Patricia Bredin

Patricia Bredin almost made it as a popular singer, almost made it as a leading lady in musicals and - unusually for a British singing actress - almost made it as a film star. But after a promising beginning, when there seemed to be plenty happening on all fronts, it was a career that fizzled.

Her first principal role in a West End musical was as the island girl Molly in the Slade-Reynolds Free as Air at the Savoy Theatre in 1957. In fact, Bredin played second female lead to Gillian Lewis, who grabbed some of the notices, but Bredin had a good share of the score, notably the captivating 'A Man From The Mainland' and the plaintive 'Terhou'. This first leading role was also her most substantial in London. That same year, Bredin was the singer of Britain's first entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. The song was called 'All' and Bredin brought Great Britain in seventh.

Patricia Bredin as Molly with Gerald Harper in Free as Air (1957)

Two years later she was working with regularity in British film studios. In 1959 she was seen in three films: in the Arthur Askey vehicle Make Mine A Million she had a singing cameo; in Desert Mice, a rather ineffective satire on ENSA, she mainly had to look pretty and sing some pretty awful original songs; in Left, Right and Centre she took the leading female role opposite Ian Carmichael. Her status as a leading lady on celluloid didn't help her find better theatre work. She was a supporting player for the star, Beryl Reid, in a revue, One To Another, at the Lyric in July 1959 (a hectic year).

In April 1962 she took over the role of Guenevere from Julie Andrews in the Broadway production of Camelot, staying for three months, but by the time she worked again in London her name had almost completely slipped away. There was a new musical, O Marry Me!, a lively adaptation of Goldsmith's comedy She Stoops To Conquer, in which Bredin played the leading role of Kate Hardcastle, but it didn't get beyond the Royal, Windsor in June 1963. In 1968 she was Antonia in Man of La Mancha at the Piccadilly Theatre; Keith Michell was the Knight of the Woeful Countenance.

She played Penelope, the second female lead, in a Moral Re-Armament musical called High Diplomacy at the Westminster Theatre in 1969, billed under the show's star Muriel Smith, but the piece stirred little interest. She took over the role of the Prioress from Pamela Charles in the London production of the long-running Canterbury Tales, and in 1973 was seen in a revue based on the career of the impresario Charles B. Cochran. Cockie!, like so much else she had been associated with in her career, didn't win many friends.

There seemed no reason why Bredin didn't have more success. She looked intelligent and beautiful, and her singing made you sit up. Her film appearances (a luxury most of our unsung heroines have to do without) remind us of a highly attractive artist, one whom British musicals most unfairly and almost completely ignored.

Discography

Free as Air Original London cast
Man of La Mancha Original London recording

 

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