GREAT MOMENTS IN TIMING:
Shot: Walter Bernstein, Celebrated Screenwriter, Is Dead at 101. His movies included “Fail Safe,” “Paris Blues” and, perhaps most notably, “The Front,” based on his own experience of being blacklisted:
Mr. 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.”
—The New York Times, yesterday.
—Mediaite, Friday.
In accordance with the prophesy:
UPDATE: You may not be interested in cancel culture — but cancel culture is interested in you:
Or is this a case of the Gray Lady using cancel culture to provide cover while firing someone for other reasons?
MORE: NYT Rebukes Claims That Editor Was Fired Over ‘Single Tweet:’
The Times is now saying her tweet about Joe Biden was not the cause for her termination.
“There’s a lot of inaccurate information circulating on Twitter,” a Times representative said. “For privacy reasons we don’t get into the details of personnel matters but we can say that we didn’t end someone’s employment over a single tweet. Out of respect for the individuals involved we don’t plan to comment further.”
“Developing,” as they say.
(Updated and bumped.)