Russian born Yul Brynner's amazing story

Yuliy Borisovich Briner (1920-85) was born in Vladivostok, apparently with mixed ancestry. The mystery began with Brynner's birth, for which he gave dates anytime between 1915-22. He sometimes said that he had been born off the Siberian coast, and that his mother was a Gypsy. But he was born in the Far Eastern Republic, now Russia.

Statue of Brynner in front of his Vladivostok family home

Wiki

Brynner’s father Boris (1891-1942) was a ?Russian engineer and his mother Marousia was ?Mongolian. While still young, Boris ran a key family owned import-export house in Vladivostok. Alas he left the family for a young Russian dancer in 1924 so Yuliy’s name was changed to Yul Brynner.

Marousia had to raise her children alone, so they travelled to Harbin China because Harbin had a large Russian population. Young Brynner loved watching the stagecraft of a noted cross-dressing Chinese opera star.

With tensions rising between Japan and China in the 1930s, Marousia moved the family to Paris in 1934 where Yul studied at Lycée Moncelle. He learned French of course, as well as speaking Russian and Chinese but preferred sports and music to classes. Brynner also began playing the guitar after hearing a touring Russian Gypsy troupe in Paris' Montmartre area. His debut came in 1935, as a guitarist with a Gypsy orchestra. Once Yul was fluent in French, he worked as a Parisien radio announcer.

Yul's sister Vera had married and begun a musical career in the US. In his early 20s, Brynner also travelled to the US where he drifted into acting with a touring company. He wanted to study with Anton Chekhov’s nephew Michael Chekhov, who’d relocated from Moscow Art Theatre director to US, establishing a new workshop in Ridgefield Conn. Brynner made a successful Broadway stage debut in 1941, in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. And he was on stage with both The Moon Vine (1943) and Lute Song (1946).

Then he became active as a director during the early days of tv at CBS. At this time he became a US citizen and wanted to enlist in the U.S Army. Rejected because of symptoms of TB, he worked instead as a French-language broadcaster for the Office of War Information.

Yul was also an ardent humanitarian. Brynner visited refugee camps around the world, helping to expose the plight of millions of displaced people to governments and the UN.  He was appointed a special consultant to UNHCR in 1959, which coincided with World Refugee Year. And through film and radio, he helped highlight the plight of refugees to ordinary citizens. Brynner was a noted photographer, and he wrote Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East (1960), which included his pictures.

 

Bring Forth the Children by Brynner, 1960

Biblio.com

His most famous play and film, The King and I, were based on Margaret Landon’s Anna and the King of Siam (1944), inspired by the real-life adventures of a British governess who worked for Siamese King Mongkut. The Broadway production of The King and I by Rodgers and Hammerstein was a huge success for Yul between 1951-85. Not surprisingly he won a Tony Award in 1952 as best actor in a musical. Brynner continued to make return appearances in the stage production of The King and I, because because the show paid well and age-related changes in his appearance didn’t affect the role. In 30 years, he gave thousands of performances on stage as King.

The play was adapted for the film The King and I (1956) where Brynner gave his best ever performance as the irritating, yet caring king who shaved his head. He starred with Deborah Kerr, the musical film again scored by Rodgers and Hammerstein. He won an Academy Award for best actor in 1956. Interestingly the Thai government has never officially allowed the film to be shown there because of historical errors about the king.

   

Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr, in King and I

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The 1950s were important. Brynner made his film debut as a drug smuggler in Port of New York (1949), the first of his c45 films. Taking a leading role, he starred opposite Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia (1956), playing a crooked Russian refugee making a living in Paris. He was Dmitri in Brothers Karamazov (1958) playing opposite Claire Bloom, Lee J Cobb and William Shatner. Brynner starred as Solomon in another Old Testament epic, Solomon and Sheba (1959), with Gina Lollabrigida and George Sanders. One of Brynner’s best-known film roles was in The Magnificent Seven (1960), a western based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Co-stars were Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn and James Coburn.

