Early Life and Career
Berry was born in Moline, Illinois, one of two children to accountant Darrell and his wife, Bernice. His older sister, Dona Rae, rounded out the family. He is of Swedish-English decent.
Berry realized he wanted to be a dancer and singer at the age of 12, as he watched a kids’ dance performance during a school assembly. He dreamed of starring in movie musicals and would go to the movie theater to see Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in some of his favorite of their films including Easter Parade, Royal Wedding, On the Town and Summer Stock.
After seeing a school performance, Berry immediately started tap dance class and, at age 15, won a local talent competition sponsored by radio and television big band leader Horace Heidt. Heidt asked Berry to join his traveling performance ensemble, "The Horace Heidt Youth Opportunity Program", which was a popular touring group. Berry's parents drove him to Los Angeles to live with the rest of the troupe at the Horace Height ranch in the San Fernando Valley. He toured the U.S. and parts of Europe for 15 months with the program, dancing and singing for the public and at post-World War II Air Force bases overseas. Berry made lasting relationships with several of his co-cast members and Horace's son, Horace Heidt Jr., who later launched a big band and radio career.
After finishing the tour with Horace Heidt, Berry returned to Moline and he and a friend converted an old grocery store into a dance studio where he taught dance. Thinking that teaching dance could be his profession, Berry taught for about a year before deciding to refocus on his own performance career.
Read more about this topic: Ken Berry
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“That poor little thing was a good woman, Judge. But she just sort of let life get the upper hand. She was born here and she wanted to be buried here. I promised her on her deathbed she’d have a funeral in a church with flowers. And the sun streamin’ through a pretty window on her coffin. And a hearse with plumes and some hacks. And a preacher to read the Bible. And folks there in church to pray for her soul.”
—Laurence Stallings (1804–1968)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)