJonas Mosa Gwangwa was born on Oct. 19, 1937, in Orlando East, a township of Johannesburg, and grew up surrounded by song. His parents played records around the house; one of his two older sisters was a concert pianist; the family often came together to sing hymns.He studied at St. Mary’s elementary school in Orlando and then at nearby St. Peter’s, a premier high school for Black students. In 1954, he was given his first trombone by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, an Anglican missionary and social campaigner, who also put Mr. Masekela’s first trumpet (donated by Louis Armstrong) in his hands.Jonas had hoped for a clarinet, but he made use of what he got. “I’m a self-taught musician even in just holding the instrument. I saw from a Glenn Miller picture how to hold it,” he was quoted as saying by Gwen Ansell in her book “Soweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa” (2004).He met his future wife, Violet, when the two were teenagers. For almost 70 years, their relationship endured through exile in various countries; for extended periods they were unable to see each other. But in 1991, with apartheid toppled, they finally settled back in South Africa, surrounded by their children.Ms. Gwangwa died just weeks before her husband. Four sons, three daughters, and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren survive.As soon as he could play, Mr. Gwangwa was swept up in the jazz boom in Sophiatown, a racially mixed Johannesburg neighborhood where a vibrant youth culture emerged in the postwar years. Together with Mr. Masekela and the saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, he journeyed to Cape Town to seek out Dollar Brand (later known as Abdullah Ibrahim), a young piano phenom whom musicians in both cities were talking about. When they found him, the Jazz Epistles were born: six blazing young talents, all fascinated by American bebop but intent on giving voice to the cosmopolitan imagination of young South Africans.In 1960, police in the Sharpeville township massacred a group of protesters against apartheid restrictions. A harsh government crackdown followed in all realms of society. After touring with “King Kong” in London, Mr. Gwangwa remained abroad, eventually moving to New York to enroll at the Manhattan School of Music.He roomed with Mr. Masekela for a time and became increasingly active in the milieu of A.N.C.-aligned expatriate artists. He helped to edit the speech that the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, an old friend, wrote for the vocalist and activist Miriam Makeba to read before the United Nations in 1963. He was the arranger of a Grammy-winning album by Ms. Makeba and Harry Belafonte, and he performed at the 1965 “Sound of Africa” concert at Carnegie Hall, alongside Mr. Masekela, Ms. Makeba and others. He also led his own ensembles, including African Explosion, which released one album, “Who?” (1969).Mr. Gwangwa’s apartment in New York became a meeting ground for fellow musicians and activists, fondly referred to as “the embassy.”In 1976, after a stint in Atlanta, Mr. Gwangwa moved with his family to Gaborone, Botswana, where he founded Shakawe, a group of exiled South African jazz musicians, and became a member of the Medu Art Ensemble, an interdisciplinary collective engaged in the anti-apartheid struggle. In 1977, he appeared in Lagos, Nigeria, at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known as Festac, a historic gathering of representatives from around the African continent and across the diaspora. Taking in the range of talent on hand, he decided to organize the South African performers into a unified multidisciplinary production. They were a hit.He was later summoned to Angola, where he met with A.N.C. leaders and soldiers in the party’s armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe, known as M.K. They commissioned him to write a full musical telling the story of South Africans’ heritage and the continuing freedom struggle, and he assembled a cast of musicians, dancers and other performers made up of M.K. soldiers and other expatriates. It became the A.N.C.’s flagship arts ensemble, the Amandla Cultural Ensemble.Mr. Gwangwa in performance in 1996.Credit…AlamyFor the next few years Mr. Gwangwa alternated between rehearsals in Angola, tours around the world and home in Botswana. But his prominent role in the movement placed a target on his back. In 1985, the South African Defense Force staged a raid on the M.K. and organizers in Gaborone. Mr. Gwangwa’s home was bombed.He and his family moved to London, then to the United States. As the apartheid government fell, they returned home, and Mr. Gwangwa received a heroic reception. In 2010, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga, South Africa’s highest honor for contributions to the arts and culture. The only other recipient that year was Mr. Masekela.He released a few standout late-career albums, including “A Temporary Inconvenience” (1999). But his proudest accomplishment remained Amandla, as he told Ms. Ansell in a recent interview.“Because it involved all the things in music that excited me the most, and gave me the opportunity to bring them together,” he said, “for the most important reason possible: It was for the people.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Gunnel Lindblom, Familiar Face in Bergman Films, Dies at 89

