Eric Braeden was born in the midst of World War II and survived the deadliest shipwreck
in German naval history. If you only know him from The Young and the Restless,
that's only a small part of his sometimes tragic life story.
Eric Braeden entered the world as Hans Gudegast April 3, 1941 in Kiel,
Germany. Soviet forces were bombarding Germany at the time, as Stalin's Red Army was taking on
Hitler's Third Reich during one of WWII's most intense periods. Conditions were so
dangerous that the hospital where Braeden was born had been bombed the day after his
mother was discharged. Braeden wasn't sure if the timing was luck or serendipity, but the incident
planted a seed of fearlessness in the future soap star. Braeden shared with TV Insider:
"I do feel I grew up with a deep-seated belief
that I could overcome anything. That was always a part of me."
Braeden had every reason to be scared during the war, especially living near Kiel,
where shipbuilding was the major industry and a feeder of vessels to the German Navy. It didn't
help that Braeden was born to a well-off family in Bredenbek, where his father was
also the mayor. But status wasn't enough to insulate themselves against tragedy.
The sights and sounds of conflict were everywhere
in his home country. Braden recalled to the Washington Post:
"I remember images of bomb attacks — the noise of planes approaching, bombs falling,
and anti-aircraft shooting back. I remember clinging to whatever adult was close by in
shelters. You would come out and find families crying, animals screaming."
By 1945, Hitler's forces gained control of Europe as the Soviets and Allied forces began retaliatory
strikes on Germany. The intensity of the fighting forced the Gudegasts and other locals to flee
the country via the ocean liner MV Wilhelm Gustloff. But hours after the ship left port,
a Soviet sub torpedoed the Gustloff, killing an estimated 9,400 of the 10,000 people on board,
in what turned out to be the deadliest single-ship disaster in naval history. The
Gudagests were miraculously among the very few who made it back to Germany alive. The family
unfortunately had to endure the remainder of the war, which ended later that spring.
Eric Braden mentioned the marine disaster in his 2017 memoir, I'll Be Damned: How My Young and
Restless Life Led Me to America's #1 Daytime Drama. But he said his bigger recollections
of life during wartime consisted of flashes of fireballs destroying the town, starving citizens
digging for potatoes, and those scary moments in the Gudegast basement during air raids. He wrote:
"As a little boy, with nothing to compare them to, I wonder if I thought those horrors
were normal, that they were part of what everyday life was like in this world."
Eric Braeden recalled the pain and bewilderment
of losing his father to a heart attack. He wrote in his memoir, I'll Be Damned:
"It was an overwhelming number of changes for a 12-year-old to process,
especially one who was still mourning the loss of
the most important person in his life, with no clue how to make sense of it."
The tragedy not only changed Braeden's demeanor,
but it also became a tool that helped him navigate his way through the power-tripping
egos of Hollywood. Braeden said losing his father at a young age made him resentful
of imposed authority. He revealed on the podcast State of Mind with Maurice Benard:
"I will not take s— from anyone. And that has served me well over the years."
Braeden blamed the war, the humiliation from being arrested and his father's loss
of business as being the triggers for the cardiac arrest that killed him. But he was also appalled
to discover why his father was arrested in the first place. At the end of WWII,
a British officer arrested his father for his association with the Nazi Party,
which the bewildered four year old Braeden didn't know at the time. Braeden
explained to People, regarding his father:
"[He] was not a part of the atrocities. In fact, I
found out my eldest brother was approached by the Hitler Youth and my father forbade him to join."
The war and eventual incarceration also disrupted his father's construction business,
and the household quickly felt the pinch. Braeden wrote in his memoir:
"Within a few weeks, we didn't just see the end of our life of privilege, we plunged into utter
poverty. The Nazis had confiscated most of my father's trucks during the war. What trucks
they didn't confiscate, the British did, when the war ended and they took over."
The Gudegasts wound up living in a small upstairs
section of the home they once owned. Despite the hardship,
Braeden not only learned valuable lessons but he was also forced to grow up in a hurry.
