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March 19th, 2008
CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PRESENTS TONIGHT ERIC BRAEDEN SHALL EAT YOUR SOUL: A LOOK AT THE PRE-SOAP CAREER OF TV’S BLACK KNIGHT
In 1970 Universal pictures cast
Klaus in his first starring role in the sci-fi thriller Colossus: The
Forbin Project. There was one catch though. If Klaus was to play the
potentially high profile role of Dr. Charles Forbin, a scientist who
creates a super computer that holds the world hostage with the threat of
unleashing a nuclear holocaust, they wanted him to do one thing – change
his name. I guess the folks at Universal figured that Klaus Gudegast
wasn’t a sellable or memorable moniker, and that it wouldn’t look good on
the marquee. With much reluctance Klaus agreed. Taking the name Eric
from a popular family name and Braeden f The 1970’s would prove to be the
golden age of Eric Braeden's career. Although he
Thus, when William Bell was looking for an actor to play sadistic millionaire Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless, Eric Braeden fit the role perfectly. Yet, although Braeden had not yet found iconic stardom in his career, he did not want to surrender himself to the life of a daytime soap actor. He took it under the conditions that the role was temporary, and it was agreed that the part would only last six months, and then Victor Newman would be killed off. It would, however, prove to be a very long six months.
However, while he may have found
fame as Victor Newman, Eric Braeden has not been entirely condemned to
soap opera limbo. Sure, the hectic schedule to create a daily program
hinders his ability to regularly appear in other TV programs and movies,
but Eric Braden has made other memorable appearances on other projects.
Villain of the week roles continued on Murder She Wrote, Airwolf
and
Yet, while he may
forever be remembered as playing villains, being a screen
bad guy has been
pretty good to Eric Braeden, earning him an Emmy Award and a Peoples
Choice Award as well as his own star on
So why do I
want to interview Eric Braeden? Obviously he’s had a long and colourful
career, however it’s more then that. Not long ago I watched Eric Braeden
doing an unfortunate interview with an interviewer who bored the actor to
an angry frustration by forcing him to listen to the superficial ramblings
about his own vacation to Germany. As Braden’s frustration grew as he was
repeatedly had his train of thoughts interrupted by the interviewer, I was
pained as a man who has conducted interviews, and watching the potential
loss of an interesting discus
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Every now and then people say to
me, “Hey Sam Tweedle! If you could interview any celebrity in the
whole world, who would it be?” Now there are lots of people I would give
one of my kidneys to pick the brain of, but people are always astonished
when one of the first names I say is Eric Braeden. They respond, “Victor
Newman? But…you don’t even watch soap operas!” I guess that people
always expect me to go with one of my pop culture obsessions, like a Brady
or a Beatle or Bettie Page or Buffy. Perhaps they expect somebody more
universally famous, or more iconic, or more culturally important. But
it’s true! If I could interview one man it’d be Eric Braeden. Yet, I
probably wouldn’t spend that m
uch time asking about his role on The
Young and the Restless. People are right. I don’t watch soaps.
However Eric Braeden is far more then just a soap actor. In fact, Eric
Braden’s career is so dipped in pop culture history that he is a
television icon all his own. His list of screen credits on the imdb is
one of the most impressive I've ever seen, and the people he has worked
with is incredible. Quite frankly, Eric Braeden is a man with stories to
tell. You see, long before he even stepped on a soap opera sound stage,
Eric Braeden appeared on over 80 television and film productions playing
the villain of the week. With his dark hair, intense stare, and cold and
authoritive German accent, Eric Braeden menaced some of pop cultures
biggest and most beloved icons of the 1960s and 1970s He was half ladies
man, half demon and a whole lotta evil. Every generation needs it’s
Edward G. Robinsons, Christopher Lees and Gary Oldmans and in the decade
where adventure shows were king, Eric Braeden made an entire career out of
playing spies, Nazis, crooks and villains. So come along as we look at
the days before Victor Newman and see the darkness Eric Braeden brought to
the television screen as:
Now despite my general disinterest
and ignorance of North America's soap opera industry, like most people, I
did discover Eric Braeden on daytime TV playing multi-millionaire
industrialist Victor Newman on the long running CBS soap opera Young
and the Restless. Like most stay at home Moms, my mother tuned in
every day to watch the daily drama unfold for the residents of Genoa City
so The Young and the Restless was a common sight and sound around
the house as I was growing up. As my mother watched her show, at age
five, I was too young to know, or even care, about what was going on. It
was a time to play with my toys or color quietly. However, one fateful
afternoon the drama on Y&R actually caught my attention, and chilled my
blood in a way that never left me. Victor Newman had some guy imprisoned
in his basement! Feeding his captive like a dog from a tray,
Victor
taunted his prisoner, who was trapped in an isolated cell! Later, as
Victor slept, his wife tried to steal a key attached to a chain around his
neck, in order to free the prisoner, but was unsuccessful in her attempt!
