"Just call me a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy."
Russian-
American actor (1915-1985). Brynner tried to keep people
guessing nearly all his life about his
origins, often claiming to be half-Swiss, half-
Japanese, but he was really born in
Vladivostok in the
Soviet Union. He really was part
Swiss--he also had
Mongolian and
Russian blood. When his
father left the family, his
mother took him and his sister to
China, then to
Paris, where Yul attended the
Lycée Moncelle. After dropping out of the exclusive school, he played
guitar in nightclubs for a while before becoming an
apprentice at
Jean Cocteau's
Theatre des Mathurins and working as a
trapeze artist with the
Cirque d'Hiver.
Brynner moved to the
United States in 1941. He debuted on the
New York stage as
Fabian in "
Twelfth Night" and later worked on "
Mr. Jones and His Neighbors", an early TV series, and "
Mr. and Mrs.", the first
television talk show, which he made with his wife,
Virginia Gilmore. After working as a television
director for CBS, he made his
film debut--with
hair!--in "
Port of New York" in 1949.
In 1951, Brynner starred in
Rodgers and Hammerstein's
musical "
The King and I". He was wildly
popular in his role as
King Mongkut of
Siam and went on to star in the film version, for which he won an
Academy Award for
Best Actor. From then on, Brynner was a Capital-S
Star, appearing in a wide variety of roles, from the
Pharaoh Ramses in "
The Ten Commandments" to
King Solomon in "
Solomon and Sheba", from
Dmitri Karamazov in "
The Brothers Karamazov" to
Jason Compson in "
The Sound and the Fury", from
Pancho Villa in "
Villa Rides" to
Chief Black Eagle in "
Kings of the Sun", and from
noble gunslinger Chris Adams in "
The Magnificent Seven" to the
robot gunslinger in "
Westworld". Yes, he was even in "
The Magic Christian" as, if I remember correctly, a
transvestite lounge singer.
In the 1970s, Brynner returned to "
The King and I", touring the world playing his best-known role. In the mid-80s, he developed
lung cancer. Blaming his lifelong habit of
smoking, he recorded an anti-smoking
PSA, which was played after he died in 1985.
Much research courtesy of the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)