Berry Kroeger: Actor of Radio, Stage, Film, and Television (1912–1991)

Walker Berry Kroeger, actor, was born in San Antonio on October 16, 1912, to Ethel (Bright) Kroeger and Simpson Kroeger, a railroad mechanical foreman. He was named after his maternal uncle and grew up with four older sisters on the east side of San Antonio.

Kroeger attended Brackenridge High School, where he was the lead performer in a one-act play which placed second in a state-level University Interscholastic League dramatics contest; he was named “class actor.” He graduated in 1929. In 1956 he was the guest of honor at a class reunion. He continued his education at San Antonio Junior College and was affiliated with the San Antonio Little Theatre (later the San Pedro Playhouse). He acted in and directed various plays and also performed a number of behind-the-scenes duties. He also broke into local radio.

 In 1935 Kroeger moved to California, where he worked in radio and continued to perform onstage before relocating to New York. He was a regular on various CBS and NBC radio shows, including Inner Sanctum Mystery, Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre on the Air, Big Sister, and Young Dr. Malone. In 1943 he had the title role on The Falcon as a suave private eye. The radio series was prompted by the RKO film series starring George Sanders and later Tom Conway.

In 1943 Kroeger also made his Broadway debut with The World’s Full of Girls (1943). His subsequent Broadway credits were The Tempest (1945); Therese (1945); Joan of Lorraine (1946–47), starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by Margo Jones; Julius Caesar (1950); Reclining Figure (1954–55); and Shangri-La (1956), a musical adaptation of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon (1933).

Film director William Wellman saw Kroeger in Joan of Lorraine and cast him in The Iron Curtain, a 1948 spy movie with Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. Kroeger’s only previous film role had been uncredited voice work in Tom, Dick and Harry (1941) starring Ginger Rogers. Following The Iron Curtain, however, he established a presence in Hollywood during the peak years of film noir. He had supporting roles in Cry of the City (1948), The Dark Past (1948), Act of Violence (1949), Chicago Deadline (1949), and Gun Crazy (1950). According to film noir maven Karen Hansberry, these films showcased Kroeger’s ability to play “duplicitous, deadly, and altogether dastardly” characters. Unlike radio, cinema allowed him to use his burly physiology to good effect.

Kroeger worked steadily in films and television through the 1970s. Among the more prominent films in which he appeared were Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), Blood Alley (1955), Seven Thieves (1960), Atlantis: the Lost Continent (1961), and Youngblood Hawke (1964). His ability to convey menace in film noir also served him well in horror movies, such as Chamber of Horrors (1966) with Patrick O’Neal, Nightmare in Wax (1969) with Cameron Mitchell, The Mephisto Waltz (1971) with Alan Alda, and The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971) with Bruce Dern. His final cinema credit was Demon Seed, a 1977 science-fiction horror film starring Julie Christie.

Kroeger never had a recurring role in a television series, but he was a frequent guest star. He accumulated credits in sixty-nine television programs from 1949 through 1978. He appeared in such diverse shows as 77 Sunset Strip (1958–64), Peter Gunn (1958–61), Death Valley Days (1952–70), The Rifleman (1958–63), Bonanza (1959–73), Mister Ed (1961–66), Hawaiian Eye (1959–63), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964–68), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964–68), Burke’s Law (1963–66), Get Smart (1965–70), It Takes a Thief (1968–70), and The F.B.I. (1965–74). He was seen in seven different roles in Perry Mason (1957–66).

Kroeger retired from acting in 1978 due to health problems. He died of kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on January 4, 1991. He was survived by his wife, Mary Agnes (Gill) Kroeger, whom he wed on June 12, 1975.