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGunnel Lindblom, Familiar Face in Bergman Films, Dies at 89She appeared in early classics like “The Seventh Seal,” “Wild Strawberries” and “The Virgin Spring” and devoted much of her long career to the stage.Gunnel Lindblom and Gunnar Björnstrand in Ingmar Bergman’s classic 1957 film “The Seventh Seal.” She appeared in several of his early films. Credit…Svensk Filmindustri, via PhotofestJan. 27, 2021, 5:04 p.m. ETGunnel Lindblom, a Swedish actress who worked with Ingmar Bergman in his early classic films and on decades of stage productions, died on Sunday in Brottby, Sweden, a small community north of Stockholm. She was 89.The death was announced by her family.In “The Seventh Seal” (1957), Bergman’s portrait of a knight (played by Max von Sydow) returning from the Crusades to find his village devastated by plague, Ms. Lindblom was an unnamed mute girl. At the film’s end, her character finally speaks, announcing biblically, “It is finished.”In “Wild Strawberries” (1957), about an elderly professor reflecting on life and loneliness, she was the man’s beautiful and kind sister in turn-of-the-century flashbacks.In “The Virgin Spring” (1960), Bergman’s tale of Christianity and revenge in medieval Sweden, Ms. Lindblom was a young, sullen, accidentally pregnant, Odin-worshiping servant girl of a wealthy landowner (also played by Mr. von Sydow). She witnesses the rape and brutal murder of his daughter, her spoiled but naïve teenage mistress.Ms. Lindblom’s professional relationship with Bergman, who died in 2007, continued and evolved. After “The Virgin Spring,” she appeared in two parts of his film trilogy about religion and faith: In “Winter Light” (1963), her character was a depressed fisherman’s wife; in “The Silence” (1964) she was a woman isolated with her dying sister in an unfamiliar foreign country.A decade later she had a supporting role in “Scenes From a Marriage,” Bergman’s Scandinavian mini-series, which starred Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson and was released internationally as a feature film in 1974. Her character, Eva, is an attractive work colleague of the leading man.One of Ms. Lindblom’s seven screen directing credits was “Paradistorg,” a drama about a family getaway. When it was released in the United States in 1978 as “Summer Paradise,” Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times summed up the characters’ middle-class crises: “The women are lonely, the men are weaklings, and the children are growing up without proper supervision.”When Bergman directed “Ghost Sonata,” August Strindberg’s 1908 modernist play, at Dramaten in Stockholm at the turn of the millennium, Ms. Lindblom was cast as the Captain’s Wife, a beautiful woman who becomes a mummy.Strindberg, although he died in 1912, was perhaps the second most influential Swedish artist in her career; in recapping it, in fact, the first credit that some European obituaries mentioned was her title performance in a 1965 BBC production of Strindberg’s “Miss Julie,” his story of a wealthy young woman’s attraction to a servant. Ms. Lindblom received an honorary Guldbagge, Sweden’s Oscar equivalent, for lifetime achievement in 2002.Ms. Lindblom in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” the 2009 Swedish film version of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novel. It was her last high-profile movie role.Credit…AlamyGunnel Martha Ingegard Lindblom was born on Dec. 18, 1931, in Gothenburg (Goteborg), Sweden, and studied acting at the Gothenburg City Theater in the early 1950s.She made her film debut in Gustaf Molander’s “Karlek” (the English title was “Love”), a 1952 drama about a young priest, and collaborated frequently with Bergman at Malmo City Theater, where he had become artistic director.She had a busy six-decade theater career, most notably with the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, and played close to 60 screen roles — including Aunt Julie in “Hedda Gabler” (1993), the professor’s wife in “Uncle Vanya” (1967) and the ex-wife of a guilty choreographer in Susan Sontag’s “Brother Carl” (1971).She appeared in three recent film shorts (the last, “Bergman’s Reliquarium,” in 2018) and made a guest appearance on “The Inspector and the Sea,” a Swedish crime-drama series, in 2011. But her last high-profile screen role was in the Swedish film version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” (2009), based on Stieg Larsson’s best seller. (Two years later, an American version, starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, was released.)In the Swedish film “Millennium” and in the 2010 American mini-series inspired by it, Ms. Lindblom