Yul Brynner

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  A few days after Yul Brynner died, a thirty-second warning from him appeared on all the major American television networks and in other countries. The Russian and American actor looked straight into the camera. He said: "Now that I'm gone, I tell you: Don't smoke. Whatever you do, just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer. I'm convinced of that." The clip came from a television interview, and the American Cancer Society helped turn it into a public service announcement. It was a strange last role for a man who had spent decades playing kings, pharaohs and gunmen. How did a boy born into a wealthy family in the Russian Far East become one of Hollywood's most recognizable faces? Why did he keep one look for the rest of his life? And how much of the legend he told about himself was true?

  29351669

• 2. Vladivostok Roots

  ›

  On the 11th of July 1920, a boy named Yuliy Borisovich Briner was born at 15 Aleutskaya Street in Vladivostok. His parents' home was a four-storey house. The family were landowners and silver mining developers in Siberia and the Far East. He was named for his grandfather, the merchant Yuliy Ivanovich Brinner, a Swiss citizen who had moved to Vladivostok in the 1870s and built a successful import and export company. The boy's ancestry mixed Swiss-German, Russian and Buryat, a Mongol people. His paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, came from Irkutsk and was partly Buryat.

  The Vladivostok of his birth was under Japanese occupation, while the surrounding territory was run by the Far Eastern Republic, a communist buffer state. The Red Army occupied the city in October 1922. By the end of the Russian Civil War, the state had confiscated most of the Briner wealth. The family, including his elder sister Vera, kept living in the house under a temporary status even though it had been seized.

  In 1922 his father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, had to give up his Swiss citizenship, and every family member became a Soviet citizen. Boris was a mining engineer and inventor who had graduated from Mining University in Saint Petersburg in 1910. His work required a great deal of travel. In 1923, in Moscow, he fell in love with the actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova. She was the ex-wife of the actor Aleksei Dikiy and had been the stage partner of Michael Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre. In 1924 Boris divorced his wife but kept supporting her and the children. Katerina had no children of her own, so the couple adopted a girl. After Boris died, Yul took this adopted sister into his care. The bond between father and son stayed complicated and emotionally painful for the boy. Boris eventually settled in Harbin, in Manchuria, where he set up a business in international trade.

  His mother, Maria Dimitrievna, known as Marousia, was born Blagovidova and came from the Russian intelligentsia. She had trained to be an actress and singer. Her son said she had Russian Roma ancestry. Documents examined by modern historians of Vladivostok say the Briner family had no Roma blood connection at all. Yul nevertheless felt a deep tie to the Roma. He came into close contact with their culture in exile, while he and Vera were looking for a stage image. Vera later objected sharply to this borrowing. In 1977 he was named honorary president of the International Romani Union, a title he held until his death.

  Taidje Khan was the name Brynner gave reporters for his supposed birth identity. He claimed to have been born on the Russian island of Sakhalin to a Mongol father and a Roma mother. He sometimes called himself Julius Briner, Jules Bryner or Youl Bryner. His son Rock untangled several of these claims in a 1989 biography. In 2006 Rock followed it with Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond, a book about the family's history.

  912283713

• 3. Harbin and Paris

  ›

  In 1927, Marousia Briner took Yuliy and Vera out of Vladivostok and across the border to Harbin, China. The two children attended a school run by the YMCA. On his birthday in 1930, his father gave him an acoustic guitar. The instrument and the lessons that followed left a lasting mark on his artistic development. Vera, a classically trained opera singer, guided his studies. After several years of hard practice, he became an accomplished guitar player and singer.

  In 1933 Marousia feared a war between China and Japan and moved the family to Paris, where many Russians had settled in exile after the Revolution. On the 15th of June 1935, the fourteen-year-old Brynner made his debut at the Hermitage cabaret. He played his guitar and sang in the Russian and Roma languages. After an early success, he kept performing in Parisian nightclubs, sometimes accompanying his sister. By day he studied French at a lyceum, where classmates and teachers knew him for his strong character and frequent fist fights.

  In the summer of 1936, Brynner worked as a lifeguard at a resort beach in Le Havre. There he joined a French circus troupe and trained as a trapeze acrobat. He stayed with the troupe for several years, until a back injury ended it. In nearly unbearable pain, he turned to narcotics for relief and became dependent on them.

  While buying opium from a local dealer, he met Jean Cocteau, who lived from 1889 to 1963. The two became lifelong friends. Cocteau introduced him to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Josephine Baker, Jean Marais and the bohemian world of Paris. Those experiences and connections later served his career in acting, directing and producing.

  At seventeen, Brynner admitted that he was addicted to opium, and his family tried to help. He spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland, at a clinic and at Lausanne University Hospital. His aunt Vera Dmitrievna Blagovidova-Briner paid for the care. She was his mother's sister, a physician who had trained in Saint Petersburg before the revolution. The treatment included hypnotherapy and had a lasting effect on his health. He never used illicit drugs again. He later became addicted to cigarettes, which damaged his lungs and ruined his health as he aged.