Still known in Hollywood as Hans Gudegast, Eric Braeden's opportunities were scarce at
the time due to his name. His German associated name meant his background shut him out of more
diverse opportunities. According to his former Young and the Restless costar Doug Davidson,
Braeden was considered to play James Bond in the movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service,
a role George Lazenby eventually landed. Davidson revealed in a tweet that:
"[Eric] was disqualified from playing the role because he didn't have a British passport."
Braeden's big chance came in 1970 when he was tapped to play the lead as a scientist in the
movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. The only problem was that he had to change his name.
Braeden didn't want to change his name until his wife, Dale Russell, reminded him that legendary
German actors like Maxmillan Schell had to settle for only playing Nazis in war films. He told CBS:
"Changing my name was one of the most painful decisions I've ever made,
so I needed to choose a name that I could still identify with."
He came up with Eric, a rather common name in Northern Europe,
and opted for the last name Braeden, after his hometown of Bredenbek. It worked, as his role in
the film Colossus quickly opened a lot of doors. Braeden told Archive of American Television:
"When you suddenly star in a film, things change very quickly. It's an
uncanny feeling. A very disconcerting feeling. A very unbalancing feeling."
After Colossus, Eric Braeden managed to get more eclectic roles on TV in shows
like Charlie's Angels and Kojak, as well as movies like Escape From the Planet of
the Apes. His star took another upturn in 1980 when he accepted a gig to play Victor
Newman in The Young and the Restless, whose personality was every bit as brash
as the actor portraying him. Braeden said in an interview about the show:
"I said 'what is that?' 'Well, that's a daytime drama on television.' 'They have
television during the day?' 'Oh yeah.' I didn't know."
It was that attitude which got him into frequent trouble on the set. In 1991,
Braeden allegedly got into an altercation with Peter Bergman, who played Jack Abbott,
Newman's rival. While he had a lot of respect for Bergman, Braeden said the two actors had
different styles of approaching the material. He told Soap Opera Digest:
"There was a time when I said to Peter, 'Look, we may not like each other,
but we are both good for the show. This storyline that you and I have,
this enmity between us, is good for the show. It makes for drama and conflict.'"
He had another altercation with an actor who tried to get Braeden fired,
but the actor in question eventually got himself canned. Braeden told TV Insider:
"He was a very good actor, but he's lucky he's walking in one piece."
Braeden himself walked off The Young and the Restless in 2009
for refusing to take a pay cut. He told CNN:
"This is a certain corporate culture now that is very deleterious."
In January 2010, he returned after making a few compromises in his contract.
Like most veteran actors on the soap circuit, Eric Braeden has seen several colleagues come and go,
sometimes due to the saddest of circumstances. One loss that emotionally shook the actor was
the 2013 death of Jeanne Cooper, who played corporate matriarch, Katherine
Chancellor. Upon Cooper's passing, Braeden in a prepared statement to Soap Opera Network, said:
"She was an absolute joy to work with. We never did a scene without having laughs.
After a painful struggle, she has finally found peace. I will miss working with her a lot."
In 2019, Braeden was crushed by the death of another Y&R actor. Kristoff St. John died
from heart disease just five years following his son's death by suicide. Visibly weary with grief,
Braeden talked to Extra about the shocking news. He said of St. John:
"He was a man's man, a damn good actor, loved everyone, everyone loved him."
Braeden went on to say that St. John was one of the most charming
and gregarious actors they ever had on The Young and The Restless.
Throughout his life, Eric Braeden has survived everything from bullets and bombs to the most
tragic shipwreck in history. But another test of his mortality surfaced in 2023
when he revealed that he has bladder cancer. He said in a Facebook video:
"I hate to be this personal, but I think this may be
good for some older guys who may or may not listen to this. It'll happen to them."
His health issues started shortly after a knee replacement, when he began to notice problems
with his prostate gland, starting with frequent needs to urinate. Braeden is now recovering
after surgery that removed low-grade and high-grade cancer cells. He reassured his fans:
"I'll be in top form soon. So, I'm still happy to be able to work. That I enjoy. It distracts me,
I love acting, I love knowing that I entertain people, and ... I love your support."
At 82, Braeden's prognosis is good, especially given his years of athletics.
Statistics taken from the American Cancer Association's 2023 findings suggested the
five-year relative survival rate for bladder cancer in the United States
is 77% and the death rate has been decreasing steadily by 2% since 2016.