played Isabella Vanger, the mother of the serial-killer antagonist. Isabella knew for years that her children were being sexually abused and said nothing.Ms. Lindblom and Sture Helander, a Swedish physician, married in 1960, had three children and divorced in 1970. In 1981, she married Frederik Dessau, the Danish film director and writer, and they divorced in 1986.No information on survivors was immediately available, but Ms. Lindblom had two sons, Thomas Helander and Jan Helander, and a daughter, Jessica Helander.Much of Ms. Lindblom’s career was devoted to theater, but she gladly acknowledged her love of filmmaking — sometimes just for the joy of shooting outdoors rather than being cooped up inside a theater, she said. And she had a particular appreciation for period films, partly because some managed to convey true timelessness.Watching contemporary films of the past, “you say, ‘Oh, that was made in the ’50s,’ ” she reflected in a 21st-century video interview. “But in a period film, if it’s well done, you don’t see when it’s made.”After all, the human condition itself is timeless.“I don’t think people have changed very much,” Ms. Lindblom said in the same interview, alluding to her medieval character in “The Virgin Spring.” “The feelings are very much the same. So you have to go for the truth.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Gregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83Often cast in ethnic roles, he saw his career take off in the 1970s as a recurring character on “Sanford and Son” and a regular on “Barney Miller.”Gregory Sierra in an episode of the Emmy Award-winning sitcom “Barney Miller.” He played a detective for two seasons on the show, set in a Greenwich Village police station.Credit…ABC, via PhotofestJan. 26, 2021Updated 7:03 p.m. ETGregory Sierra, a character actor who navigated easily between comedy and drama but was best known for his supporting roles on the sitcoms “Sanford and Son” and “Barney Miller,” died on Jan. 4 at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif. He was 83.His wife, Helene Sierra, said the cause was stomach and liver cancer.Lanky and balding, Mr. Sierra started out in Hollywood in the late 1960s and early ’70s taking modest parts — including on the sitcom “The Flying Nun” and the secret agent series “Mission Impossible,” as well in as the 1970 film sequel “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.”With his Puerto Rican background, Mr. Sierra was often cast in ethnic roles, including Latinos, Italians and Native Americans.In 1972, during its second season, he joined the cast of “Sanford and Son,” one of Norman Lear’s many groundbreaking sitcoms, in the recurring role of Julio Fuentes, a junk dealer who lived next door to Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), who also had a junkyard with his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He stayed until 1975.Julio tried hard to befriend Fred but was the frequent target of his insults.“Why don’t you go do some work in your yard,” Fred tells Julio in one episode. “Go take a bath. Go milk your goat.”“I did that all this morning,” Julio says.“Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico?” Fred says.“I come from New York City and I can live in any of the 50 states I want,” Julio answers.“Why don’t you try Alaska?” Fred responds. “That’s a state.”Mr. Sierra left “Sanford and Son” to become a member of the original cast of “Barney Miller,” the Emmy Award-winning sitcom starring Hal Linden set in a police precinct in Greenwich Village. As Detective Sgt. Chano Amenguale, Mr. Sierra earned particular praise for a 1975 episode which he was emotionally devastated and nearly broke down after killing two gunmen.After two seasons, he left “Barney Miller” when he was cast as the star of an ensemble comedy, “A.E.S. Hudson Street,” about an emergency service hospital in Manhattan. He played a doctor in the series, which made its debut in 1978.In his review, The New York Times’s television critic John J. O’Connor described “A.E.S. Hudson Street” as “silly, often downright stupid and occasionally insultingly tasteless.” But, he added, “With Mr. Sierra around to hold the absurdities together, it should not be written off to quickly.”ABC canceled it after five episodes.Mr. Sierra with Redd Foxx, seated, and Demond Wilson in an episode of “Sanford and Son.”Credit…NBC, via PhotofestMr. Sierra was also part of the original cast of “Miami Vice” in 1984, as the commanding officer of the detectives played by Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson. But he left after four episodes; his character was assassinated after he decided to leave the series. “He did not like Miami and some of the people he worked with,” his wife said by phone. “He gave up a lot to leave the show.”Gregory Joseph Sierra was born on Jan. 25, 1937, in Manhattan and grew up in Spanish Harlem. His parents abandoned him when he was young, and he was raised by an aunt.In addition to his wife, Mr. Sierra is survived by his stepdaughters, Kelly and Jill, and