His film career peaked in a great film Ten Commandments (1956), in which he starred as King Rameses with Charlton Heston’s Moses. Morituri (1965) was set in WW2, starring Brynner and Marlon Brando; and Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), a drama starring Katharine Hepburn. Finally he was a killer robot in the sci-fi adventure Westworld (1973).

   

King Rameses, in Ten Commandments

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In 1960s Brynner returned to Europe, taking Swiss citizenship. He continued to perform on the guitar, sometimes on film, and in 1967 he released an album, The Gypsy and I: Yul Brynner Sings Gypsy Songs.

Brynner smoked packets of cigarettes daily, and in 1983 was diagnosed with lung cancer. His last performance was in 1985 and he died that year.

Thank you to his historian son Rock who wrote a biography of the Brynner family: Yul: The Man Who Would Be King, 1989, with accounts of dad’s personal and professional successes and failures. Yul married actress Virginia Gilmore in 1944 but the marriage ended in 1960, after Rock was born in 1946. His second marriage was to Doris Kleiner and their child Victoria. His third marriage was to Jacqueline de Croisset plus two adopted orphans, which also ended in divorce. His 4th marriage in 1983, to Kathy Lee, lasted until his death. Also note his famous affairs with Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman and others.

Amazing Negev Desert Zoo just opened

Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Animal Park in Israel serves as a sanctuary for endangered desert animals and injured local wildlife, and as a home to animals born in captivity that cannot be returned to their natural habitats. After years of progress, the zoo called Midbarium (midbar = Hebrew for desert) opened in Beer Sheva in July 2024. It was launched in the presence of the mayor of Beer Sheva; chairman of the Mandel Foundation Board; CEO and Director General of Mandel Foundation Israel; and a speaker from the Cultural Buildings Dept of Israel’s National Lottery.

Raw concrete roof 1,800 sq ms,  resembles the basic structure of a tent.

A Lerman architect

Metalocus

Midbarium introduces visitors to the wide range of desert animals and to the ways in which the animals have adapted to, and survived in the desert climate. This is an experiential animal park of 37 acres that helps visitors understand the movements and behaviours of animals in their Negev habitat. Located on the outskirts of the desert NW of Beer Sheva, it has 100+ species that live, hunt and adapt.

Visitors can explore four desert habitats that naturally replicate the conditions of areas where desert animals live: Arava/Willow, Canyon, Oasis and Savannah, connected by trails and bridges. In these areas, visitors can meet c100 species of desert animals, including white lions, hippos, giraffes, zebras, meerkats, endangered Guinea baboons and Nile crocodiles.

The park emphasises active learning through experience, research, experimentation and curiosity. It enables a unique meeting between visitors and the animals via walks through desert environments, inter-active games, direct contact with animals and modern guiding methods.

See the issues that worry me, a desert-familar Australian. Visitors will have a full picture of the challenges of the desert and the climate crisis, and their effect on plant and animal life. Deserts are some of the harshest environments on earth. The extreme heat, the constant droughts and harsh climate make it a tricky place for humans to survive, let along any animal species. Clearly many creatures have found ways to thrive in this impossibly rugged environment.

Melbourne recently struggled to cope with 3.5 days at 38c! Imagine how incredible to think of the complex adjustments these animals have developed to survive and even flourish in the desert. And I know the animals have to adapt to the Negev and not vice versa. But do they have enough ponds to lie in, troughs of water to drink and shelters to protect them from the heat?

Midbarium is not a zoo in which animals are kept in captivity and trapped in cages. It is an interactive animal park in which animals roam freely in spaces designed specifically to meet their needs. It is much more than a place to view animals; it is a symbol of commitment to conservation, to education and to preserving the planet’s biodiversity.

The construction of Midbarium was made possible by a $20M grant from the Mandel Foundation, with more funding from Beer Sheva municipality, National Lottery and Ministries of Tourism and Housing. The Mayor stressed the finances were worthwhile; he noted the central role that Midbarium will play in enhancing the Negev’s leisure culture and in attracting families to the southern half of the tiny country.

