Yul Brynner

Biography

Yuliy Borisovich Briner (Russian: Юлий Борисович Бринер; July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985), known professionally as Yul Brynner (Russian: Юл Бриннер), was a Russian and American actor. He was known for his portrayal of King Mongkut in the Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musical The King and I (1951), for which he won two Tony Awards, and later an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1956 film adaptation. He played the role 4,625 times on stage, and became known for his shaved head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for The King and I. Considered one of the first Russian-American film stars, he was honored with a ceremony to put his handprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in 1956. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960. In 1956, Brynner received the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of Rameses II in the Cecil B. DeMille epic The Ten Commandments and General Bounine in Anastasia. He was also well known as the gunman Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its first sequel, Return of the Seven (1966). He had roles as the android "The Gunslinger" in Westworld (1973) and its sequel Futureworld (1976). In addition to his film credits, he worked as a model and photographer, and wrote several books.

== Early life ==

=== In Russia ===

Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920 in the city of Vladivostok. He had Swiss-German, Russian, and Buryat (Mongol) ancestry. While he also claimed Romani ancestry, no evidence has been found to support this. He was born at his parents' home, a four-storey house on 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, into a wealthy Swiss Russian family of landowners and silver mining developers in Siberia and the Far East. He was named after his grandfather merchant Yuliy Ivanovich Brinner. The Briner family enjoyed a good life at their four-storey mansion. At the time of his birth, Vladivostok was under Japanese occupation, while the territory was controlled by the Far Eastern Republic—a communist Russian buffer state. The Red Army occupied Vladivostok in October 1922, and most of the Briner family's wealth was confiscated by the state at the end of the Russian Civil War. The Briner family, including Yul's elder sister Vera, continued living in their house under a temporary status, even though the house had been seized. Later in his life, Brynner humorously enjoyed telling tall tales and exaggerating his background and early life for the press and others, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of a Mongol father and Roma mother on the Russian island of Sakhalin or that he was a nephew of Nicholas II. He occasionally referred to himself as Julius Briner, Jules Bryner, or Youl Bryner. The 1989 biography by his son, Rock Brynner, clarified some of these issues. Brynner's father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer and inventor of Swiss German and Russian descent. He graduated from Mining University in Saint Petersburg in 1910. The actor's grandfather Jules Briner (Бринер, Юлий Иванович) was a Swiss citizen who had moved to Vladivostok in the 1870s and established a successful import/export company. Brynner's paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, was a native of Irkutsk and a Eurasian of partial Buryat ancestry. Brynner's mother, Maria (Marousia) Dimitrievna (née Blagovidova, Мария Дмитриевна Благовидова), hailed from the Russian intelligentsia and had studied to be an actress and singer. According to her son, she was of Russian Roma ancestry, but documents examined by modern historians of Vladivostok claimed the Briner family had no blood connections with Roma. Yul came into close contact with Roma culture in exile while working with his sister, singer Vera Brinner, and they were looking for a stage image. Vera later sharply objected to this appropriation. Brynner felt a strong personal connection to the Roma. In 1977, he was named honorary president of the International Romani Union, a title he kept until his death. In 1922, after formation of the Soviet Union, Yul's father, Boris Briner, was required to relinquish his Swiss citizenship. All family members were made Soviet citizens. Brynner's father's work required extensive travel, and in 1923 in Moscow, he fell in love with actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova. She was the ex-wife of actor Aleksei Dikiy and the stage partner of Michael Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre. Many years later, Katerina Kornakova would help Brynner with her letter of recommendation asking Michael Chekhov to employ him in his theatre company in the United States. In 1924, Yul's father divorced his mother, Marousia, but continued to support her and their children. His father also adopted a girl because his new wife was childless. Many years later, after the death of his father, Brynner took this adopted sister into his care. The father and son relationship remained complex and emotionally traumatic for Brynner. After leaving his children and his former wife in Vladivostok, Boris Briner lived briefly in Moscow with Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova, but eventually they moved to Harbin, Manchuria. At that time, Manchuria remained under Japanese control. Briner established a business in international trade.

