Beregi was born in
Budapest, then a part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1918. His father,
Oscar Beregi, was an actor and
matinee idol of
Hungarian-Jewish origin. The Beregi family moved to
Vienna in the early 1920s, after the dissolution of the Empire, due to the elder Oscar's political activities. Both left Europe in 1939 to escape the
Nazi takeover, the elder Beregi moved to the United States and the son settled in
Chile, where he ran a restaurant. It took several years for the younger Beregi to be granted a visa to enter the U.S., and then only through the intervention of then-U.S. Senator
Lyndon B. Johnson. ==Career==