a step-granddaughter. His first two marriages ended in divorce.After serving in the Air Force, Mr. Sierra went with a friend to an acting school audition in Manhattan. Mr. Sierra was not there for the audition, but after performing an improvisation with his friend, it was he and not his friend who got into the school.He later toured with the National Shakespeare Company and appeared as the King of Austria in “King John” at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now Shakespeare in the Park) in 1967.He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and maintained a prolific acting pace for 30 years, largely in supporting roles.One of his most riveting characters appeared in a 1973 episode of “All in the Family.” His character, Paul Benjamin, was a Jewish vigilante who tried to protect the home of Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), whose front door has been covered with a swastika. Mr. Sierra infused the character with humor and self-assurance.Believing that the ignorant, bigoted Archie has been the victim of anti-Semitism, Paul tells him — to his confusion and consternation — “You sure don’t look Jewish.”“Well there’s a good reason for that,” Archie says. “I ain’t Jewish.”The swastika, it turns out, was meant for a Jewish neighbor with a similar address. Moments after Paul leaves the Bunkers’ house, he is killed by a car bomb.Mr. Sierra’s most recent credited role was as a screenwriter in “The Other Side of the Wind” (2018), Orson Welles’s long-delayed movie about a movie director (John Huston), which was filmed in the 1970s but not released until 2018.In 2009, Mr. Sierra returned to the stage after 40 years as a British police officer in a production of “See How They Run” at the theater at Laguna Woods Village, the retirement community where he lived.“He hadn’t been onstage for a very long time, so he was a little nervous,” John Perak, who directed Mr. Sierra in that production, said by phone. “I said, ‘Greg, don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal.’ He came prepared and did very well.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Walter Bernstein, Celebrated Screenwriter, Is Dead at 101

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWalter Bernstein, Celebrated Screenwriter, Is Dead at 101His movies included “Fail Safe,” “Paris Blues” and, perhaps most notably, “The Front,” based on his own experience of being blacklisted.The screenwriter Walter Bernstein in 1983. His leftist politics influenced both his life and his art.Credit…Susan Wood/Getty ImagesJan. 23, 2021, 6:06 p.m. ETWalter Bernstein, whose career as a top film and television screenwriter was derailed by the McCarthy-era blacklist, and who decades later turned that experience into one of his best-known films, “The Front,” died on Saturday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 101.His wife, Gloria Loomis, said the cause was pneumonia.Described in a 2014 Esquire profile as a “human Energizer bunny,” Mr. Bernstein was writing, teaching and generating screenplay ideas well into his 90s. Until recently, he had several projects in various stages of development. He created the BBC mystery mini-series “Hidden” in 2011, and he was an adjunct instructor of dramatic writing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts until he retired in 2017. “They’ll carry me off writing,” he told Variety.Mr. Bernstein’s politics — he called himself a “secular, self-loving Jew of a leftist persuasion” — influenced both his life and his art.“Fail Safe” (1964), the story of an accidental bombing of Moscow, was a bold rejoinder to the nuclear arms race of the Cold War. “Paris Blues” (1961), which he wrote for the director Martin Ritt, a fellow blacklist victim and frequent collaborator, starred Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman as expatriate American jazz musicians and delivered pointed commentary on racial intolerance. “The Molly Maguires” (1970), also directed by Mr. Ritt, concerned union-busting in the coal mines of 19th-century Pennsylvania, mirroring the social upheavals of the late 1960s and ’70s.Mr. Bernstein with Woody Allen on the set of the 1976 film “The Front,” based on Mr. Bernstein’s experience during the blacklist of the 1950s. Mr. Bernstein’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.Credit…Columbia PicturesThe subject of “The Front” (1976), also directed by Mr. Ritt and the only film for which Mr. Bernstein received an Academy Award nomination (it was also nominated for a Writers Guild of America award), was the blacklist itself: Woody Allen starred as a “front,” a stand-in for a writer who, like Mr. Bernstein, had been blacklisted. (Mr. Bernstein made a cameo appearance for Mr. Allen that same year in “Annie Hall.”)Not all Mr. Bernstein’s subjects were political. The football-themed “Semi-Tough,” starring Burt Reynolds, Jill Clayburgh and Kris Kristofferson and based on a novel by Dan Jenkins, lampooned the New Age spirituality of such ’70s movements as EST; “Yanks,” starring Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave, explored