An oasis in the desert at Midbarium

Mandel Foundation

 

Baboons, Jerusalem Post

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rare white lions

Mandel Foundation

Designed by Dutch architect and modern zoo expert Erik van Vliet, Midbarium ranks immersion with the least amount of visible barriers. Zur Wolf Landscape Architects planned the landscaping, aiming at educating, understanding and caring for animals, especially those at risk of extinction. Asaf Lerman Architects provided multi-disciplinary team of experts who collaborated in the architectural design. For example the entrance roof structure, cast in raw concrete, resembles a huge tent structure that welcomes visitors into a cool, shaded space.

Light and shadow project through the veil-like grid, defining the perimeters of the public event space. See the rich range of facilities as it unfolds, including interconnected walkways, kiosks, essential services, shop, amphitheatre, seating areas and helpful touch points. These elements are well positioned near park entrances and exits.

The concrete expertise of the senior engineer was essential in developing a delicate triangulated grid of roof beams. Narrow passages lead the fresh air through the building's circulation system and it channels fresh air towards the adjacent educational building. Air conditioning, if they ever thought about having it, was avoided by using ecological ventilation, aligning perfectly with the Midbarium's commitment to sustainability.

Asaf Lerman Architects wrote the Midbarium summary, an exceptional park dedicated to fostering environmental awareness on the desert outskirts of Be'er Sheva. Its open spaces replicate various natural elements and display the region's diverse wildlife; almost all of them are desert species, although not necessarily native to Israel. A multiple team of experts from Israel and abroad collaborated on the project, responsible for the architectural design. This project adds to its history of Lerman collaboration with leading international architects on projects including Jerusalem National Museum, Mandel School at The Hebrew University and the Bezalel School for the Arts.

Witches: brutal, religious Matthew Hopkins

Being a good Christian kept a person safe because he/she was guarant­eed a place in Heaven. However at some stage Christianity came under threat from an invisible force. Starting among the educated elite, then spreading quickly, the idea emerged that evil witches were acting in secret to endanger Christian souls.

In 1597 King James VI of Scotland released his successful book, Daemonologie, which explored the areas of witchcraft and dem­onic magic. The kingdoms of Scotland & England were united in 1603 when King James moved south and became King James I of Eng­l­and. He had Parliament pass the Witchcraft Statute of 1604, making witchcraft a crime punishable by death. This led to a heightened public anxiety about witches that quietly grew in the decades that followed, worsened by similar fears in Europe.

In the book’s frontispiece, Matthew Hopkins stood in the room with two old women sitting on either side,  and animals identified as their familiars. Image credit

King Charles I (1600-49) first created the Long Parliament in Nov 1640, not long after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. It was Charles' practice to have women accused of witchcraft brought before him, and in most cases, he concluded that they were old or mentally unbalanced. Eventually he gave them money and sent them home.

John Stearne (1610–70) was a land owner and not a lawyer, but he received a warrant from the Long Parliament to flush out witches. Matthew Hopkins (c1620-47) was from Little Wenham Suf­folk. There is not much information on Hopkins before he began his witch hunter career in 1644, but he WAS brought up in a strict­, Puritanical household.  A poor or failed lawyer, Hop­kins improved his trifling salary with the opp­ortunities that witch-hunting offered in his early 20s. Within the political and religious chaos that reigned throughout the turbulent period of the English Civil Wars (1642-51), the rule of law and order broke down.

At first John Stearne made the principal accusations, and Hopkins, who he met in Manningtree Essex in 1644, was appointed as the assistant. Hopkins had overheard 6 women inside his own property, Thorn Inn in Mistley, women who were discussing their meetings with the Devil. Hopkins got vill­ag­ers to hire him and his two paid ass­ist­ants to search out witches, get their confessions and have the authorities hang them. In Mar 1645, the arrests and trials of Rebecca West and Anne West her mother, Elizabeth Clarke, Elizabeth Gooding, Anne Leach and Hellen Clarke followed.

