Curiosidades

In December 1964 it was announced that Sidney Poitier would star in "Be Ready With Bells and Drums", based on the novel by Elizabeth Kata, a story about contemporary life and racism in a big city; the film to be be produced by Pandro S Berman for MGM. The movie was eventually re-named "A Patch Of Blue" and first seen in late 1965.

Brother of film editor Henry Berman.

In November 1937 he became the new Vice President and Production Supervisor at RKO, replacing Samuel J. Briskin.

The first preview of "Sylvia Scarlett" was such a disaster, and audience response so hostile, that Katherine Hepburn and George Cukor went to Berman's office and contritely offered to do another film for him, of his own choice, without any salary at all. Both reported in later interviews that Berman had thrown them out, angrily shouting "I never want to see either of you again!" However, he eventually did work with both later on, and entirely amicably.

He was RKO's top producer throughout the 1930s, connected with all the studio's most famous films. He personally produced all the Astaire-Rogers movies except the last - which was the only one which lost money. He moved to MGM at the start of the 1940s and stayed there for about 25 years, but, after moving to Twentieth Century Fox in the late 60s, he became very unhappy. He spent a long time on a dream project called "John Brown's Body", but its budget was deemed prohibitive and the movie went unmade. Then he had a grim time producing "Justine", which lost its first director and, after expensive (but mostly abortive) location filming in Tunisia, was recalled to Hollywood to be filmed on studio sets instead of locations. Berman and new director George Cukor had a terrible time with leading lady Anouk Aimee, who seemed uninterested in the film from the outset. The picture cost a huge amount of money (much more than its original - very lavish - budget) and performed very badly at the box-office. Berman's last film was a small and very vulgar comedy, "Move", another total flop. After this, Fox seemed to feel that enough was enough, and so did Berman. He never made another film.