Beryl Bernay (March 2, 1926 – March 29, 2020) was a journalist and children's television creator, as well as a painter, photographer, actor and fashion designer.
Bernay was born Beryl Bernstein in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were Russian immigrants. Her father was a garment worker, and her mother, Sade, sold stockings and taught kindergarten. Her father changed the family name to Berney when Beryl was a child, but Beryl changed the spelling to Bernay when she reached adulthood.
Bernay took acting classes with Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof. She appeared on Broadway in Tonight in Samarkand in 1955 and later that year in ANTA's Paris production of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth with Helen Hayes and Mary Martin. She returned to Broadway in 1957 as the narrator in The Dancers of Bali and toured with the production in the United States and Canada. She appeared on stage, television and radio from the late 1950s through the 2000s. Her last television appearance was in 1983 as the librarian in a Law and Order episode (Season 3, Episode 13), her last stage performance was as Aunt Ev in the 2010 production of The Miracle Worker at The Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York.
While she was in Paris in the mid-1950s, she went to the south of France to take portraits of Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. She sent the photos to Harper's Weekly, with an article she wrote, and which was published.
Bernay was the creative force behind All Join Hands, America's first international children's television series. She and her two puppet co-hosts narrated the show which introduced young people to cultures from around the world through story-telling, puppetry, artwork, songs, and games. The series was produced by the United Nation's Children's Fund and was broadcast weekend mornings on CBS from 1962–1965. The studio audience consisted of children from the United Nations International School and public schools in Harlem and Chinatown.
Prior to creating All Join Hands, Bernay appeared in television programs geared at the young audience. She developed her craft of drawing on camera, story-telling and using puppets in her earlier program Merry-Go-Round-the-World and while hosting the children's section of the New York television program Day Watch.
Bernay died on March 29, 2020 from COVID-19 at the age of 94 in Manhattan, New York.