John Berry (film director)
Encyclopedia
John Berry was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

, who went into self-exile in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 when his career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...

.

Early Life

John Berry was born Jak Szold in the Bronx, New York, the son of a Polish Jewish
History of the Jews in Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...

 father and a Romanian mother. He began his entertainment career by as a child performer in vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, first going on stage at the age of 4. In his teens, he briefly worked as a boxer
Boxing
Boxing, also called pugilism, is a combat sport in which two people fight each other using their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee over a series of between one to three minute intervals called rounds...

 under the name Jackie Sold. Berry's father was a restaurateur, and at one point he owned 28 restaurants around New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. His father went out of business during the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, and Berry sought to support himself by working as a comedian and actor.

Mercury Theater & Hollywood

His first big break came when he was hired by the Mercury Theater for a presentation of Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar (play)
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, also known simply as Julius Caesar, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It portrays the 44 BC conspiracy against...

that was produced by John Houseman
John Houseman
John Houseman was a Romanian-born British-American actor and film producer who became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane...

 and directed by Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

. Berry acted in other roles with the theater and assisted Welles in directing the 1942 production of Native Son
Native Son
Native Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...

. In a late-life interview with the New York Times, Berry spoke positively of his association with Welles and Houseman. "It was like living near the center of a volcano of creating inspiration and fury, glamorous and exciting, full of the kind of theatricality that seems lost forever," he said.

In 1943, Houseman was producing films in Hollywood at Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

 and he hired Berry to direct the film Miss Susie Slagle's
Miss Susie Slagle's
Miss Susie Slagle's is a 1946 film directed by John Berry. It was based on the popular novel by Augusta Tucker. The film was Berry's directorial debut and first starring role for Joan Caulfield.-Plot:...

starring Veronica Lake
Veronica Lake
Veronica Lake was an American film actress and pin-up model. She received both popular and critical acclaim, most notably for her role in Sullivan's Travels and her femme fatale roles in film noir with Alan Ladd during the 1940s, and was well-known for her peek-a-boo hairstyle...

 and Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....

. Berry stayed in Hollywood and directed other features, most notably From This Day Forward starring Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....

, Cross My Heart with Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedienne and singer.-Early life:Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg, daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg and his wife, the former Mabel Lum . While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for...

, the musical Casbah
Casbah (film)
Casbah is a musical film directed by John Berry, starring Yvonne DeCarlo and Tony Martin, and released by Universal Studios.-Plot:...

with Tony Martin
Tony Martin (entertainer)
Tony Martin is an American actor and singer.-Career:Tony Martin was born on Christmas Day, 1913 as Alvin Morris in San Francisco, California to Jewish immigrant parents. He received a saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at the age of ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an...

 and Yvonne DeCarlo, and He Ran All the Way
He Ran All the Way
He Ran All the Way is a 1951 crime drama, considered a film noir, starring John Garfield and Shelley Winters. The film was Garfield's last, as accusations of his involvement with the Communist Party and a refusal to name names while testifying before the HUAC led to his blacklisting in Hollywood...

(1951) starring John Garfield
John Garfield
John Garfield was an American actor adept at playing brooding, rebellious, working-class character roles. He grew up in poverty in Depression-era New York City and in the early 1930s became an important member of the Group Theater. In 1937 he moved to Hollywood, eventually becoming one of Warner...

 and Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters was an American actress who appeared in dozens of films, as well as on stage and television; her career spanned over 50 years until her death in 2006...

.

Blacklisted

In 1950, Berry agreed to direct a short documentary
The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten is an American 16mm short documentary film. In the film, each member of the Hollywood Ten made a short speech denouncing McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklisting.The film was directed by John Berry...

 on the Hollywood 10, a group of directors and writers who refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...

 (HUAC) in their pursuit of supposed Communist Party
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....

 infiltration within the U.S. film industry. After directing the crime drama "He Ran All the Way", Berry was named as a communist by fellow director Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk
Edward Dmytryk was an American film director who was amongst the Hollywood Ten, a group of blacklisted film industry professionals who served time in prison for being in contempt of Congress during the McCarthy-era 'red scare'.-Early life:Dmytryk was born in Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada,...

, a Hollywood Ten member who had been jailed for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. After being released from prison, Dmytryk had gone into exile in England, but subsequently, he sought to reenter the Hollywood film industry. Thus, ex-Party member Dymytrk voluntarily testified before HUAC in April 1951, clearing himself by "naming names."

Berry was one of the 26 alleged "communists" named by Dmytryk (who went on to become a mainstream Hollywood director after the rehabilitation triggered by his Congressional mea culpa). Berry was also named as a communist by ex-Communist Party member Frank Tuttle
Frank Tuttle
Frank Tuttle was a Hollywood film director and writer who directed films from 1922 to 1959 ....

. (Tuttle also also testified before HUAC in 1951, after returning from Vienna, Austria to clear his name and regain employment in Hollywood by "naming names". ) Unable to secure work, Berry left the U.S. and resettled with his family in Paris. "He Ran All the Way" would be the last American film Berry directed for nearly a quarter of a century.

In France, Berry was hired to co-direct Atoll K
Atoll K
Atoll K is a French/Italian film—also known as Robinson Crusoeland in the UK and Utopia in the US—starring the comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in their final screen appearance. The film co-stars French singer/actress Suzy Delair and was directed by Léo Joannon, with uncredited...

