The Bald Truth

Yul Bynner was half-Japanese and was born on the island of Sakhalin. Or maybe he wasn’t.  His real name was Tadje Khan, he was distantly related to the infamous Mongol warlord Ghengis Khan and had served in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Or perhaps not. He was half-Swiss, and maybe his gipsy mother gave birth to him when her horse stumbled into a snowdrift. Or possibly he was Russian...

The fact is that nobody told a tall tale quite as enthusiastically as Yul Brynner. Piecing together an accurate account of his life is not a straightforward task, so exotic and varied are the accounts he gave of it himself.

But the truth about Brynner’s astonishing life is, in many ways, even wilder than the stories he furiously spun, to the delight of wide-eyed newspaper profile writers. 

He was, in real life, a former trapeze artist in a French circus, an accomplished photographer, a one-time opium addict, and a nude model. He had been Marlene Dietrich’s youthful lover, become a global film star and won an Oscar.

Pretty good going for a man who once described himself as ‘just an ordinary, clean-cut Mongolian boy’.

(He wasn’t.)

 

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“Ordinary mortals need but one birthday,” Yul Brynner once told an astonished journalist who had presented him with the numerous conflicting birthplaces and dates he had provided over the years.

But the details on his passport spell out the truth, ordinary mortal or not. He was born, Yuliy Bryner [CORRECT] on July 11, 1920, in Vladivostok, Russia into a moderately wealthy Swiss-Russian family. Later an agent would advise tweaking his name. ‘Yuliy’ he told him, sounded too much like you-all to American ears. His mother, Marousia, was an actress while his often absent father Boris was a drifter and incorrigible dreamer who left the family when Youl was just 5 years old.

Yul was a precocious, adventurous, slightly terrifying child. When the family was later living in Manchuria he had a habit of turning up at the local police station and announcing that he was the Czar’s grandson and lived in a palace. “He thrived on mystery and defiance from the moment he was born,” his sister Vera, who herself would become a noted opera singer, once said.

The family moved again, to Paris, in the early 1930s where, as a teenager, Yul fell in with a group of Russian gipsies, played the guitar, sang in nightclubs and finally landed a job as a trainee trapeze artist in Cirque d’Hiver, one of the oldest permanent circuses in the world. 

And even as a very young man his romantic life was as high-flying as his day job. There was something about his athletic build, his piercing eyes, and the sheer energy he radiated, that made him irresistible to women, often significantly older ones. 

So when he plunged from the trapeze and sustained injuries that put a premature end to his circus career, it was whispered that his line had been cut by an enraged husband who had found out about his extracurricular activities.

“Nothing since has ever approached the joys of flying on the trapeze bars,” he later said. “When I was doing it I felt so free. But I knew I had to find some less strenuous line of work.”

The man who would provide that, and change young Yul’s life, was renowned acting teacher Michael Chekov who became a hero and mentor to Brynner, one whom he would refer to only as ‘The Professor’ until the end of his life.

Brynner followed Chekov to America in 1940 where he enrolled in the teacher’s infamously gruelling classes. Soon he was getting small roles on stage, and after a few years found himself in demand as a TV director. He met, and after just 10 weeks, married Virginia Gilmore, an actress who was successful enough to have the pair’s nuptials recorded by the notoriously waspish gossip columnist Louella Parsons. “Virginia Gilmore and some gipsy she met in New York will be married on September 6th,” she wrote.

But ‘some gipsy’ was about to get a call from Broadway, and become one of the biggest stars in the world.

 

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It is often difficult to pin down the precise moment a mere actor becomes a fully-fledged star. But in the case of Yul Brynner, there is no doubt. It was towards the end of the evening of Thursday, March 29, 1951, when the curtain came down on the Broadway debut of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King And I. The audience rose, cheering, to its feet as Yul took his curtain call. And the critics were no less enthusiastic. “The best show of the decade,” wrote the Herald Tribune. “A magnificent production,” agreed the New York Times. “Yul Brynner’s  vehement, restless King is terse and vivid.”

He hadn’t been first choice. Rex Harrison had turned it down due to scheduling problems, and Oaklahoma star Alfred Drake considered himself too big a name for this untested property. Yul snagged the role when he gave an audition that was unconventional, even by his standards.

“He came out with a bald head and sat cross-legged on the stage,” Rodgers later recalled. “He gave this guitar one whack and gave out an unearthly yell and sang some heathenish sort of thing. Oscar and I looked at each other and said, ‘Well, that’s it!’”

Offering him the role, the delighted producers told Yul he was really in tune with the character. “What character?” he asked.

