Walter Bernstein Filmography

The Tramp and the Dictator

Actors: Walter Bernstein, Ray Bradbury, Sydney Chaplin, Al Hirschfeld, Stanley Kauffmann

Synopsis: One of the most compelling strokes of fate in the past millenium is the fact that the 20th century's most hated dictator and most beloved film comedian were born within four days of each other in 1889. Although Adolf Hitler probably never gave Charlie Chaplin a second thought during his rise to Read More

Fail Safe

Crew: Co-Executive Producer, Producer, Screenwriter, Teleplay By

Actors: George Clooney, Noah Wyle, Richard Dreyfuss, Hank Azaria, Brian Dennehy

Synopsis: A seemingly-minor electronic error sets the world on the verge of nuclear annihilation in this made-for-TV adaptation of the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler (which was previously filmed in 1964). Due to the burn-out of a piece of circuitry, a computer orders a U.S. Air Force jet on a Read More

Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own

Actors: Bernard Avishai, Judith Balaban, Walter Bernstein, Bruce Cohn Curtis, Thomas Cripps

Synopsis: Winner of the Best Jewish Experience Documentary award at the 1998 Jerusalem Film Festival, this A&E program directed by Simcha Jacobovici was also hailed as "provocative and engaging" by John Leonard in New York Magazine and "shrewdly on target" by Caryn James in The New York Times. Essentially Read More

Miss Evers' Boys

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Alfre Woodard, Laurence Fishburne, Craig Sheffer, Ossie Davis, Joe Morton

Synopsis: Produced for the HBO cable network, this docudrama explores the social and ethical issues at the heart of the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Blacks With Syphilis. From 1932 through 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service studied 600 poor African-American sharecroppers in Macon County, AL -- 399 Read More

The Affair

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Courtney Vance, Kerry Fox, Ciarán Hinds, Bill Nunn, Leland Gantt

Synopsis: The wife of a British army officer falls in love with an African American G.I. in this made-for-cable World War II drama. When her unfaithful husband (Ciaran Hinds) goes off to war, small-town homemaker Maggie Leyland (Kerry Fox) spends her time caring for her young son (Rory Jennings) and helping Read More

Doomsday Gun

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Frank Langella, Alan Arkin, Kevin Spacey

Synopsis: This HBO docudrama tells the real-life story of Dr. Gerald Bull (Frank Langella), a genius weapons designer whose services were used by the CIA for some highly suspect operations. After these operations were exposed, the CIA denied all knowledge of them and Bull was put in prison; following his Read More

Women and Men: In Love There are No Rules

Crew: Director

Actors: Matt Dillon, Scott Glenn, Ray Liotta, Andie MacDowell

Synopsis: Women and Men 2 is the second installment of HBO's short-story anthology series. In the first episode, Carson McCuller's "A Domestic Dilemma," Ray Liotta plays a husband who has to cut back on his work in order to care for his children, since his alcoholic wife (Andie MacDowell) cannot be trusted. Read More

Fletch Lives

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Chevy Chase, Hal Holbrook, Julianne Phillips, Cleavon Little, R. Lee Ermey

Synopsis: Though the original Fletch was drubbed by critics, it proved a major success for star Chevy Chase. It was inevitable, then, that a sequel would make an appearance. Surprisingly, Fletch Lives didn't come out until 1989--a full five years after the original. Once more, Chase stars as Irwin Maurice Read More

The House on Carroll Street

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kelly McGillis, Jeff Daniels, Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Rhode, Jessica Tandy

Synopsis: Yes, there are commies under the bed. But are there Nazis there too? Emily Crane (Kelly McGillis) is a modestly successful Life photo editor living in 1950s New York, until she is called before the Senate Un-American Activities Committee to testify about her "communist" associations. When she Read More

The Couch Trip

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Dan Aykroyd, Walter Matthau, Charles Grodin, David Clennon, Donna Dixon

Synopsis: Michael Ritchie's The Couch Trip follows a long line of Hollywood films (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Disorderly Orderly) in which the psychos are seen as saner than the psychiatrists. Charles Grodin plays Dr. George Maitlin, a pompous radio self-help guru, who is having his own personal Read More

The Legend of Billie Jean

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Helen Slater, Keith Gordon, Christian Slater, Richard Bradford, Peter Coyote

Synopsis: With their father dead and their mother busy trying to land a steady beau, pretty teen Billy Jean Davy (Helen Slater) and her younger brother, Binx (Christian Slater), spend their time riding Binx's moped and dreaming of life in Vermont -- several climate zones away from the humid, omnipresent Read More

Little Miss Marker

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Walter Matthau, Julie Andrews, Tony Curtis, Bob Newhart

Synopsis: Screenwriter Walter Bernstein made his directorial debut with Little Miss Marker, a re-make of the Damon Runyon story that has been filmed many times before (most notably as Little Miss Marker with Shirley Temple, Sorrowful Jones starring Bob Hope, and the Tony Curtis vehicle 40 Pounds of Read More

Yanks

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Richard Gere, Lisa Eichhorn, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, Rachel Roberts, Chick Vennera

Synopsis: John Schlesinger directs the war romance Yanks, based on the story by Colin Welland. Set in England at the end of WWII, the story concerns three American GIs and their affairs with British women of varying social status. The central romance concerns Sgt. Matt Dyson (Richard Gere) and Jean Moreton Read More

An Almost Perfect Affair

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Keith Carradine, Monica Vitti, Raf Vallone, Christian de Sica, Dick Anthony Williams

