When David O. Selznick became chief of production at RKO in October 1931, Berman managed to survive Selznick's firing of most of the staff. [citation needed] Selznick named him producer for the adaptation of Fannie Hurst's short story Night Bell, a tale of a Jewish doctor's rise out of the Lower East Side ghetto to become a Park Avenue physician, which Selznick personally retitled Symphony of Six Million. He ordered Berman to have references to ethnic life in the Jewish ghetto restored.[5][6] The movie was a box-office and critical success, and Selznick and Berman were proud of it. Berman later said it was the "first good movie" he produced.[7]
In 1957 he and Lawrence Weingarten formed a company Avon Productions that released through MGM.[8]
He survived several executive shake-ups at MGM and remained there until 1963, then went into independent production, closing out his career with the unsuccessful Move (1970).
In 1937, Berman and his wife, Viola, hired architect Roland Coate to design a house for them in Beverly Hills, California. The sixteen-room, Cape Cod-inspired mansion cost $50,000 to build and included a screening room.[9] Berman had three children with his first wife Viola - Susan Berman Moshay, Cynthia Berman Schaffel, and Michael Berman. His marriage to Viola ended in divorce. In 1960, Berman married Kathryn Hereford.[10]
Berman died of congestive heart failure on July 13, 1996, in his Beverly Hills home, aged 91.
^Doherty, Thomas (Summer 2011). "Symphony of Six Million". Cineaste. XXXVII (1). Archived from the original on September 25, 2013. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
^Appleton, Marc (2018). Master Architects of Southern California 1920-1940: Roland E. Coate. Santa Barbara, California: Tailwater Press. pp. 184–189. ISBN9780999666418.
