REMEMBERING YUL BRYNNER
BY: Michael Lombardi
Yuli borisovich Brynner was born in Vladivostok, Russia on July 11th, 1915 from Marousia Blagovidova, daughter of a doctor and Boris Brynner, an engineer. The story of his early years was unknown for a long time by his own design, until just recently. Sometimes when asked about his heritage he would falsely claim to be half-Swiss and half-Japanese. Brynner's life was exotic, however he would create these false claims to make his life seem even more glamorous.
After Yul's father abandoned his family, Marousia, Yul's mother, took him and his sister Vera to Harbin, China. There he went to a school run by the YMCA. In 1934 Yuli's mother then took her children to Paris, France. Yul attended the prestigious Lycée Moncelle, but did not go to class often, and dropped out to become a musician. Yul played guitar in nightclubs in the ambiance of Russian gypsies where he felt his first sense of family. In this dynamic environment Yul first met Jean Cocteau and became an apprentice at the Theatre des Mathurins. Yul began his acting and modeling in his twenties. He also worked as a trapeze artist with the Cirque d'Hiver Company. It was in 1941 that he traveled to the United States to study with the acting teacher Michael Chekhov. In that year he played Fabian in Twelfth Night. However, his most notable work was that of King Mongkut of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I. Brynner became an immediate sensation in this role, and later appeared in the 1956 film version, which won him the Oscar for Best Actor. Brynner not only launched his career in this role, but appeared beside Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments and Ingrid Bergman in Anastasia.
Specifically for his role in The Ten Commandments Yul hit the gym with an intensive weight-lifting training schedule to play beside the much taller Heston. During the next twenty years Brynner starred in films acting as Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters with his distinctive shaved head and heavy accent. During the 1970s he returned to the role that he was born to play in The King and I, touring the world. Brynner died on October 10th, 1985 of lung cancer, however had made the previous recorded statement that smoking was not the cause. Among his last and most memorable roles was when he co-starred with Marlon Brando in Morituri, Katherine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot, and William Shatner in the film The Brothers Karamazov. In 1976 his last film was Futureworld, a sequel to Westworld, with Peter Fonda and Blythe Danner. Brynner was one of the most exotic, unique, and distinguishable actors of modern drama.