John Berry (film Director) - Mercury Theatre and Hollywood

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.