Mercury Theatre and Hollywood
His first big break came when he was hired by the Mercury Theatre for a presentation of Julius Caesar that was produced by John Houseman and directed by Orson Welles. Berry acted in other roles with the theater and assisted 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 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 and he 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 with Betty Hutton, the musical Casbah with Tony Martin and Yvonne De Carlo, and He Ran All the Way (1951) starring John Garfield and Shelley Winters.
Read more about this topic: John Berry (film Director)
Famous quotes containing the words mercury, theatre and/or hollywood:
“The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Mankind’s common instinct for reality ... has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism. In heroism, we feel, life’s supreme mystery is hidden. We tolerate no one who has no capacity whatever for it in any direction. On the other hand, no matter what a man’s frailties otherwise may be, if he be willing to risk death, and still more if he suffer it heroically, in the service he has chosen, the fact consecrates him forever.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“In Hollywood now when people die they don’t say, “Did he leave a will?” but “Did he leave a diary?””
—Liza Minnelli (b. 1946)