George Berrell (16 December 1849 - 20 April 1933) was an American actor
of both the 19th and early 20th Century stage and of the silent era. He
appeared in numerous stage plays as well as 55 films over the course of
a career that ran from 1850 to 1927.
He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and died in Los Angeles,
California.
Little can be found about George Berrell beyond brief descriptions of
his film career, however, he was an important though not famous actor,
stage manager and director of the 19th Century American theater, and
central to the growth of the theater in St. Louis. Born to a theatrical
family, he first appeared as an infant on stage at the Walnut Street
Theater in Philadelphia in 1850 . As a child he earned his keep and
helped support his widowed mother, an actress, by carrying costume
baskets for actors in any company of which she might be a member. John
Wilkes Booth was one of those, and Berrell speaks affectionately of him
in his unpublished autobiography, "Theatrical and Other
Reminiscsences." In his late teens and early twenties he roamed the
country, often afoot, with the goal of "growing up with the country,"
as he put it in the autobiography. Shortly after leaving Dr. Barton's
Military Academy outside of Philadelphia, he was walking south along
the Missouri River when a rider approached him from behind.
Dismounting, he introduced himself as Turner Tinnell and as they
traveled on by walk and tie, Turner offered Berrell a job teaching
school on Keg Island, a Missouri River mud flat island. Berrell
accepted and taught there for a year, his students being the children
of Confederate fugitives, many former members of Quantrill's Raiders
and cohorts of Frank and Jesse James. Illness forced him to leave and
he returned to Philadelphia where his mother nursed him back to health.
Later he explored the frontier, living for a while in Laramie, Wyoming,
where he describes his involvement in the arrest of a corrupt city
policeman name Louis Roudepouch.
For a number of years he alternated between traveling the country and
working odd jobs, in lumber camps, on the railroad, in drug stores and
post offices, doing whatever work he could find. In his late twenties
or early thirties he returned to the theater and stayed there until
around 1915 when he retired and started working in silent pictures, a
job he did not consider on a par with acting in the theater. In 1917 he
appeared in John Ford's first full-length film, "Straight Shooting."
The novel, "Shadows and Acts," by Wilson Roberts based in part on
Berrell's unpublished autobiography, details his adventurous life and
explores the conflicts engendered by his tempestuous relationship with
Booth and his life-long friendship with the actress, Catherine Terrell,
as well as his pursuit by Miranda Ives, the daughter of a serpent
handling preacher he first encountered while teaching on Keg Island.
The novel is due to be published in 2011.
