Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist

by Walter Bernstein

During World War II, Walter Bernstein was a correspondent for the U.S. Army magazine Yank ; after the war, he joined the Communist Party. When Senator Joseph McCarthy began his notorious witch hunt for Communists in the late 1940s, Bernstein -- a writer for film and television -- found himself blacklisted. For a decade he would scrape a living together by selling scripts through front men. Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post has called Inside Out "a lovely piece of work . . . a memoir of the blacklist that, without minimizing any of its offenses or forgiving any of its architects, finds humanity and humor in the period." The author vividly recalls an entertainment community torn between those who were willing and those who refused to denounce their friends, and he provides unforgettable glimpses of leading Hollywood figures such as Burt Lancaster, Elia Kazan, Bette Davis, and Zero Mostel. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer has hailed this as, simply, "the best personal account of the era."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Memoir, Film, Biography Memoir

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 1996

About the author

Bernstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Hannah and Louis Bernstein, a teacher. He attended Dartmouth College, where he got his first writing job, as a film reviewer for the campus newspaper, and where he also joined the Young Communist League. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1940, and in February 1941 was drafted into the U.S. Army. Eventually attaining the rank of Sergeant, he spent most of the war as a correspondent on the staff of the Army newspaper Yank, filing dispatches from Iran, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Yugoslavia.[2] He also wrote a number of articles and stories based on his experiences in the Army, many of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. He had barely started working in Hollywood when he was blacklisted. He is a recipient of The Writers Guild of America East Lifetime Achievement Award and he also wrote the book "Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist". Though unfairly blacklisted by Hollywood for his political alliances, luckily he recovered to have a long remarkable career.

Reviews

[Sarah Sammis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inside Out claims to be a memoir of the blacklist and while the blacklist, HUAC / McCarthy trials are mentioned, it's mostly just a meandering autobiography. Bernstein needs an editor to shorten and break up these chapters to keep things more on topic. The first chapter is by far the best at covering the blacklist era and shows how it turned the film and television industry "inside out." The second and third chapters go back in time, covering in all of his childhood in one and all of World War Two in another. They also strive to build an explanation of why Bernstein chose to join the American Communist party but instead of presenting a well-thought and erudite discussion of third party politics, socialism and communism, he weakens his overall memoir with long winded, rambling tangents.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, very brisk, very personal view of the blacklist era from inside. By making this a memoir, Bernstein makes it a much more compelling (and naturally cinematic) story. He shows why his communist ties weren’t a mistake, but a clear, justifiable, even patriotic choice that came from his upbringing and his wartime work. The villains are those who betray their old friends (Elia Kazan does not come off well at all). The companionship and generosity of Bernstein’s true friends inside and outside of the blacklist make the story heartwarming. If you like movies about movies, you will love this.

[Glenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second time around with this magnificent account. Moving, surprising, often hilarious, filled with remarkable anecdotes and fantastic thumbnail sketches of the great and near great. And not just wise, but incredibly commonsensical.

[Rick Burin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An honest and intimate first-person account of the HUAC era from blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein, tracing his journey from Young Communist League activist to wartime news reporter and finally fully-fledged party member, as the vultures begin to circle. You might look at Bernstein’s credits and think, “Who the hell was this guy anyway? He didn’t write much of note” and then you remember that he’d just been hired by Robert Rossen to adapt All the King’s Men when he was blacklisted for eight years. Which is rather the point.

Bernstein writes in a spare, staccato style, influenced like so many of his contemporaries by Hemingway’s short sentences and simple language. Chapter breaks are rare, but new chapters start with vivid, cinematic images born of his teleplay experience. His segues between topics can be clumsy or even incoherent, and there’s little hierarchy of information: John Garfield’s death, the unmasking of Soviet Russia, a Bette Davis name-drop and sketch – all get much the same treatment.

But the book is truly exceptional on the psychology of blacklisting: why Bernstein abhorred some stool pigeons and almost excused others; the way HUAC inspired the communal living that the reds had previously only imagined; the way it put them on the defensive, preventing them from questioning their own beliefs.

By 1996, aged 77, he is, for the most part, a remarkably clear-eyed chronicler (the exception is the question of loyalty to the Soviet Union, raised as an issue, then rather mangled), candid about his own errors of judgement or analysis, ruthless about others’ failure of integrity. There are moving cameos from Zero Mostel, Abe Polonsky and Philip Loeb, all victims of the blacklist who Bernstein semi-fictionalised for his 1976 script, The Front.

A child of the screen, he sees everything through the prism of cinema: events from real life are merely mirrors of things he’s glimpsed in the movies. And man does he love the movies. He writes wonderfully about them too: sentimental but perceptive, celebrating art and genre schlock alike, simultaneously seduced and revolted by the “lunatic pretension” of Mankiewicz’s Barefoot Contessa (which he watches in the company of sailors who believe that the male hero has “got no dick”).

If you’re here purely for the witchhunt material, you’ll find it in embedded in context of variable interest – Bernstein’s wartime exploits include scoring the first international interview with Tito, training, and just sort of sitting around quite a bit – but at its best it offers a perspective on the period that no other blacklist book does.

[Mia Carelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

McCarthy-era blacklisted screenwriter Walter Bernstein recounts his life and times in a memoir that documents some important American history. Unfortunately, the book was a disappointment, and while much 1940s-‘50s political history is reviewed, I didn’t ultimately connect with the author.

