WGAE Names Walter Bernstein As Burkey Award Recipient
NEW YORK CITY – Walter Bernstein will be awarded the Writers Guild of America, East's (WGAE) Evelyn F. Burkey Award. The prestigious award is given in recognition of contributions that have brought honor and dignity to writers everywhere. Bernstein will receive his award at the New York reception for the 60th Annual WGA Awards being held on Saturday, February 9th at the Hudson Theatre.
Walter Bernstein is an accomplished screen and television writer of more than 60 years. His screenwriting credits include: Fail Safe, Kiss The Blood Off Your Hands, That Kind Of Woman, The Money Trap, Paris Blues, Heller In Pink Tights, The Betsy, The Molly Maguires, Yanks, The Front, Semi-Tough and The House of Carroll Street. In addition, he wrote The Magnificent Seven and The Train uncredited.
During the period 1950-1958, Bernstein wrote numerous dramatic television shows under different names, as well as prose mostly for The New Yorker. He has also written Miss Evers' Boys and Doomsday Gun for HBO, Durango for Hallmark Hall of Fame, and the television adaptation of Fail Safe for CBS. He recently completed the film adaptations of the novels Gertrude and Claudius and The Music Lesson.
Bernstein has received many awards, including the WGAE's Ian McLellan Hunter award for lifetime achievement in writing and the Gotham Award for Writers from the Independent Film Project. He is a current member of the WGAE Council. Bernstein's memoir of war, movies and the blacklist, Inside Out, originally published by Knopf has been republished in paperback by Da Capo Press.
The Evelyn F. Burkey Award was established in 1978 to honor Evelyn F. Burkey, who supported and helped writers. Burkey worked in the creation of the Writers Guild of America, East in 1953 as the union of film, television and radio writers, independent of precursor organizations. She was executive director of the WGAE until her retirement in 1972. The Burkey Award, created in her honor, continues her mission by recognizing one "whose contributions have brought honor and dignity to writers everywhere." Past recipients of the Burkey Award include: 2007 recipient Joan Didion, Martin Scorsese, The Museum of Television & Radio, Colin Callender, Tom Fontana, Vaclav Havel, David Brown, Sidney Lumet, Dennis Potter, Arthur Miller, Joan Ganz Cooney, Jacqueline Babbin, George Schaefer, Art Buchwald, Horton Foote, Andy Rooney, the Communications Workers of America, Athol Fugard, Lloyd Richards, Herbert Brodkin, Elmer W. Lower, Walter Cronkite, Fred Coe, and Barbara Schultz.
The Writers Guild of America, East is a labor union representing writers in motion pictures, broadcast, cable, and news and new media. The WGAE is active in legislative activities on the state, federal, and international levels with a special focus on globalization, labor, communications, and copyrights. It also conducts a number of programs, seminars, and events on issues of interest to, and on behalf of writers.