By Garry McGee
Jean Seberg’s widower, Dennis Berry, died on June 12 in Paris. He was 76.
Berry was married to Seberg from 1972 until her death in 1979. From 1982 he was married to actress Anna Karina until her death in 2019.
Born in the United States, Dennis Berry had lived in Paris most of his life. His father was the exiled Hollywood film director John Berry. In 1950, John Berry agreed to direct a short documentary on the Hollywood 10, a group of directors and writers who refused to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in their pursuit of supposed Communist Party infiltration within the US film industry. John Berry was named as a communist by fellow director and former party member Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten who had been jailed for contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with HUAC. After being released from prison, Dmytryk had gone into exile in England, but he subsequently sought to reenter the Hollywood film industry and voluntarily testified before HUAC in April 1951, clearing himself by "naming names."
The Hollywood 10.
By naming John Berry and 25 other alleged communists, Dmytryk was then able to resume his Hollywood career. Berry was also named by ex-Communist Party member Frank Tuttle, who testified before HUAC in 1951 after returning from Austria, to clear his name and regain employment in Hollywood. Unable to secure work and unwilling to compromise his principles, Berry left the U.S. and resettled with his family in Paris.
Jean Seberg and Dennis Berry at the premiere of Last Tango in Paris in 1972.
Dennis Berry was introduced to Jean Seberg at a party in early 1972. A whirlwind courtship took place and the couple married in Las Vegas several weeks after meeting. Although separated, the couple remained married at the time of Seberg’s death in 1979. The couple had no children.
Dennis Berry appeared as an actor in various works including a brief bit in 1970’s “Promise at Dawn”, a biographical work of Seberg’s second husband novelist Romain Gary. Berry’s film shorts drew attention and acclaim in France, and in 1975 he directed his first full-length film “le grand delire” with Seberg and Isabelle Huppert. He continued to work in American and French film and television productions including “Highlander” with Marion Cotillard in 1992. His last film, “Savages”, was released in 2019.
Seberg’s first husband, film director and producer Francois Moreuil, died in 2017. Her second husband, Romain Gary, passed in 1980.
Garry McGee is the co-producer-director-writer of Jean Seberg: Actress, Activist, Icon (now in the distribution phase). He is the Emmy® nominated filmmaker behind the documentary The Last Wright (co-produced with Lucille Carra) and the author of Jean Seberg--Breathless, Neutralized: the FBI vs. Jean Seberg (with Jean Russell Larson) and The Films of Jean Seberg (with Michael Coates-Smith).
The award-winning documentary Jean Seberg: Actress, Activist, Icon tells the true story of Hollywood and heartbreak, beginning when an unknown 17-year-old Iowa girl who beat out 18,000 actresses to play Saint Joan in Otto Preminger's 1957 film. The documentary goes behind the scenes of her rocky life in the international film spotlight, her civil rights activism that drew FBI attention, and her mysterious death in Paris in 1979 - deemed a "probable suicide." Produced by Emmy-nominated and award-winning filmmakers Garry McGee (McMarr Ltd.), and Kelly Rundle and Tammy Rundle (Fourth Wall Films).
Visit JeanSebergMovie for updates on the documentary, glimpses behind-the-scenes, all things Jean Seberg, and upcoming news on the film's release.
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