John Berry (film director)
| John Berry | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Jak Szold September 6, 1917 The Bronx, New York City |
| Died | November 29, 1999 (aged 82) Paris, France |
| Cause of death | Pleurisy |
| Other names | Jack Berry Stuart Hofmann |
| Occupation | Film director, screenwriter, actor, film producer |
| Spouse(s) | Myriam Boyer |
| Children | Jan Berry,Dennis Berry and Arny Berry |
John Berry (September 6, 1917 – November 29, 1999) was an American film director, who went into self-exile in France when his career was interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist.
John Berry was born Jak Szold in The Bronx, New York, the son of a Polish Jewish father and a Romanian mother. He was a child performer in vaudeville, first going on stage at the age of four. In his teens he briefly worked as a boxer under the name Jackie Sold. Berry's father was a restaurateur who at one point owned 28 restaurants around New York City, but he went out of business during the Great Depression and Berry sought to support himself by working as a comedian and actor.
Berry's first big break came when he was hired by the Mercury Theatre for its debut production, Caesar (1937). Berry acted in other roles with the theater and assisted Orson Welles in directing the 1942 production of Native Son. In a late-life interview with The New York Times, Berry spoke positively of his association with Welles and John Houseman, who co-founded the Mercury. "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.
By 1943, Houseman was producing films in Hollywood at Paramount Pictures and hired Berry to direct the film Miss Susie Slagle's starring Veronica Lake and Lillian Gish. Berry stayed in Hollywood and directed other features, most notably From This Day Forward starring Joan Fontaine, Cross My Heart (all 1946) with Betty Hutton, the musical Casbah (1948) with Tony Martin and Yvonne De Carlo, and He Ran All the Way (1951) starring John Garfield and Shelley Winters.
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