At the time I didn’t know why Victor had locked this guy in the basement,
but just the idea that someone was wicked and powerful enough to cage
another human being horrified me Weeks passed, and Victor Newman’s
prisoner was still locked in that basement! Ah! The slow moving
world of the daytime soap! Was he ever going to get out? Was there
no stopping Victor Newman? It was through this over the top soap opera
plot that I probably first learnt the concept of evil. You see, I was a
pretty sheltered and happy little kid, and didn't get what evil was.
I was to young to understand Darth Vader, the Joker was still just a
cartoon character to me and the only world I knew was the one in my own
back yard, thus I didn’t understand hatred, war, prejudice, tyranny and
murder. The fear that Eric Braeden brought to my fragile young mind burned
his face in my brain, making his one of the very first celebrities that I
recognized this side of KISS and the Muppets. Even at the age of five, I
knew the most important thing about understanding Eric Braeden. Eric
Braeden was best was when he was being bad.
But
long before there was Eric Braeden,
there was Klaus Gudegast. He would not take the name Eric Braeden
until the 1970s, long after his acting career had already began.
Born in Kiel, Germany in the middle of the Second World War, Klaus
came to America at the age of nineteen and worked at a number of unlikely
jobs, including a translator, a cowboy and a mill worker before he
enrolled in the University of Montana on a track and field scholarship.
It was at the University that Klaus met another student named Bob McKinnon
who wanted to film a documentary about boating both up and down Idaho’s
Salmon River, a trek that had never been accomplished by anybody before.
He asked Klaus to be his partner on the expedition, and the two became the
first men in history to make the journey. Calling the documentary The
Riverbusters, Klaus and McKinnon traveled to Los Angeles to find a
distributor for the film where Klaus became so enchanted with the bright
lights of LA that he never left. Enrolling into the College of Santa
Barbara, Klaus studied economics and politics, while also playing on a
professional soccer team. However, when word got out that German actors
were being sought for the film Operation Eichman, a quickie drama
about the capture of the famed
Nazi that was made to coincide with Eichman's trial, Klaus got himself an agent and was cast in a minor role
as a Nazi. Thus began his brand new career of playing villains and evil
doers. More German military roles quickly followed on programs such as
The Gallant Men, Combat!, The Chrysler Theatre and
The Wackiest Ship in the War. But when Klaus wasn’t playing
Nazis, he was playing a more modern villain. Being the midst of the cold
war, Klaus Gudegast also fit perfectly into the shoes of another popular
stock 1960s villain role – the communist spy, which he played on The
Man From UNCLE and Mission Impossible. These high profile
programs gained Klaus the attention of the casting directors of a brand
new WWII adventure series called The Rat Patrol, and in 1966 Klaus
Gudegast was awarded his first permanent role on a weekly series as the
Rat Patrol’s chief adversary, Captain Hans Dietrich.
Focusing on Sgt. Sam Troy and his
three man squad in North Africa, viewers watch each week as Troy and his
men used guerilla warfare to cause chaos and hardships for Germany's Afrika
Crops, lead by Captain Hans Dietrich. However, while most WWII
action/adventure programs portrayed the villains as cold hearted Nazis,
Klaus Gudegast encouraged the producers to allow him to do something a
little bit different, and a little more realistic, with the character of
Hans Dietrich. Being a German nationalist, Klaus was, and still is, a
vocal critic of the collective war guilt put upon Germany during the
Second World War, believing that the German people were not all Nazis, and
not all of the men in the German army believed Adolph Hitler's message of
hate Thus, instead of the stock Nazis Klaus had played before, and
arguing that the program was far away from the European battle field and
had nothing to do with the holocaust, Klaus was able to create a moral and
sympathetic villain. Hans Dietrich was driven and temperamental, but
had a certai
n amount of respect for the cleverness of the men who
challenged him . He was a man who only fought his foes because they were
at war and not out of an insane, unstoppable, cartoonish hatred. As a
result of Klaus' three dimensional take on the character, Hans Dietrich
became as popular as the members of the Rat Patrol themselves, and became
an instant favorite amongst viewers. Unfortunately, as a result of
political legislation blaming violence on TV for the violence in America
in the 1960s, and not say…oh…that whole Viet Nam War thing, The Rat
Patrol was cancelled after three seasons along with many other
favorite action/adventure programs of the decade. However, his time on
The Rat Patrol was an important part of establishing himself as one of
Hollywood’s best villains. Slipping back into the villain of the week on
Garrison’s Gorillas and Dayton’s Devils, Rat Patrol
creator Tom Gries, who also worked with Klaus on Mission: Impossible,
cast Braeden in the 1969 w
estern 100 Rifles with Raquel Welch, Burt
Reynolds and Jim Brown, once again playing a villainous German military
officer. However, 100 Rifles would be the final screen appearance
that Klaus Gudegast would ever make.
rom the name of the Germanic
village in which he was raised, Eric Braeden was born! Colossus: The
Forbin Project was a minor success, but was not nearly as legendary as
Braeden's next sci-fi project in 1971 when he played the villainous Dr.
