John BERRY

Born in the Bronx in 1917 to a family in the arts, Berry's first experience as a performing artist was at the tender age of four. That did not prevent him, however, from becoming a professional boxer. By the age of twenty, he was active in Orson Welles' Mercury Theater group. In 1940 he acted in and later took over as touring director for the New York and national production of Richard Wright's Native Son. This was followed in 1946 by his directing the national touring production of Deep are the Roots, the first play to show a white woman (played by Besty Blair) kissing a black man. By then Berry had won a loyal following within the African-American community, which was to endure for the rest of his career.
Working as an apprentice director to Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity led to Berry's first assignment as a director with Miss Susie Slagle's (1946) starring Lillian Gish and produced by John Houseman with whom he had worked on the documentary Tuesday In November (1942). Some years later in an interview, when Gish was asked who after D.W. Griffith was the director she most enjoyed working with, Gish replied, John Berry.
In Hollywood, Berry made a name for himself at the Actor's Lab enjoying major success as an actor and director in Arnold Manoff's All That You Need Is a Good Break. He then directed John Garfield in He Ran All the Way (1951), and had been set to direct Garfield again in The Man with the Golden Arm when the House of Un-American Activities Committee hearings abruptly halted his career in the United States. After being blacklisted by the industry, Berry directed a 16 mm documentary, The Hollywood Ten (1951), which was produced to raise funds for the defense of the hearings' victims.
The blacklist sent Berry into exile in France, where he soon regained public recognition with two of Eddie Constantine's best films: Va Barder (1954) and Je suis un sentimental (1955). Berry went on to an international career that took him to France, England, Canada and even as far as India, Russia and Japan. In all those countries he directed numerous films, plays and television movies.
In his travels, he discovered the great South African playwright Arthol Fugard and subsequently staged his play The Blood Knot, first in London in 1962 and then in New York in 1965. In London in 1961, Berry created a major theatrical event directing and starring in Ted Allan's The Way of the World. In 1970, Berry then staged Boesman and Lena in New York garnering great critical acclaim and popular success. He then directed the film Claudine in 1974, for which Diahann Carroll received and Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.
Sadly, Berry passed away on November 29, 1999 in Paris, a few days before completing post-production on Boesman and Lena. In recalling Berry's acting and directing of All That You Need is a Good Break, fellow blacklistee Abraham Polonsky stated that Boesman & Lena Should allow John, maybe the most inspired...of all of us, to end his career, much like John Huston with The Dead, at the level of greatness that is really his John Berry's theatre and film work reflect a man of great talent who like a gypsy roamed the world. Underneath his apparent random path was in the words of Athol Fugard man who had a burning sense of injustice. This led him to have strong affinity for the African-American actors and creative people he came to work with from his first production of Native Son to his last film Boesman and Lena.