In a time when Martin Sheen can't seem to remember if he's the President of the United States or just plays him on TV, the spectacle of Hollywood types throwing their gym-toned muscle behind political causes has become almost numbingly common. And with the pending Iraq war looming like an ominous third-act denouement, the ritual has taken on a particularly pallid cast: celebrity goes on ratings-hungry talk show, celebrity announces his/her opposition to the war, host berates celebrity for having the audacity to think that people care what he/she thinks (conveniently omitting the fact that non-celebrities against the war couldn't get within a hundred yards of the green room). Unfortunately, the celebrity never cuts to the chase and asks, "If nobody cares what I think, why am I on your show?"

Despite his 50-odd years writing for Hollywood movies and television, Walter Bernstein is hardly the stereotypical limousine liberal. In a Jan. 23 L.A. Times op-ed, Bernstein recalled his firsthand experience of the liberation of Sicily during World War II, evoking the warm welcome Allied troops received there, and the far more ambiguous reception that might await them in Iraq. "[T]his will not be a war of liberation," he wrote. "I am not proud. And I do not think I am alone."

Bernstein has had practice taking stands, even before he was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. A dedicated communist (though not a party member), he took advantage of the open-ended orders he'd been given as an army journalist and slipped into Yugoslavia to score the first interview with Marshal Tito. (His furious superiors, who'd promised an exclusive first to the civilian reporters patiently waiting their turn, had his piece held, and almost court-martialed him.)

If Bernstein's politics have always been clearly defined, his taste is more elusive. In Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist, Bernstein recalls surrendering as readily to the charms of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as The Earrings of Madame de. While his work -- such movies as the anti-nuclear Fail Safe (1964, remade in 2000), the pro-labor The Molly Maguires (1970) and the Tuskegee Experiment exposé Miss Evers' Boys (1997), not to mention the 1960 collective-action parable The Magnificent Seven (on which Bernstein went uncredited due to the blacklist) -- is hardly lacking in political conviction, Bernstein has always chosen to work within the Hollywood system. "I've always worked within the establishment, as it were," he says from his Manhattan home. "I felt, first of all, that's where I could make a living, and second, that's where [a movie] would reach the greatest number of people."

Working "within the establishment" wasn't easy during the blacklist, of course; Bernstein and other writers survived by finding "fronts" -- people who would put their name on a blacklisted writer's script, usually in return for a percentage (and occasionally to further their own careers). The arduous process is detailed in Inside Out (which is out of print, but easy to find), and, comically, in The Front (1976), which Bernstein wrote for director Martin Ritt, a fellow blacklistee. Along with several other blacklisted writers, Bernstein wrote scripts for the popular TV show You Are There, which dramatized historical events as if they were being covered by a modern news crew. What escaped the attention of the higher-ups who were trying to weed out any tinge of pink from popular programming was how many shows focused on rebels who'd defied authority (Joan of Arc) or times when mass hysteria trumped the public's better judgment (the Salem Witch Trials). But You Are There's agenda didn't go unnoticed; in Inside Out, Bernstein relates how Edward R. Murrow pulled the show's producer aside and asked "how he got away with it."

It wasn't always easy. "You went into it knowing what the odds were, what you were up against," Bernstein recalls. "And you have to have a certain kind of character. I remember talking to Lewis Milestone, who had directed All Quiet on the Western Front. He had been for many years in Hollywood, and he would tell me all these terrible stories. At one point, I said to him, "How could you live in this?' and he looked at me with those great, hooded eyes and said, "How does an alley cat live in the alley?' You have to have a certain amount of that in you to survive."

Parallels with the days of the blacklist should be drawn only with care, but Bernstein sees the similarities loud and clear. "People always ask me, Could it happen again?' Yes, of course. I always said it would take [another] external enemy [like the Soviet Union]. What's scary is that's what's happening now. We have an external enemy, and under the cover of fighting that enemy, we've already seen the beginning of restrictions on civil liberties -- an attempted blacklist."

Bernstein isn't naive about what movies can do to change the situation, but he holds on to the hope he's earned. "A movie can't do very much. I can have an immediate effect, but it's essentially a shallow one. But there are always things to fight for. You try to join up with others. You have to fight the alienation. The only advice I would ever give is, Don't give up.' Just like when we were looking to do movies, knowing the odds were against us. We had no feeling that we were going to change anything, but we had to make our statement."

Walter Bernstein will read and talk Mon., Feb. 17, 6:30 p.m., and participate in a brunch conversation Tue., Feb. 18, 10 a.m., Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, 215-573-WRIT. RSVP (required) to whfellow@english.upenn.edu. Both events are free. Tuesday's conversation will be webcast via www.english.upenn.edu/~whfellow.