The emotional resonance of this tragic time rarely came through. Bernstein manages to talk about friends like Bette Davis, Elia Kazan and Zero Mostel, for example, without communicating what made them so special. Chapters are often agonizingly long. The narrative only came alive sporadically when the writer and colleagues became successful with the use of “fronts” and talked about the challenges and comedic complications that ensued. A gripping and poignant episode is the author’s witness of the Peekskill riots, where he had gone to attend a Paul Robeson civil rights benefit concert.

I was frustrated by a lack of dates (the aborted Robeson concert was in 1949, for example, but I had to look that up online). Perhaps this book serves better as a general resource than a good read. Bernstein fictionalized some of his experiences in the film The Front (1976). Inside Out (a title I didn’t understand) was published 20 years later, and may simply reflect the “interminable delay” to its publication that Bernstein mentions, or the author’s age when it was finally released.

[Bob Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Best Recollection of the Blacklist You Can Read

Now considered a period of ancient history for most Americans, the era of the Blacklist holds many dangerous parallels to today’s time of ‘alternative facts’ and ‘truthy’ events. This is one man’s version of the tragic and dangerous times where knowing the wrong person or showing up at the wrong event could mean your future dissolving before your eyes. Walter Bernstein died in the early days of 2021 but this account of struggling to get any job writing scripts and the hardships he suffered will live on forever.

[Raimo Wirkkala · Rating 4 out of 5]

An estimable personal account of surviving the 'blacklist'-era in the movie business. This memoir is a little more expansive than the subtitle might suggest but it is all in service of context. Bernstein conveys well the terrible choices that innocent people were forced to make by paranoid, fearful and ignorant authority figures. He finally names some names but he does so on his own terms.

[Chris Nagel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "butler" did it.

Pretty good, but more a personal memoir than a memoir of the blacklist, which is what I was wanting. I did enjoy Bernstein's writing, too. He clearly had fun writing the book, tossed in some flourishes for the hell of it.

[Gary Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walter Bernstein has written one of those books that are, on the surface, a simple retelling. And the story he retells is one we think we know. During the 1950s, we have learned, actors and others in Hollywood were blacklisted – unable to work at their profession because of the witch hunt for Communists, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Commission. (Patriot Act, anyone?) But what does it mean to a person to lose his ability to work? And what does it mean to a country – to AMERICA, the “land of the free” – to label some of its citizens as un-American, as subversive, as evil? We (well, I) have always taken it for granted that the blacklist was a bad thing, an evil thing, but that communism, too, is bad and evil. The blacklist was a wrongheaded way to combat what was a true threat to America. Right? At the end of his ordeal, Bernstein agreed to answer questions about his communist attachments for a studio head in Hollywood. Here is his account:

“I told him to ask his questions, and I would answer. He went down the list carefully, making notes as he went. I felt like the star guest of This Is Your Life. When we came to Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito would bound out from the wings, grinning at my amazement. The audience would applaud. The causes rolled by, bearing their load of nostalgia. How noble this one was, how misguided that one, how could this other one be both noble and misguided? How stupid I was to join this, how lucky to have been part of that! These causes were what had shaped my life, given it purpose, enriched it, impeded it, gotten me blacklisted for eight years. They belonged to a time when I had hope and belief in what they represented. Most of them had ended in defeat and some in corruption, but there were many that I still believed in, would join their equivalents again if they existed, even if they were thought subversive, even if I knew their time had not yet come.”

How like any American’s life! How like my own! I have been an evangelical Christian, a fundamentalist, a proponent of having many children, and a homeschooler in years past. “How stupid I was to join this; how lucky to have been part of that!” My political views have veered from very liberal to very conservative and back again. Walter Bernstein and his fellows, whatever their ideals, were no threat to America, any more than I am. In fact, we are a celebration of the freedom of speech and thought that makes America a wonderful place to live.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book about Hollywood and the blacklistin the late 1940s. I read it in conjunction with writing a paper for class, but found the book easy to read and interesting.

Apparently, in times of great stress, the liberties we take for granted are often taken away - at least from some people. This story reminded me of the Japanese-Americans (West Coast) who were forcibly taken from their homes and jobs and interned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The blacklist was not quite as radical as that, but it nevertheless, deprived a lot of talented people of their jobs and careers. It's certainly not impossible to think, with terrorism and such, that something similar couldn't happen again.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall it's an interesting look at what it was like to be blacklisted in Hollywood. One interesting thing is his discussions about how it impacted people outside of the entertainment world as well.

The book does get (in my opinion) bogged down a bit with a lengthy section about him working in World War Two as a soldier-writer. I felt like it kind of lost focus sometimes. But overall, if you are interested in knowing more about the blacklist, this is definitely a good read.

[Su · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the shocking story of the McCarthy witch hunts written by a screenwriter who was blacklisted. It is a star-studded tale of betrayal, desperation and a lunatic obsession with "reds under the bed". A must have for anyone who loves the arts and values their freedom.

[Karen]

Hollywood members put on the blacklist after WWII. #coldwar #history #socialscience #government #politics #communism

[Danna]

I'm beginning to appreciate eBooks and Google Books on my public transit commutes.