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’s Mercury Theatre. 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 Betsy Blair, then Mrs. Gene Kelly) 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 (19421). 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 atg the Actor’s Lab, enjoyikng 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 16mm 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: Ça va barfder (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 Athol 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 an 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 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, "a man who had a burning sense of injustice." This led him to have strong affinity for the African-American experience in the U.S., a feeling which was reciprocated by the many talented African-American actors and creative people he came to work with from his first production of Native Son to his last film Boesman & Lena.

Filmography:

Tuesday in November (1945) (uncredited)

Miss Susie Slagle’s (1946)

Cross My Heart (1946)

From This Day Forward (1946)

Casbah (1948)

Tension (1949)

He Ran All the Way (1951)

The Hollywood Ten (1951) (uncredited)

C’est arrivé à Paris (1952) (uncredited)

Ça va barfder (1954)

Je suis un sentimental (1955)

El Amor de Don Juan (1956)

Tamango (1958)

Oh! Qué Mambo! (1959)

East Side/West Side (1963) (TV series)

Maya (1966)

A tout casser (1967)

Claudine (1974)

Thieves (1977) (uncredited)

The Bad News Bears Go to Japan (1978)

Sister, Sister (1982) (TV)

Voyage to Paimpol (1985)

Maldonne (1987)

A Captive in the Land (1990)

Athol Fugard was born June 11, 1932, in a remote village in South Africa. The child of an English father and Afrikaner mother, Fugard grew up in Port Elizabeth, the setting for most of his plays. In 1958, he moved to Johannesburg where he worked as a court clerk, an experience that made him keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid and served as a source of inspiration for his writings. In the same year, he wrote, directed, and acted in a multiracial theater which he organized.

Best known for his plays The Blood Knot (1961) and Master Harold . . . and the Boys (1982), Fugard’s dramatic works deal primarily with the injustices of apartheid. His public attacks on apartheid put him in confllict with the South African government. After the production of The Blood Knot, a play about two multi-racial half-brothers struggling with the institutionalized racism of apartheid, the South African government seized Fugard’s passport and placed him under surveillance. In 1971, the government restrictions against him were relaxed as he was given permission to travel to England to direct his play Boesman & Lena. His play A Lesson from Aloes won the 1980 Drama Critics’ Circle Award, while two other plays, Sizwe Bansi Is Dead and The Island, were each nominated for three Tony Awards. Considered one of the greatest contemporary

dramatists, Fugard continues to write and produce plays.

Fugard’s Plays:

No-Good Friday (1958)

Nongogo (1959)

The Blood Knot (1961), updated as Blood Knot (1985)

Hello and Goodbye (1965)

People AreLiving There (1968)

Boesman and Lena (1969)

Orestes (1971)

Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (1972)

Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1968) improvised by Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona

The Island (1973)

Dimetos (1975, revised 1976)

A Lesson from Aloes (1978)

Master Harold . . . and the Boys (1982)

The Road to Mecca (1984)

Blood Knot (1985)

A Place with the Pigs (1987)

My Children! My Africa! (1989)

Playland (1993)

A Valley Song (1996)

The Captain's Tiger (1999)

From DVD of Boesman & Lena 2001 and from Iain Fisher’s Athol Fugard Web Site: http://www.iainfisher.com/fugard.html

RETURN to CFAF Resource Page