, a comedy film
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...

 starring Stan Laurel
Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley "Stan" Jefferson , better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy. His film acting career stretched between 1917 and 1951 and included a starring role in the Academy Award winning film...

 and Oliver Hardy
Oliver Hardy
Oliver Hardy was an American comic actor famous as one half of Laurel and Hardy, the classic double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted nearly 30 years, from 1927 to 1955.-Early life:...

. However, the blacklisted Berry did not receive screen credit; only French director Léo Joannon
Léo Joannon
Léo Joannon was a French writer and film director. Born in Aix-en-Provence, Joannon was originally a law student who became a novelist and journalist before entering the film industry in the 1920s as a cameraman....

 was credited as director.

During the 1950s, Berry directed two films starring Eddie Constantine
Eddie Constantine
Eddie Constantine was an American-born French actor and singer who spent his career working in Europe....

, Ça va barder (1953) and Je suis un Sentimental (1955), and he also directed Tamango
Tamango
Tamango is a 1958 film directed by John Berry, a black-listed American director who exiled himself to Europe. Dorothy Dandridge and Curd Jürgens star in the film with co-stars Alex Cressan and Jean Servais....

(1958), a film about a slave uprising that starred Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress...

.

Exile's Return

The blacklist was broken in 1960 with the release of two films written by blacklisted Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...

, Exodus
Exodus (film)
Exodus is a 1960 epic war film made by Alpha and Carlyle Productions and distributed by United Artists. Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, the film was based on the 1958 novel Exodus, by Leon Uris. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, which represented the breaking of the Hollywood...

and Spartacus
Spartacus
Spartacus was a famous leader of the slaves in the Third Servile War, a major slave uprising against the Roman Republic. Little is known about Spartacus beyond the events of the war, and surviving historical accounts are sometimes contradictory and may not always be reliable...

, which gave Trumbo (one of the most prominent of the Ten) his first screen credits since being blackballed by Hollywood. With the blacklist broken, Berry returned to the U.S. in the early 1960s, where he directed episodes of the TV shows East Side/West Side
East Side/West Side
East Side/West Side is an American drama series starring George C. Scott, Elizabeth Wilson, Cicely Tyson, and later on, Linden Chiles. The series aired for only one season and was shown Monday nights on CBS.-Synopsis:...

and Seaway
Seaway
Seaway is a Canadian drama series that aired on CBC from 1965 to 1966. The series was a Seaway Films production in collaboration with the UK's ATV, with production money provided by the CBC...

.

He continued to work in France, but again returned to the U.S in the 1970s and directed several films, most notably Claudine
Claudine (film)
Claudine is a 1974 American film produced by Third World Films and released to theatres by 20th Century Fox. Starring James Earl Jones, Diahann Carroll, and Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, Claudine was written by Lester Pine and Tina Pine, and directed by John Berry...

(1974), starring Diahann Carroll in an Academy Award-nominated performance, and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan
The Bad News Bears Go to Japan is a 1978 film release by Paramount Pictures and was the sequel to The Bad News Bears and the sequel to The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training. It stars Tony Curtis, Jackie Earle Haley, and Regis Philbin...

(1978). At the time of his death, he was editing Boesman and Lena
Boesman and Lena
Boesman and Lena is a play by South Africa's Athol Fugard.The play was inspired by an incident in 1965 when Fugard was driving down a rural road in South Africa. He noticed an old lady walking along the road in the boiling-hot sun, miles from anywhere, and offered her a lift. She was overcome and...

, a film version of the Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard
Athol Fugard is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in English, best known for his political plays opposing the South African system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy-Award winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood...

 play starring Danny Glover
Danny Glover
Danny Lebern Glover is an American actor, film director, and political activist. Glover is perhaps best known for his role as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film franchise.-Early life:...

 and Angela Bassett
Angela Bassett
Angela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including singer Tina Turner in the motion picture What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in the films Malcolm X and...

.

Legacy

John Berry divided the remainder of his career between theater direction in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and film direction in Paris. His experiences during the Hollywood blacklist era were the inspiration of the character played by Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...

 in the 1991 film Guilty by Suspicion
Guilty by Suspicion
Guilty by Suspicion is a 1991 film about the Hollywood blacklist and associated activities stemming from McCarthyism and the House Un-American Activities Committee...

. (The director had played Ben, the night club owner, in the movie Round Midnight, which had been produced by Irwin Winkler
Irwin Winkler
Irwin Winkler is an American film producer and director. He is the producer or director of 50 major motion pictures, dating back to 1967's Double Trouble, starring Elvis Presley. The fourth film he produced, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? , starring Jane Fonda, was nominated for nine Academy Awards...

, the writer-director of Guilty by Suspicion.)

Berry, looking back at his career for an interview with Newsday
Newsday
Newsday is a daily American newspaper that primarily serves Nassau and Suffolk counties and the New York City borough of Queens on Long Island, although it is sold throughout the New York metropolitan area...

, remarked: "I wouldn’t give up my life for anything. I have been a curiously blessed individual despite all I’ve lived through."

External links

  • John Berry at Allmovie
  • John Berry at Encyclopædia Britannica
    Encyclopædia Britannica
    The Encyclopædia Britannica , published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia that is available in print, as a DVD, and on the Internet. It is written and continuously updated by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 expert...

  • John Berry's obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer
    The Philadelphia Inquirer
    The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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