  1328512764

• 4. Learning the Craft

  ›

  In Harbin, Katerina Kornakova gave Brynner his first professional acting lessons. She showed him scenes from her repertoire at the Moscow Art Theatre and taught him to answer her lines with his voice and body. She explained the principles of Konstantin Stanislavsky's school of acting and the ideas of Michael Chekhov. Brynner was excited and impressed. His father had planned to groom him for a management job in the family business. Boris changed his mind after watching several of these lessons and seeing how happy his son was.

  Kornakova recommended that Brynner study with her former partner Michael Chekhov. She wrote a letter of recommendation, and Boris added money and his blessing. At the same time, Marousia's illness grew worse. She had been diagnosed with leukemia, and the treatment she needed was available only in the United States. Brynner made the long journey across the world with her.

  In 1940, speaking little English, Brynner and his mother sailed from Kobe, Japan. They arrived in San Francisco on the 25th of October 1940. Their final destination was New York City, where Vera already lived. Vera went on to star in The Consul on Broadway in 1950, appeared on television as Carmen, and later taught voice in New York.

  During World War II, Brynner worked for the US Office of War Information as a French-speaking radio announcer, broadcasting to occupied France. He also broadcast in Russian to the Soviet Union for the Voice of America. In Connecticut he studied acting with Chekhov and worked for his theatre company as a truck driver and stage hand.

  His Broadway debut came in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which opened on the 2nd of December 1941. He played Fabian, a character with only a few lines, since his English was limited and his Russian accent was noticeable. The job helped him add English to a list of languages that already included Russian, French, Japanese and Hungarian. The show closed after the attack on Pearl Harbor, like many other Broadway productions.

  In 1944 Brynner married the actress Virginia Gilmore. He soon began work as a director at the new CBS television studios. In 1948 and 1949 he directed Studio One and also appeared in it alongside his wife. In 1946 he had co-starred with Mary Martin in Lute Song, and his film debut, Port of New York, was released in November 1949. Martin would soon push him toward the audition that changed his life.

  5128133132

• 5. The King

  ›

  In 1950, at Mary Martin's urging, Brynner auditioned for the new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical in New York. He was reluctant, since he was finding success as a television director and did not want to return to the stage. Then he read the script. The character of the King fascinated him, and he became eager to take part.

  Brynner opened in the original 1951 production of The King and I opposite Gertrude Lawrence. He played King Mongkut 4,625 times on stage in all, across later touring productions, a 1977 Broadway revival, a London production in 1979 and another Broadway revival in 1985. The first Broadway run won him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, and the last earned him a Special Tony Award.

  In 1951 he shaved his head for the part. After the huge success of the Broadway show and then the film, he kept his head shaved for the rest of his life and wore a wig only when a role required one. A shaved head was unusual for a man at the time. His striking look added to his exotic appeal. Some fans shaved off their own hair to imitate him, and the style was often called the "Yul Brynner look".

  The 1956 film of The King and I, with Deborah Kerr, was a huge hit with critics and audiences. It won Brynner the Academy Award for Best Actor. He is one of only ten people to have won both a Tony and an Academy Award for the same role. In 1972 he played the part again in Anna and the King, a short-lived CBS series that ran for 13 episodes.

  7879733329

• 6. Hollywood Highs and Lows

  ›

  Cecil B. de Mille cast Brynner as Ramesses II in The Ten Commandments (1956) after seeing him in The King and I on stage. De Mille told him backstage that he was the only person for the part. He played opposite Charlton Heston. The same year he made Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman, directed by Anatole Litvak. Both films were big hits, and Brynner became one of the most in-demand stars in Hollywood. The National Board of Review honored him as Best Actor for all three of his 1956 films.

  Exhibitors ranked him 21st at the American box office in 1956. In 1957 he reached 10th in both the US and the UK, and in 1958 he reached 8th in the US. MGM cast him in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), another commercial success. The Buccaneer (1958), in which he played Jean Lafitte, was less successful. De Mille produced it and Anthony Quinn directed. The Journey and The Sound and the Fury, both from 1959, lost money.

  Solomon and Sheba (1959) came after Tyrone Power died during filming and Brynner stepped in. The film was a huge hit with Gina Lollobrigida. It delayed his own planned film about Spartacus, and when Kirk Douglas's Spartacus came out in 1960, Brynner chose not to make his version.

  The Magnificent Seven (1960) was a Western adaptation of Seven Samurai made for The Mirisch Company. It disappointed on its first American release but was hugely popular in Europe and has stayed popular ever since. In the Soviet Union it sold 67 million tickets. Its success led to a three-picture deal with the Mirisches. His comedies for director Stanley Donen, Once More, with Feeling! and Surprise Package, drew an underwhelming response.

  The next several years brought a run of disappointments, including Flight from Ashiya, Kings of the Sun, Invitation to a Gunfighter and Morituri, opposite Marlon Brando. Return of the Seven (1966), where he again played Chris Adams, was a hit. He then made Battle of Neretva in Yugoslavia, and The Madwoman of Chaillot with Katharine Hepburn, a big-budget flop. In The Magic Christian (1969), he appeared unbilled as a torch singer in drag.

