John Berry Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

John Berry (1917 - 1999) was an American actor and director. On the theater scene since childhood, he was noticed by Orson Welles who hired him at the Mercury Theatre. Read the full biography

John Berry (1917 - 1999) was an American actor and director. On the theater scene since childhood, he was noticed by Orson Welles who hired him at the Mercury Theatre. He became Billy Wilder's assistant in Flames of Sin (1944), in 1952, a victim of McCarthyism and blacklisted by Hollywood stars, he was forced into exile first in England and then in France, where he made numerous commercial films (Silence ... we shoot, 1954, with Eddie Constantine, The Great Seducer, 1955, with Fernandel). After a brief American interlude, he returned to France and directed Constantine again in Frank Mitraglia's That Carnage (1968), cut and re-edited by the production, before returning again to New York, where he founded Third World Cinema Production and shot, with a all-black cast, the dramatic comedy Claudine (1974).