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.