Colin Broadley

Colin Broadley made contributions to radio, acting, and the Kiwi counterculture. On-screen, he's remembered for his starring role as the young man drowning in romance and ennui in 1964 road movie Runaway.

Runaway's cast included a Bond beauty (Nadja Regin) and a future opera legend (Kiri Te Kanawa), but Broadley was the throughline — the only person on-screen in almost every scene. Some reviewers were confused by his character David Manning, who "leaves home in a huff and under a cloud". Yet Broadley's acting won praise. The Listener said he did "a remarkably good job". Variety: "he looks well in his sharp-boned narrow-eyed way and is not unsympathetic".

As Broadley pointed out in this documentary about the film, Runaway clearly found an audience since it lasted for three weeks at Auckland's Civic Theatre. 

Colin Langston Broadley was born on 3 March 1940 In Paeroa. At 15 he ran away from home, and spent three months working on a Putāruru farm. At high school in Thames he starred in musical The Gondoliers, wrote short stories for radio station 2YA, and got high marks in School Certificate art. 

He did more acting while living in Hamilton, then joined professional company the New Zealand Players. Between acting jobs Broadley found work as a barman at Bellamy's and a photographer's model. Shifting to Auckland in 1959, Broadley did time as a radio announcer for the NZ Broadcasting Service and in the advertising department of Amalgamated Theatres, and managed the Lido Cinema.

In the early 1960s he scored his first screen job, as a presenter on popular music show In the Groove. Aside from his starring role in Runaway, he also had smaller roles in TV thriller The Alpha Plan (1969) and award-winning anti-drink driving drama On the Day (1975).

Broadley was also busy behind the scenes: he launched an advertising agency, and joined the team at pirate station Radio Hauraki, where he created a temporary antenna after the mast of boat Tiri collapsed in a storm. He talked about his Hauraki days in this 1986 interview and docudrama Pirates of the Airwaves.

In July 1973 Broadley was flung from his car in a crash and spent a year in hospital — three months of it in a coma. While still in bandages he worked on a television commercial, then spent three weeks filming a documentary in China despite his arm still being in plaster.

Counterculture festival Nambassa helped encourage Broadley to withdraw from the rat race. He set up a recording studio that floated on car tyres, and co-edited 1979 book Nambassa - A New Direction. In the same period, Broadley began living "a life of semi self-sufficiency" in Thames. He continued to create art and act in local musicals, and kept a hand in radio. In 1991 he founded a training school to help staff local radio station Ngā Iwi FM. He also did occasional reports on theatre for arts show Kaleidoscope.

Colin Broadley died on 30 March 2023, five months after the passing of his partner Gwenyth Wright (QSM).

Written by Ian Pryor; long profile published on 21 December 2023

Sources include
Colin Broadley and Judith Jones (editors), Nambassa -  A New Direction (Wellington: AH and AW  Reed, 1979)
John Reid, Whatever It Takes - Pacific Films and John O’Shea 1948 - 2000 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2018)
Richard Swainson, 'Talent with an explosive quality: Colin Langston Broadley (1940 - 2023)' - The Waikato Times, 13 May 2023
'FAJ' Review of Runaway, The Listener, 6 November 1964
Runaway Revisited (Television Documentary) Director John Reynolds (Learning Media, 1994)