Records show that Hopkins was also given an official commission by the Long Parliament and received payment from the government to prosecute witches. Hopkins and Stearne became known as "professional" witch-finders. Of the next 23 women they tried as witches, four died in prison and 19 were later convicted and hanged.

Before long, Hopkins’ zeal had surpassed Stearne’s, and he became the leader, assuming the title of Witch-finder Gen­eral in 1645. In the chaos of the Civil War and with the lack of app­oint­ed court judges, torture was accepted. Hopkins, Stearne and their associates trav­el­led the villages and towns of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk & Huntingdon where, within a year or more, there were c250 people accused of witchcraft. c100 of those were hanged. These cases, including a few Anglican clergymen, were called The Hopkins' Trials.

Witches queue up to kiss the devil's arse. Image credit

Witch-hunting was meant to be a judicial process, so torture was illegal. Yet many of his methods of inquisition used by Hopkins were very close to torture and were taken directly from King James’ best seller Daemonologie.

Hopkins used many methods to examine and torture:
A] He prevented women from sleeping, walking them around endlessly without shoes on. Once their feet blistered, it led to a quicker confession.

B] Witches fed their accompanying familiars/animals with their own blood. So by keeping the witch under guard, this ensured that their familiars would not be able to feed. He concentrated on the familiars at night because it was at night that witches frightened the townsfolk.

C] Hopkins pricked any skin deformity on the acc­us­ed that was thought to be an extra mole for suckling imps, determining if the woman pos­sessed the Devil’s mark. Lady Pickers cut the woman’s arms with a needle or pin, and if she did not bleed, she was said to be a witch.

D] The Water Test involved dropping the accused into water, because a witch, having denied baptism, would be repel­led by the water. Hopkins’ infamous Swimming Test involved binding the arms and legs of the accused to a chair before throwing her into the vil­lage pond. If she sank and drowned, she would be innocent and received into heaven; if she floated and survived, she would then be tried as a witch. 

Thus the women drowned if they were not witches, and were hanged or burned if they were!!

Burning of the witches. Image credit

In his booklet, Discovery of Witches 1647, Hopkins described his mission in life, how to detect witches and how to punish them. Af­ter Hopkins' writing, Stearne published a document describing Hopkins’ cases and their witch-hunting mission. The Hopkins-Stearne team was the driving force in England in the mid 1640s.

Conclusion
Hopkins’ favourite method of interrogation once torture was by illegal in England was swimming where the woman was bound and thrown into a pond. If she floated she was deemed a witch who rejected the waters of baptism; if she sank and drowned, then she was innocent. Yet Hopkins’ ongoing motivation for hunting witches was unclear. 

Matthew Hopkins supervised the Essex witch trials

University of Essex Library

Hopkins profited financially from the trials, but was this his primary motivation? Hopkins had not possessed property, was not well educated, lacked good ancestry and had no military experience or community power. Perhaps he was just relishing in his newly found power. Perhaps he hated women.

Some accounts say Hopkins drowned undergoing his own Water Trial, after being accused of witchcraft himself. Hopkins actually died after an illness in 1647. Just a few decades later (1684), the very last execution for witchcraft in England took place in Exeter.

The witches of Salem in the USA were hanged in 1692. Was it Matthew Hopkins who inspired New England witch hunters?

Edna Walling's stunning garden designs

Edna Margaret Walling (1895-1973) was born in York, second daughter of William and Harriet Walling. Edna studied at the Convent of Notre Dame in Devon, enjoying exploring with dad and the practical arts. Arriving in New Zealand in 1912 with her family, she began a nursing course at Christchurch. About 1914 the Wallings moved to Melbourne where William became a warehouse director.

Encouraged by her mother, Edna studied at School of Horticulture Burnley, gaining a graduate certificate in Dec 1917. She then began work as a jobbing gardener around Melbourne. Asked by an architect to plan a garden, she loved the idea. More commissions came and by the 1920s she had built a successful practice in garden design. She developed a sophisticated style,attracting an equally sophisticated clientele, and rapidly became the leading exponent of the art in Victoria at first, then spread to other states. Her regular gardening columns (1926-46) in Australian Home Beautiful and other magazines extended her influence.