  In Italy he made a spaghetti Western, Adiós, Sabata (1970). In 1973 he created another iconic role in the cult hit Westworld, playing the Gunslinger, a killer robot. The Ultimate Warrior and Futureworld (1976) were variations on that performance. Between them he returned to Broadway in Home Sweet Homer, a notorious flop musical. His final film was the Italian action picture Death Rage.

  7376474950

• 7. Family and Other Passions

  ›

  Brynner became a naturalized American citizen in 1943, at age 22. By the 1960s he had avoided paying income tax as an American living in Switzerland. He lost that exemption because he spent so much time working in the United States. Facing nearly $2 million in back taxes and penalties, he followed his accountants' advice and renounced his American citizenship at the US Embassy in Bern in June 1965. In the early 1980s he embraced Buddhism and regarded himself as a Buddhist.

  He was also a photographer, and he served as a UN special consultant on refugees. His daughter Victoria later gathered his pictures of family, friends, fellow actors and refugees into Yul Brynner: Photographer. He wrote Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East in 1960, with photographs by himself and the Magnum photographer Inge Morath. In 1983 he published The Yul Brynner Cookbook: Food Fit for the King and You. In 1967 he recorded the album The Gypsy and I: Yul Brynner Sings Gypsy Songs with Aliosha Dimitrievitch.

  Brynner married four times and had five children, three by birth and two by adoption. His first wife, from 1944 to 1960, was Virginia Gilmore. Their son, Yul Brynner Jr., was born in 1946 and was nicknamed Rock at age six in honor of the boxer Rocky Graziano. Rock became a historian, novelist and university lecturer. During the first production of The King and I, Brynner began a long affair with Marlene Dietrich, who was 19 years older. In 1959 he fathered a daughter, Lark, with the 20-year-old Frankie Tilden. Lark lived with her mother and Brynner supported her financially.

  His second wife, from 1960 to 1967, was the Chilean model Doris Kleiner, whom he married on the set of The Magnificent Seven. Their daughter Victoria was born in November 1962, and Audrey Hepburn was her godmother. The Belgian novelist and artist Monique Watteau was also linked romantically with him from 1961 to 1967.

  His third wife, from 1971 to 1981, was the French socialite Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume, the widow of Philippe de Croisset. They adopted two Vietnamese children, Mia in 1974 and Melody in 1975. Together they bought the Manoir de Criquebœuf, a 16th-century manor in northwestern France, which became the first house he owned. The marriage reportedly broke up after his 1980 announcement that he would keep playing the King on another long tour. His affairs with female fans and his neglect of his wife and children were also blamed.

  On the 4th of April 1983, at age 62, Brynner married Kathy Lee, a 26-year-old ballerina from Ipoh, Malaysia. He had met her in the London production of The King and I. They stayed married for the last two years of his life.

  5113586265

• 8. Final Curtain

  ›

  In September 1983, Brynner developed a sore throat, and his voice changed. Doctors found a lump on his vocal cords. In Los Angeles, only hours before his 4,000th performance in The King and I, he learned that he had inoperable lung cancer, although his throat was not affected. He had begun smoking heavily at age 12 and had quit in 1971, but the damage was done. His promotional photos still often showed him with a cigarette in hand or a cigar in his mouth. The tour paused for a few months while he had radiation therapy, which damaged his throat and made speaking and singing difficult. Then it resumed.

  In January 1985, the tour reached New York for a farewell Broadway run that lasted from the 7th of January to the 30th of June. Knowing he was dying, Brynner gave an interview on Good Morning America about the dangers of smoking and said he wanted to make an anti-smoking commercial. His last performance came a few months before his death. He died of lung cancer on the 10th of October 1985 at New York Hospital, aged 65. His body was cremated, and the ashes were buried in the grounds of the Saint-Michel-de-Bois-Aubry Orthodox monastery, near Luzé, between Tours and Poitiers in France. He had spent many years living, studying and working in France, and his will said he wished to be buried there.

  On the 28th of September 2012, a 2.4-metre statue was unveiled in Yul Brynner Park, in front of the Aleutskaya Street house where he was born. The sculptor Alexei Bokiy carved it from a granite monolith bought in China and shipped to Vladivostok. It shows Brynner as King Mongkut. The city donated the land and paid the extra costs. Mayor Igor Pushkariov, US Consul General Sylvia Curran and Rock Brynner attended the ceremony with hundreds of residents. The Briner family cottage in a suburb of Vladivostok is now a Yul Brynner museum.

  In Hollywood, he pressed his hands and feet into the concrete in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1956. A star at 6162 Hollywood Boulevard on the Walk of Fame followed in 1960. The comedian Bill Hicks, a proud smoker, mocked his anti-smoking message on the 1992 album Relentless. In 2022 a podcast about his films launched under the title "Here's Looking at Yul, Kid", and its guests have included Ron Howard.

  2935707180