Synopsis: Inside jokes about the film industry dominate this slight tale of ambition and romance at the Cannes Film Festival. Keith Carradine plays a first-time director who has sunk two years and all his money into a movie about the execution of murderer Gary Gilmore. With his last bit of cash, he flies Read More

The Betsy

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Laurence Olivier, Robert Duvall, Katharine Ross, Tommy Lee Jones, Jane Alexander

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Harold Robbins, this is the story of Loren Hardeman, Sr., a Midwestern automobile manufacturer (Lord Olivier) who pins his future on The Betsy, a "wonder car" named after his daughter (Kathleen Beller). The Betsy is designed to last practically forever, which doesn't rest Read More

Annie Hall

Actors: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane, Paul Simon

Synopsis: Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The Read More

Semi-Tough

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh, Robert Preston, Bert Convy

Synopsis: Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson star as two pro-football pals who both fall for the team-owner's very rich daughter. Kind of goofy, kind of funny, and somewhat endearing--those are the qualities that surface in this light-hearted comedy built upon an extremely predictable scenario. ~ All Read More

Hollywood on Trial

Actors: John Huston, Edward Dmytryk, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., Lester Cole, Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Joseph McCarthy

Synopsis: Combining familiar newsreel footage with freshly shot material, David Helpern's Hollywood on Trial is a documentary concerning the "communist witch-hunt" era. In the years following World War II, several ambitious Washington politicos were anxious to dissipate the last traces of Roosevelt's New Read More

The Front

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi, Michael Murphy, Andrea Marcovicci

Synopsis: The McCarthy-era "witch hunts" in the entertainment industry set the stage for this comedy drama set in the 1950s. Howard Prince (Woody Allen) is a cashier at a corner bar who works as a small-time bookie on the side, with little success. One day, Howard's old friend Alfred Miller (Michael Read More

The Molly Maguires

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Sean Connery, Richard Harris, Samantha Eggar, Frank Finlay, Anthony Zerbe

Synopsis: This grim historical drama from director Martin Ritt was loosely based on real-life events. Richard Harris stars as James McParlan, an operative for the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1876. The Pinkertons have been hired by a major coal company to infiltrate and expose an underground terrorist Read More

The Money Trap

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Glenn Ford, Elke Sommer, Rita Hayworth, Ricardo Montalban, Joseph Cotten

Synopsis: In this well-regarded film noir thriller, Joe Barron (Glenn Ford) is a police detective whose wife Lisa (Elke Sommer) has inherited a stock portfolio from her father. Joe and Lisa go on a spending spree, but when their new holdings fail to pay dividends, Joe finds himself deep in debt. Dr. Read More

The Train

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, Michel Simon, Suzanne Flon

Synopsis: John Frankenheimer directs Burt Lancaster in the tense spy thriller The Train. Lancaster plays Labiche, a French railway inspector. Allied forces are threatening to liberate Paris, so Col. Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) is ordered to move the priceless works of art from the Jeu de Paume Museum Read More

Fail-Safe

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Frank Overton, Dan O'Herlihy, Edward Binns, Fritz Weaver, Larry Hagman

Synopsis: Based on the novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail-Safe is set for the most part at Strategic Air Command headquarters, where a misguided transmission sends a squadron of bombers hurtling towards Russia, fully prepared to drop their atomic weaponry on Moscow. Air Force commander Frank Overton Read More

Paris Blues

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Louis Armstrong, Diahann Carroll

Synopsis: The second film of director Martin Ritt with both Paul Newmanand Sidney Poitier, it's set in a city that has long been a haven for black musicians eager to escape the racism of the U.S. Newman is Ram Bowen, a trombone player who makes his living in a jazz group, which also includes tenor man Eddie Read More

A Breath of Scandal

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren, Maurice Chevalier, John Gavin, Angela Lansbury, Milly Vitale

Synopsis: Based on the Ferenc Molnar play Olympia, A Breath of Scandal serves as an elegant vehicle for a ravishing Sophia Loren. The star plays Princess Olympia, who despite her station in life cannot resist the urge to satisfy her sexual appetites. Exiled to the countryside, Olympia falls in love with Read More

The Magnificent Seven

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn

Synopsis: Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954) is westernized as The Magnificent Seven. Yul Brynner plays Chris, a mercenary hired to protect a Mexican farming village from its annual invasion by bandit Calvera (Eli Wallach). As Elmer Bernstein's unforgettable theme music (later Read More

Heller in Pink Tights

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, Eileen Heckart, Ramon Novarro, Margaret O'Brien, Steve Forrest

Synopsis: The talents of the cast and director George Cukor (A Star Is Born, My Fair Lady), combine to bring off this otherwise routine Western based on a Louis L'Amour novel. Sophia Loren is Angela Rossini, a woman who seems to create the situations she gets into, and Anthony Quinn is the strong, silent Read More

That Kind of Woman

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Sophia Loren, Tab Hunter, Jack Warden, Barbara Nichols, Keenan Wynn, George Sanders

Synopsis: That Kind of Woman stars Sophia Loren as an Italian girl, Kay, who enjoys a brief wartime romance with American paratrooper Red (Tab Hunter). But Kay is already the property of a suave millionaire (George Sanders) known only as "The Man." When next we see her, Kay is living Hollywood's concept of Read More

Kiss the Blood off My Hands

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, Robert Newton, Lewis L. Russell, Aminta Dyne

Synopsis: In this film noir drama, Bill Saunders (Burt Lancaster) is a former Prisoner of War living in England whose experiences have left him emotionally unstable and prone to violence. One night, while drinking in a pub, he gets into an argument with the owner which quickly escalates into a brutal Read More