Mawarra in Sherbrooke, designed in 1932

Dandenong Ranges Photography

To some extent, Walling emulated the styles of Spanish and Italian gardens and the work of Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll in Britain. The gardens she created typically exhibited a strong architectural character. For clients in the wealthy suburbs of Melbourne and on country estates, her designs included grand architectural features: walls, pergolas, stairs, parterres, pools and colonnades—woven into a formal geometry. And she always found a space for a wild, unstructured section.

For clients with more modest means, Walling's approach was more relaxed, relying on curving lawns and garden beds to give the illusion of greater space. But rarely were there no stone walls or other structural features. Whether the garden was big or small, she created a succession of pictures. Her handling of space, contour, level and view was brilliant. Equally impressive was her mastery of plants and their visual and ecological relationships. Her gardens were clothed by a soft and consistent palette of plants. She favoured greens and used other colours sparingly, mostly in pastel tones or white. For many clients she produced an exquisite water-colour plan of the garden as a means of conveying her proposals. Most of her gardens were constructed by Eric Hammond. Walling often provided the plants from her own nursery and was frequently on site giving instructions and helping with the physical labour. 

Edna Walling's iconic 1920s landscape design, Sherbrooke 

Heritage listed, Facebook

In the early 1920s Walling had acquired land at Mooroolbark where she built a house for herself, known as Sonning. Here she lived and worked, establishing her nursery and gathering around her a group of like-minded people for whom she designed picturesque 'English' cottages and gardens. She named the area Bickleigh Vale village. Some people rather unkindly called it Trouser Lane because of the dress of its predominantly female residents. The village was, and remains, an extraordinary experiment in urban development. In Walling's lifetime, and beyond, it has become a place of pilgrimage for her many followers. She designed several other group-housing estates. One, at Mount Kembla in NSW, was built for Broken Hill Associated Smelters Pty Ltd. Others remained on paper.

By the 1940s Walling's was a household name and she capitalised on her popularity by publishing four successful books: Gardens in Australia (1943); Cottage and Garden in Australia (1947); A Gardener's Log (1948); and The Australian Roadside (1952). A further monograph, On the Trail of Australian Wildflowers, appeared posthumously in 1984. Several more manuscripts were unpublished.

Her influence on C20th gardening in Australia was enormous. The visual impact of the hundreds of gardens she created, her extensive writing, and the respect she commanded from those with whom she worked, including Glen Wilson, Ellis Stones and Eric Hammond, had a considerable effect on the next generation. In the 1980s and 1990s she was to become almost a cult figure for many Australian gardeners and a number of books were published about her work.

The Edna Walling Book of Australian Garden Design,

by Anne O'Donovan, 1980

In the mid-1940s Walling had developed a particular interest in native plants; she had begun using them in domestic gardens in the 1920s. An early and active conservationist, she joined battles to protect the natural environment and crusaded for the preservation of indigenous roadside vegetation. She was an outstanding photographer who always took her camera on her extensive travels. Classical music was another of her passions.

Miss Walling was not a person to be taken lightly. On site, dressed in her customary jodhpurs, jacket and tie, with strong, handsome features, she was energetic, determined and demanding. These character traits often provoked conflict, especially with some of her wealthy male clients. Yet she was also generous, fun loving and good company, attracting many loyal admirers and friends. By 1967, tiring of the characterless suburbs advancing towards Bickleigh Vale, she moved to Buderim, Queensland, to be in a warmer climate and near to her niece Barbara Barnes. Always single, Walling maintained a close relationship with Lorna Fielden, a teacher forwhom she had designed a house and garden at Bickleigh Vale. Fielden also moved to Buderim. 

Edna Walling, book cover of

The Unusual Life of Edna Walling, by Sara Hardy

Royal Historical Society of Victoria

Walling died in 1973 at Nambour and was cremated with Christian Scientist rituals.