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)
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air; the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1859–1924)
“That’s one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to him in the form of a salary check. In Hollywood the average writer is not young, not honest, not brave, and a bit overdressed. But he is darn good company, which book writers as a rule are not. He is better than what he writes. Most book writers are not as good.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)