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Martin Berkeley (August 21, 1904 − May 6, 1979) was a Hollywood and television screenwriter who cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the 1950s by naming dozens of Hollywood artists as Communists or Communist sympathizers.
In the 1920s he performed in several productions on Broadway theater. With Marie Baumer, he co-wrote Seen but Not Heard, a comedy that ran on Broadway for several weeks in 1936. His drama Roosty lasted for just a week of performances in 1938.
He worked for MGM from 1940 to 1945 and for 20th Century Fox from 1945 until 1950.
In 1949 he was nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Written American Western for his work on Green Grass of Wyoming. His screenwriting credits, often shared, include So Dark the Night (1946), Gypsy Colt (1954), Tarantula! (1955), Revenge of the Creature, The Big Caper (1957) and Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case. He wrote the first draft of Kangaroo.
Berkeley testified publicly on September 19, 1951, and in closed meetings of the committee in 1953. He told the committee that people in his role could not work Communist propaganda into scripts without it being noticed by film producers and studio executives. He painted a particularly negative portrait of writer John Howard Lawson as the "grand Poo-Bah of the Communist movement" who "speaks with the voice of Stalin and the bells of the Kremlin."
Berkeley was represented by Edward Bennett Williams, who had close ties to many enthusiasts of the anti-Communist campaign of the McCarthyism.
Following his testimony, Berkeley became a member of an organization formed to expose Communist influence in the entertainment industry, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA).
He had an extensive second career in television, including the series Shotgun Slade, Tales of Wells Fargo, and Tombstone Territory.
Berkeley died on May 6, 1979, in Brandon, Florida.
A collection of his scripts and screenplays is on deposit with the Performing Arts Special Collections at UCLA.
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