In September 1945, Brandt, then a 26-year-old Army veteran, successfully auditioned for the year-old NBC radio series Welcome Home, open to men and women discharged or on the brink of discharge from military service. One newspaper column described it: “The auditions are tooted as an ‘open sesame to studios’ for GIs interested in radio … Melville Brandt, 40-15 44th Street of Sunnyside, Long Island, came in for an audition after having served overseas for three years. His only experience had been as ‘acting’ sergeant in Special Services, but he pulled an ‘A plus,’ the highest audition mark possible. Encouraged by audition results, he tramped about wearing out radio agency carpets and finally got the commercial for an important daytime serial on another network. The fact that other stations and radio agencies will draw from Welcome Home spares many a vet who wants to get into either the writing or acting phase of radio several yards of red tape.”
Brandt’s career was up and running. At 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 1946, he became a co-star of one of the first televised soap operas. Called Faraway Hill, the eight-episode dramatic serial was first broadcast over the DuMont network station WABD (today’s WNEW) for any of the approximately 3,600 television sets in the New York City area. Brandt portrayed the tall, slender, dark-haired Charlie White. The Caples Ad Agency, which produced Faraway Hill, was reported as believing “… there eventually will be television broadcasting 18 hours a day.”
Brandt would soon become an NBC staff announcer and Baby Boomers would instantly recognize his signature TV phrase, which he would voice from 1962 — 1975: “The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC.”
Serving as New York Local president, a national officer and national president, Brandt earned the nickname “Poppa” from his fellow AFTRA leaders. He was keenly interested in the international aspects of performers’ rights and, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, he represented AFTRA in meetings of the Executive Board of the International Secretariat of Entertainment Trade Unions. There he developed ongoing relationships with like-minded delegates regarding foreign usage of American products and reciprocal agreements regarding pay and reuse.
In 1972 at the AFTRA National Convention in San Diego, Brandt was bestowed with George Heller Memorial Gold Card No. 16 for his work on behalf of the union and its members’ rights.
Devotees of NBC’s Saturday Night Live may recall that another NBC announcer briefly replaced the popular Don Pardo for a season beginning in 1981 — yes, it was Mel Brandt.