=== In China === In 1927, Marousia Briner took her children, Yuliy and Vera (January 17, 1916 – December 13, 1967), and emigrated from Vladivostok to Harbin, China. There young Yul and Vera attended a school run by the YMCA. In 1930, Boris gave Yuliy an acoustic guitar as a birthday present. That guitar and the music lessons that followed made a lasting impression on Brynner's artistic development. His natural curiosity, creativity, and imagination became focused on mastering guitar technique and studying classical and contemporary music. Brynner studied music under the guidance of his sister Vera, who was a classically trained opera singer. After several years of arduous studies, Brynner became an accomplished guitar player and singer.

=== In France and Switzerland === In 1933, fearing a war between China and Japan, Marousia Briner moved with her children to Paris. Many Russians had moved there in exile after the Revolution. There, on June 15, 1935, the fourteen-year-old Brynner made his debut at the Hermitage cabaret, where he played his guitar and sang in the Russian and Roma languages. After initial success, he continued performing at various Parisian nightclubs, sometimes accompanying his sister, and playing and singing Russian and Roma songs. At that time, Brynner was a student at a lyceum in Paris, where he studied French. His classmates and teachers were aware of his strong character, as he was often involved in fist fighting. In the summer of 1936, Brynner worked as a lifeguard at a resort beach in Le Havre. There he joined a French circus troupe, trained as a trapeze acrobat and worked with a circus troupe for several years. After breaking his left shoulder and ribs in a fall, he left the circus troupe. In nearly unbearable pain, Brynner took narcotics for relief. He soon developed a drug dependency. One day, while buying opium from a local dealer, Brynner met Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) and the two became lifelong friends. Cocteau introduced Brynner to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Josephine Baker, Jean Marais, and the bohemian milieu of Paris. The experience and connections eventually helped him in his multifaceted career of acting, directing, and producing. Seventeen-year-old Brynner realized he had become addicted to opium and the family tried to help him treat the illness. He spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland treating his addiction at a Swiss clinic and at Lausanne University Hospital with financial support from his aunt Vera Dmitrievna Blagovidova-Briner, his mother's sister. Blagovidova-Briner was a physician trained at medical school in Saint Petersburg, Russia, before the revolution. She later practiced in China and Switzerland. The year-long treatment in Switzerland, which included hypnotherapy, had a lasting effect on Brynner's health. Yul never used illicit drugs again in his life. Later, he would become addicted to cigarettes, which damaged his lungs and ruined his health as he aged. In Harbin, Brynner's father had a lucrative trade business and lived with his second wife, actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova. She gave Brynner his first professional acting lessons by showing him scenes from her repertoire at Moscow Art Theatre. She instructed him in how to respond to her lines using his voice tone and body language. During their first lessons, Katerina Kornakova demonstrated and explained to Brynner the principles of Konstantin Stanislavsky's school of acting, and the innovative ideas of Michael Chekhov. Brynner was excited and impressed with the new experience. His father initially tried to prepare his son for a management position at their family business, but changed his mind after watching several acting lessons and witnessing Brynner's happiness. Katerina Kornakova was impressed with Brynner's intellectual and physical abilities and recommended him to study acting with her former partner Michael Chekhov. Brynner took the letter of recommendation from his stepmother and also accepted money and blessings from his father. With the generous support from both his father and stepmother, Brynner became encouraged and confident in his future success as an actor. At the same time, Brynner's mother's illness (she had been diagnosed with leukemia) progressed and required special medical treatment that was available only in the United States. Brynner traveled with his mother on a long trip across the world.

=== In the US ===

In 1940, speaking little English, Brynner and his mother emigrated to the United States aboard the President Cleveland, departing from Kobe, Japan. They arrived in San Francisco on October 25, 1940. His final destination was New York City, where his sister already lived. Vera, a singer, starred in The Consul on Broadway in 1950. She also appeared on television in the title role of the opera Carmen. She later taught voice in New York. During World War II Brynner worked as a French-speaking radio announcer and commentator for the US Office of War Information, broadcasting to occupied France. He also worked for the Voice of America, broadcasting in Russian to the Soviet Union. At the same time, during the war years, he studied acting in Connecticut with the Russian actor Michael Chekhov. He worked as a truck driver and stage hand for Chekhov's theatre company.