He reprised his role in the film version of Tea and Sympathy, which won him the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer, and portrayed Lieutenant Joseph Cable in the Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical South Pacific.

He grew up in the New York City area, and went to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire;[2] after graduating from Harvard University,[3] he worked at the nearby Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in summer stock.

[citation needed] He made his Broadway debut in 1953 in Mary Coyle Chase's Bernardine, a high-school comedy for which he won a Theatre World Award.

He made The Cobweb for MGM, which liked his work so much it co-starred him with Leslie Caron in Gaby (1956), the third remake of Waterloo Bridge, which, in its original pre-Code 1931 version, featured John's grandfather, actor Frederick Kerr.

The part instead went to Jimmy Stewart, a veteran of World War II, who was over 20 years older than Kerr and nearly twice the age of Lindbergh when he made his historic 1927 flight.

[1] Kerr had a major role in the film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific (1958), playing Lt. Joe Cable, the newly arrived marine about to be sent on a dangerous spy mission.

In The Crowded Sky (1960), Kerr played a pilot who helps the Captain (Dana Andrews) steer a crippled airliner back to earth.

[citation needed] In the 1970s, Kerr had a recurring role as prosecutor Gerald O'Brien on The Streets of San Francisco[4] and he made guest appearances in several other TV programs including The Mod Squad, Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Barnaby Jones and The Feather and Father Gang.