the romantic entanglements and cultural differences between American troops and local Englishwomen during World War II. Mr. Bernstein’s lone feature film as a director was a comedy, “Little Miss Marker,” a 1980 version of the oft-filmed Damon Runyon story that starred Walter Matthau and Julie Andrews.A Hollywood EducationMr. Bernstein was born in Brooklyn on Aug. 20, 1919, to Louis and Hannah (Bistrong) Bernstein, Eastern European immigrants who were “not really affected by the Depression,” as Mr. Bernstein recalled in his autobiography, “Inside Out” (1996), because his father, a schoolteacher, was protected by civil service employment rules. He attended Erasmus High School in Flatbush, which was so crowded the students were split into three shifts, a boon for the film-loving Walter: When he was on the 6:30-to-noon shift, he could catch matinees next door at the Astor Theater, where admission during the day was a dime.Upon graduation, Mr. Bernstein was offered what he called a “wild, dubious” gift from his father: six months of an intensive language course at the University of Grenoble. His father knew a French family Walter could stay with and “had aspirations for me I did not share,” Mr. Bernstein recalled, adding, “If I had a choice of where to go for six months it would have been Hollywood.”Walter Matthau, Julie Andrews and Sara Stimson in “Little Miss Marker” (1980), the only feature film Mr. Bernstein directed.  Credit…Universal PicturesBut the experience broadened him, thrusting him as it did into the midst of young intellectuals, often Communists, living on a continent where Hitler, war and Marxism were the currency of conversation.He then attended Dartmouth College, where he became the film critic of The Daily Dartmouth, a job that came with a pass for the local cinema. “The only catch,” Mr. Bernstein recalled in “Inside Out,” “was that there were no screenings or previews, so you had to write the review before seeing the movie.”“I found this no real impediment,” he added. “Anyone could review a movie after seeing it; that was mere criticism. Doing it this way made it art.”He also became a contributor to The New Yorker, for which he would write during and after the war, and where he eventually became a staff writer.First, however, there was a war to get through. Shortly after graduating from Dartmouth, he was drafted and sent to Fort Benning, Ga., where in 1941, during the relatively relaxed period before Pearl Harbor, soldiers staged a show titled “Grin and Bear It,” written by Mr. Bernstein. (“It wasn’t very good,” he recalled, “but it was a show.”)“Brooks Atkinson was coming down from The Times to see it,” he said, “and John O’Hara, who was the reviewer for Newsweek. It was a big thing. We were supposed to open on Dec. 10.” On Dec. 7, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.“One of the actors said, ‘Now we’re not going to get the critics,’” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “And we didn’t.”Making Wartime NewsWhile contributing military-themed articles to The New Yorker, Mr. Bernstein, who eventually attained the rank of sergeant, became a globe-trotting correspondent for Yank, the Army journal, a job that would last throughout World War II. It was for Yank that he got the scoop that would give him his first taste of fame.“Army Writer Also Sees Tito but Censors Stop His Story” read the May 20, 1944, Associated Press headline: Mr. Bernstein, defying military protocol, had been spirited into war-torn Yugoslavia by anti-German partisans and given the first interview with Marshal Josep Broz, known as Tito, the Communist leader who would head the postwar Yugoslav republic until his death in 1980.“I was the first Western correspondent to see him,” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “The Allies were planning to send in a couple of reporters from the pool and photographers, but the military wanted to delay any news about Tito till after the Second Front opened; the partisans wanted the opposite. They wanted publicity.”Although Mr. Bernstein’s interview with Tito was temporarily quashed, the Associated Press article made it world news.The screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, center, in 1947 after testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refusing to say whether he was or had been a member of the Communist Party. Mr. Trumbo, like Mr. Bernstein and a number of other Hollywood writers, was blacklisted.Credit…Henry Griffin/Associated Press“I had an aunt who was a charter member of the Communist Party; she worked for the party as a stenographer or something like that,” Mr. Bernstein said in 2010 in an interview for this obituary. “And when I came back from the war, she asked me if I would talk to some Communist functionaries. I said that was all right with me. They wanted to know about Tito; nobody was telling them anything. And I told them about my adventures.”