WENHAM — Brook Berry, 49, was working with the star of PAX TV's "Diagnosis Murder," creating commercials advertising the show. Dick Van Dyke carries a lot of history, going back to films like "Mary Poppins" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

One day, unexpectedly, the comic actor's granddaughter arrived on the scene.

"He just smiled," Berry recalls. "And he started dancing and singing."

As Van Dyke swept across the floor the crew did something very uncharacteristic. One by one, they turned to watch. In no time, the aging comedy star had riveted everyone's attention.

"He was wonderful," Berry says, shaking his head at the memory. "Whatever that magic is — he still had it."

Hollywood is a place full of magic. And it was almost magic that brought Berry there in 1994. The wizardry did not last, however. He did not become a famous screenwriter. (He sold television pilots, but they weren't produced.) Even so, he found a comfortable niche promoting programs first for NBC and then for family-friendly PAX.

It wasn't enough.

When Berry returned East to a new post as vice president for enrollment and marketing at Gordon College, he knew he was picking the right job on the right coast.

"Ultimately there's an emptiness to it," he says of the entertainment capital. "I could get millions of people to do something that's not important ... watch OK TV. ... Or I could get a small group of people to do something that will affect their whole lives."

Born in Minneapolis, Berry was drawn to writing and theater at an early age.

"I was captivated," he says.

Eventually, he went into advertising as a way to make money. He and wife Karen were simultaneously successful in the same field. In their 20s, they developed a routine that brought them to restaurants every night.

Yet, confined to the Twin Cities, they soon ran out of restaurants.

"So, my wife says, 'Let's move.' And it was such a fun idea."

At the same time, the Berrys were hearing from friends about an undiscovered paradise — the North Shore of Massachusetts. The pull only increased as they learned more about it. "We quit our jobs a month later."

Here, Karen supported the couple while Brook wrote. In addition, he developed close associations with friends at Gordon College. It was, however, while taking a creative writing course at Boston University with Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott that he teamed up with Steve Sohmer, a former head of Columbia Pictures.

Sohmer liked Berry's work and amazing things resulted. "Brook, let's write a pilot and make lots of money," he said.

Berry was provided with an office in Beverly Hills and invited to live in one of Sohmer's homes. "I started at the top," he says as if still amazed by it all.

When the pilots failed to pan out, Sohmer helped him get work at NBC, and later PAX, where he learned to edit movie and television programs for those "must-see TV" commercials. It brought him in close proximity to some of the biggest names in the industry, including cast members of "Seinfeld," "Frasier" and "The West Wing."

With a few exceptions — and he won't talk about those — Berry came away with a favorable impression of the people in Hollywood. A self-described Evangelical Christian, he rarely encountered hostility on account of his beliefs.

"Most people were terrific," he says.

"Seinfeld's" undisciplined Kramer, for example, recently earned notoriety with a lamentable, racially charged outburst. But Berry knows Michael Richards as an obsessive craftsman. "All the little moves he does, he practices and practices and practices. He's far more serious and studied than you'd think."

When Berry wrote Richards a line, "Now I want to party," the star, who eventually earned $1 million for each "Seinfeld" episode, asked to speak to him. "I want to change it and just say 'Party time,'" Richards respectfully suggested.

"Michael, that's perfect," Berry replied.

Berry left Hollywood for Minnesota in 2004, just as his three children approached high school age. "It was a wild ride," he says. "It was fun to be a part of this whole thing." More recently, he jumped at the chance to return to the North Shore, taking a home in Wenham.

Berry points to Gordon's stunning campus, the explosion of greenery, the stillness of the pond out back. You don't see anything like it in crowded Los Angeles nor on Minnesota's windswept prairies. It's a beauty, he believes, New Englanders themselves fail to fully appreciate.

"I'm proud to be here," Berry says.