Otto Hasselien in the cult classic Escape From the Planet of the Apes,
the third entry in the Planet of the Apes series. When our ape friends
Cornelius and Zira (played by Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter), who aided
Charleston Heston in the first film, and possibly two of the most iconic
characters in the series, are blasted through time to the past, they must
learn to function in a world where the humans are civilized and the apes
are the beasts. However, when Otto Hasselien finds out that in the future
the apes enslave the humans, and learning that Zira is pregnant, he
befriends the heroes, only to go all "Dr. Zaius" on them and plots
the doom of Zira, Cornelius and their child. Escape From the Planet of
the Apes not only secured Eric Braeden’s place in pop culture history,
not to mention geek culture for the shocking events at the films' finale,
but reestablished his role as a screen villain into the 1970’s.
wouldn’t see another
regular series until the end of the decade, nor would he star in any other
major motion pictures, Braeden become one of television most prolific
villains and menaced pretty much every small screen hero you can name!
Becoming a regular on the TV movie industry, Braeden found himself
menacing such diverse actors such as Bettie Davis, Janet Leigh, Britt
Eckland, Raymond Burr and David Soul. He played an enemy agent on
Hawaii 5-0, a diamond thief of the FBI and Banachek, and
even a werewolf on Kolchak the Night Stalker. He shot down Steve
Trevor over Paradise Island in the pilot of Wonder Woman, threw his
weight around as a temperamental and out of control television critic on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show and menaced Dean Jones as an
obnoxious race car driver in the family film Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo.
He even had time to menace Kojak, Barnaby Jones,
Charlie’s Angels, Marcus Welby, Mannix, Cannon,
Christie Love, Barretta and Ponch and Jon on CHiP’s
amongst other less memorable TV dramas. I mean, you couldn’t turn your
television on in the 1970s without seeing Eric Braeden being a complete
and total ba
stard. However, by just looking at that list of
programs, Eric Braeden had the opportunity to work amongst some of
Hollywood's most famous icons. It's these sort of character actors
that I find the most interesting, and who have the most stories to tell.
Victor Newman was only on the horizon for Eric Braeden, but he had already
achieved an interesting Hollywood existence that most actors only dream of. Right there is hours of interview material to talk about! His
dark and intense good looks, not to mention one of the only men in
Hollywood who didn't make having a moustache look stupid, made him a
commodity, which insured him work. Hollywood needs bad guys, and
Eric Braeden was the best that Hollywood had to offer.
Victor Newman first appeared on
Young and the Restless in 1979 when he came to Genoa city to help
Catherine Chancellor run Chancellor Industries. Moving into a reclusive
ranch far away on the cities outskirts, he brought with him his beautiful
wife Julia who he kept hidden away at the ranch. But, when Julia goes
into the city looking for work, trouble starts! Starting a
career as a fashion model, Julia meets and falls in love with photographer
Michael Scott. Discovering this, Victor immediately becomes possessive
and jealous, and when Julia ends up pregnant Victor suspects that the
father is the shutterbug and that’s when he kidnapped the guy and locked
him in the basement (which, in actuality was a bomb shelter or
something). Of course, this is when I first noticed Victor Newman, and
where our tale comes full circle. Anyways, for those of you who want to
know how the story ends (god knows I do), Julia finally managed to free
Michael but Victor caught them, and in an enraged fury Victor beats the
crap out of Michael! That teaches him to mess with Eric Braeden!
Tragically, in the commotion, Julia falls and has a miscarriage, and later
testing proved that the unborn baby was Victor Newman’s all along! No
longer able to stand the sight of the mustached brute, Julia and Scott
leave Genoa city, and Eric Braeden’s six month contract came to
an end.
However, there was a glitch that Braeden and William Bell didn’t account
on. The Young and the Restless viewers absolutely loved Victor
Newman. Sure, he was a total bad ass, but as it so often happens in the
realm of pop culture, the villains are often more interesting and popular
then the heroes. William Bell offered Eric Braeden a permanent role on
Young and the Restless but, still hesitant to enter the trap of
daytime soaps, Eric Braeden declined the offer. Yet, after more
consideration, and further negotiations, Braeden took Bell’s offer,
leading Eric Braeden to finally finding the stardom that was eluding him
throughout the 1970s. Twenty nine years later, Eric Braeden is still
bringing Victor Newman to TV everyday, and has become one of the most
recognizable and iconic soap opera stars worldwide. Sure, over the years
the character of Victor Newman has mellowed out a bit, but he is still a
sadistic and evil bastard, and if you know anything about the show you
don’t mess with Victor Newman. You never know when you might end up
imprisoned in a bomb shelter.
a Perry Mason TV movie, but by the 1990’s, after playing a mysterious
billionaire for so long, Eric Braeden found himself no longer cast as
villains but as tycoons and millionaires, most memorably in the screwball
comedy Meet The Deedles and the Oscar winning blockbuster
Titantic where he played real life American tycoon John Jacob Astor.
Currently Braeden is branching out as producer for the upcoming western
The Man Who Came Back, who he’ll be appearing alongside Titantic
co-hort Billy Zane.
Hollywood’s esteemed walk of
fame! However, in 1991 Eric Braeden received an even greater honor when
he was awarded Germany’s Federal Medal of Honor by German president 