“I didn’t join the party until after the war,” Mr. Bernstein said, although the events of the ’30s, including the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe, made the Communist cause attractive to him. “The Communists,” he said, “seemed like they were doing something.”In 1947, with his Yank and New Yorker experience under his belt, a well-received collection of his war stories (“Keep Your Head Down”) on the bookshelves and a hankering to get into movies, Mr. Bernstein went to Hollywood. He had been offered a contract with the writer-producer Robert Rossen at Columbia Pictures, where he did uncredited work on “All the King’s Men.”Mr. Bernstein ended up staying in Hollywood for six months: His agent, Harold Hecht, had formed what would be a prolific production partnership with the actor Burt Lancaster and “offered me a job for twice what I was getting,” Mr. Bernstein recalled, “which still wasn’t much.”That led to his first Hollywood credit, “Kiss the Blood Off My Hands” (1948), a crime drama starring Mr. Lancaster and Joan Fontaine. But by this time the blacklist was starting to make itself felt within an industry where left-wing political sentiments had previously been both common and tolerated.Suddenly Untouchable“I was still in Hollywood in 1947, during the Hollywood Ten,” Mr. Bernstein said, referring to the prosecution of writers, producers and directors who had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refused to answer questions about their Communist affiliation. “I was working for Rossen, who was a Communist. At first it was the Hollywood 19, then it was cut down to 10. I don’t know why. Rossen was very upset that he hadn’t made the cut.”No one took the hearings seriously at first, but they soon would. Mr. Bernstein was considered untouchable both in Hollywood and in the fledgling television industry in New York once his name appeared in “Red Channels,” an anti-Communist tract published in 1950 by the right-wing journal Counterattack.“I was listed right after Lenny Bernstein,” Mr. Bernstein recalled. “There were about eight listings for me, and they were all true.” He had indeed written for the leftist New Masses, been a member of the Communist Party and supported Soviet relief, the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and civil rights.Mr. Bernstein at his apartment in Manhattan in 2000. He continued to write, teach and generate screenplay ideas well into his 90s.Credit…Jim Cooper/Associated PressMr. Bernstein and other blacklisted writers were forced to work under assumed names for sympathetic filmmakers like Sidney Lumet, who used Mr. Bernstein, now back in New York, throughout the ’50s on “You Are There,” the CBS program hosted by Walter Cronkite that re-enacted great moments in history.It was during this period that Mr. Bernstein and his colleagues, notably the writers Abraham Polonsky and Arnold Manoff, began the ruse of protecting their anonymity by sending stand-ins to represent them at meetings with producers, a ploy later dramatized in “The Front.” (In addition to Mr. Allen, the movie starred Zero Mostel, who, like the film’s director, Mr. Ritt, had also been blacklisted.)“Suddenly, the blacklist had achieved for the writer what he had previously only aspired to,” Mr. Bernstein joked in “Inside Out.” “He was considered necessary.”It was the now largely forgotten “That Kind of Woman” (1959), with Sophia Loren, that restarted Mr. Bernstein’s “official” career. The film’s director was Mr. Lumet, who hired Mr. Bernstein under his own name, thus effectively restoring him to the ranks of the employable.In the years following the blacklist, Mr. Bernstein worked regularly for Hollywood, although he continued to live in New York. Among his film credits were the westerns “The Wonderful Country” (1959) and “Heller in Pink Tights” (1960), the Harold Robbins adaptation “The Betsy” (1978) and the Dan Aykroyd-Walter Matthau comedy “The Couch Trip” (1988). He received an Emmy nomination for the television drama “Miss Evers’ Boys” (1997), based on the true story of a 1932 government experiment in which Black test subjects were allowed to die of syphilis, and wrote the teleplay for the live broadcast of “Fail Safe” in 2000.In addition to his wife, a literary agent, Mr. Bernstein is survived by a daughter, Joan Bernstein, and a son, Peter Spelman, from his first marriage, to Marva Spelman, which ended in divorce; three sons, Nicholas, Andrew and Jake, from his third marriage, to Judith Braun, which also ended in divorce, as did a brief second marriage; his stepdaughter, Diana Loomis; five grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Marilyn Seide.Six decades after the fact, Mr. Bernstein voiced a warmly nostalgic view of the Red Scare period, an era that has become synonymous with intolerance and fear.“I don’t know if it’s true of other people getting older,” he said, “but I look back on that period with some fondness in a way, in terms of the relationships and support and friendships. We helped each other during that period. And in a dog-eat-dog business, it was quite rare.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More