Robert E Bradford

Robert E. Bradford , a film and television producer, and the husband of Barbara Taylor Bradford, O.B.E., the novelist, has died in New York’s Weill Cornell Hospital after a short illness. This year they celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary. Robert Bradford produced nine of his wife’s books as mini series and movies-of-the-week for NBC and CBS. It was Robert who said books should be promoted as films were and he was the first to take a full page ad on the back page of the Art Section of the New York Times. He continued to take those back pages to promote many of her books.

Robert Bradford, debonair and charismatic, was German-born and French-educated. At the end of World War II he left war-torn Europe, and headed for New York, where he had a relative. He already spoke English, and soon found a job in public relations. But eventually he went to Hollywood, following his dream to be a movie producer. In no time at all he had acquired two formidable mentors, Louis Blau of Loeb and Loeb, the renowned lawyer, and Jessie L. Lasky, founder of Paramount Pictures, who gave him his first job in movies.

Several years later, Mr. Bradford served as a VP for Samuel Bronston Productions in Madrid. Among his film credits from this era are El Cid, Fifty-Five Days in Peking and John Paul Jones. Later he was president and CEO of Franco London Films in Paris. While at this noted independent French film company he supervised major productions including John Frankenheimer’s Impossible Object starring Alan Bates and Dominique Sanda. He personally oversaw production of the much-nominated French hit movie Mourir D’Aimer starring Annie Girardot. The film became the biggest financial and award-winning production of the year in France. It was bought by MGM and released in the US under the title To Die of Love.

In the 1980s, Mr. Bradford formed his own production company and began to film the novels written by his wife Barbara Taylor Bradford. The TV miniseries and movies-of-the-week produced by him starred such actors as Sir Anthony Hopkins, Liam Neeson, Deborah Kerr, Jenny Seagrove, James Brolin, Stephen Collins, Sir John Mills, Lindsey Wagner, Elizabeth Hurley and Victoria Principal. All of these movies were filmed in London. At the time of his death, Mr. Bradford was planning a remake of his wife’s international bestseller A Woman of Substance.

Services 12:30 P.M. Wednesday July 10, 2019 at the Riverside, 76th Street & Amsterdam Avenue. In lieu of flowers donations to NY Weil Cornell Medical Center. https://give.weill.cornell.edu/