Bernard Braden
Bernard Chastey Braden was a Canadian-born actor, writer, and broadcaster, renowned for his contributions to radio and television in the United Kingdom. Born on May 16, 1916, in Vancouver, British Columbia, he started his career as a radio singer in 1935 and later transitioned into acting and producing content for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After moving to England in 1947, Braden gained recognition for his work on documentaries and stage productions, including a notable role in "A Streetcar Named Desire." He co-hosted the popular show "An Evening at Home with Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly," which helped solidify his status as a prominent entertainment figure.
In the 1960s, he became well-known for "On the Braden Beat," a consumer watchdog program that earned him a BAFTA award. However, his career took a downturn following a controversial decision to endorse Stork margarine, which led to tensions with the BBC and the cancellation of his show. In later years, Braden focused on producing corporate videos and conducting interviews with notable figures, although his work often went unreleased. After suffering from health issues, he passed away in 1993. Posthumously, interviews that he filmed were rediscovered and aired, further highlighting his legacy in the media landscape.
Subject Terms
Bernard Braden
Actor
- Born: May 16, 1916
- Birthplace: Vancouver, British Columbia
- Died: February 2, 1993
- Place of death: Camden, London
Contribution: Bernard Braden was a Canadian actor best known for his work with BBC television. As the star of several BBC television shows, he and his wife, Barbara Kelly, became well-loved, familiar figures to millions of viewers.
Early Life and Education
Bernard Chastey Braden was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 16, 1916 to Dr. Edward Braden, a minister, and his wife Mary. His mother was musical, and Braden inherited her talent. He began his career as a radio singer in Vancouver in 1935. Later, he worked as an announcer, an actor, and a radio engineer.
In 1937, he took a year off from work to recover from tuberculosis but made a full recovery and returned to writing and acting in radio plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). In 1940, he met Barbara Kelly, also an actor, and they married two years later. The couple had three children together.
Career
Braden, Kelly and their first two children moved to England in 1947 where Braden worked on documentaries depicting the country’s recovery from World War II. Later, he turned this material into a book, These English (1948). In 1949, Braden, Kelly, and their three children settled in the city of London where Braden played the role of Mitch in the stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Vivian Leigh and directed by Laurence Olivier. While still playing Mitch, Braden also hosted a daily radio show called Breakfast with Braden. The show was renamed Bedtime with Braden in 1950, and in 1951, it was picked up by BBC television and renamed An Evening at Home with Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly, which was widely popular among audiences. The two also starred in Leave Your Name and Number, which was a huge hit on BBC radio. Braden was recognized as the Light Entertainment Personality of the British Variety Club and received the Royal Television Society Award for Artistry in Front of the Camera. In 1955, he was named honorary chancellor of the London School of Economics.
From 1962 through 1967, Braden hosted Associated Television’s popular consumer watchdog show On the Braden Beat, which contained discussion of British public and political issues intermixed with upbeat sketches and music. Braden won a British Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) award in 1964 for his work on the show. When he moved to the BBC network in 1967, the show was renamed Braden’s Week, and Braden was its host for the next five years.
Braden’s and Kelly’s popularity soared until 1972 when Braden accepted a very lucrative contract to advertise and endorse Stork margarine in a series of television commercials that aired on BBC’s rival network Independent Television (ITV). At the time, BBC stars simply did not appear in advertisements, but Braden argued that the amount of money Stork offered for one afternoon’s work was too much to refuse. His BBC bosses were not sympathetic and Braden’s Week was dropped from the network’s lineup. Within a week, the show was reinstated with a new name and a new star: That’s Life featured Esther Rantzen, formerly a researcher for Braden’s show.
Life after the BBC
The incident with the BBC left Braden and Kelly feeling extremely bitter. Although Braden occasionally worked in film, television, or stage productions, he never again achieved the status he once enjoyed. He began making corporate videos and, with Kelly, opened an agency that booked celebrities for speaking engagements.
In the late 1960s, Braden began personally funding and producing a series of hundreds of interviews with iconic figures of the time, including writers, actors, politicians, and athletes. After the incident with the BBC and essentially being blacklisted by the network, Braden could not find any television executives who were interested in the project. The interviews were shelved and were never shown on air.
Braden suffered from a series of strokes later in life. He died in 1993 at the age of seventy-six. The interviews were forgotten until after Kelly’s death in 2007, when an assistant found them. In 2008, Britain’s Channel Five began airing them on a show called 1968 Unseen, combining each episode with a current-day interview with the same public figure.
Bibliography
Averill, June. “Obituary: Bernard Braden.” Independent. The Independent, 6 Feb. 1993. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.
“Barbara Kelly: Actress and Star of ‘What’s My Line?’” Independent. The Independent, 16 Jan. 2007. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.
Bean, Kendra. “Streetcar.” Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait. Philadelphia: Running Press, 2013. 124–45. Print.
Braden, Bernard. These English. 1948. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962. Print.
Cable, Amanda. “Young, Gifted and Lost for 40 Years: Bernard Braden and His Remarkable Record of the Sixties.” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers Ltd., 5 Dec. 2008. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.
Dillon, Robert. History on British Television: Constructing Nation, Nationality and Collective Memory. New York: Manchester, 2010. Print.
Holmwood, Leigh. “Channel Five to Air Unseen 1960s Bernard Braden Interviews.” Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 22 Aug. 2008. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.
McCreath, Ross. “Braden, Bernard (1916–1993).” Canadian Broadcasting History: Biographies. Canadian Communications Foundation, June 2005. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.