Yul brought all his life experience to bear on his depiction of the King, seizing control of much of the production as well. He designed Mongkut’s fearsome Kabuki-influenced make-up himself and, crucially, decided to shave what was left of his hair. Shirtless and barefoot for most of the performance he harnessed both his own animal magnetism and drew on the acting theories of his mentor, ‘The Professor’, to channel the energy of wild beasts into his depiction of the volatile, charming, terrifying King Mongkut. 

The word ‘sensation’ is overused on Broadway. But if ever it was applicable it was to Yul Brynner’s performance. Every night of the show’s three-year Broadway run was sold out. 

It was perhaps inevitable that three thousand miles away, Hollywood had been watching.

 

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Negotiations with 20th Century Fox, who owned the rights for a movie version, had been ongoing but production was delayed by a typical career swerve from Brynner. His first movie project would not be The King And I. Instead he would appear as the Pharoe in Cecil B. De Mille’s remake of his own 1923 silent hit The Ten Commandments. Only once that was finished filming would he consider reprising The King And I for the movie cameras.

In fact, Yul knew that 20th Century Fox needed him and delighted in drawing out negotiations. When they stalled, owing to yet another of his demands, his eruptions were volcanic. At one point he had matchbooks made with a version of the studio logo that read 16th Century Fucks and distributed them all over Hollywood.

But the film was a hit, and Yul was rewarded with an Oscar for Best Actor. That year he had two other cinematic triumphs. The Ten Commandments was a success, and Anastasia, in which he starred opposite Ingrid Bergman, was similarly well-received.

But the remarkable thing about Yul Brynner is that despite being, to this day, one of the most instantly recognisable, and cherished stars of Hollywood’s golden era, how few hits he subsequently had. After the annus mirablis of 1956 his film career was bumpy at best, the result of his carelessness when assessing scripts, but also his monumental self-belief. There was the odd success: The Magnificant Seven in 1960 and then Westworld in 1973, but for the most part, his cinematic output is best forgotten.

He seemed to think that by sheer force of will he could transform celluloid dreck into big-screen gold. “Yul honestly believed that his mere presence could improve a bad plot,” said Magnificent Seven co-star Eli Wallach. 

He was the victim of his uniqueness: too remarkable (and proud) to be a successful ensemble player he was nevertheless too exotic to be easily cast as a lead in a Hollywood where the stars were still the straightforward, ethnically uncomplicated likes of Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman. 

Or perhaps, as Burt Reynolds put it, “In this business, you have to expect some clunkers. Yul simply had more than his fair share.”

His personal life was as dramatic as some of his film roles. His four marriages all finally floundered, mostly due to his incorrigible womanising. “It depends very much on the sort of wife you have,” he said when asked if a man should be honest about his affairs. “With some wives, you can be quite candid. Fortunately, I have one of those.” 

His wife at the time was less sanguine. “Sometimes I felt like Yul’s parent,” Virginia said. “He’d try and justify himself like tome callow teenager. His reasoning was juvenile to say the least.” 

Once, when Virginia confronted him about an affair, he said, “What was I supposed to do, ignore her? Would you want to be married to a man that women didn’t find attractive?”

Virginia had a point.

By the mid-1970s his movie career was all but over. Futureworld (1976) was an insipid cash-in. “I should have retired after Westworld,” he later said. “I could see the writing on the wall.” His final film was Death Rage (1976) an Italian quickie rip-off of Michael Winner’s The Mechanic. 

“I have had enough of Hollywood’s chicanery!” he declared after the film sank without a trace. But he had a plan. Broadway had been where he had been born as a star. He would return to its embrace for his final years.

 

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When the curtain rose on The King and I’s Broadway revival in May 1977 the question was could Yul recapture the magic he had brought nearly 20 years ago? It turns out that not only could he, but he exceeded even the critics’ wildest expectations. Age and experience now informed his performance, giving it a new depth and a level of pathos. “He feels more right for the part now than he did the first time around,” said one reporter.

After a decade in the wilderness, Yul was finally re-experiencing the unalloyed success he had enjoyed as a young man. The production toured: first Los Angeles and then over 500 performances in London. Yul was earning upwards of $70,000 a week – enough to alleviate the money troubles he’d experienced during the fallow years.

But a slight cough began to trouble him. Then he noticed a small lump on his neck. The doctors confirmed the dire news. Yul had lung cancer, likely the result of his five-pack-a-day smoking habit. It was terminal. 

On June 30th 1985 he walked onto the stage and delivered his 4,625th performance. Four months later he passed away in New York Presbyterian Hospital. That night Broadway’s lights dimmed. The king was dead.

Yul Brynner’s life had been, by any measure, extraordinary. He had swung from poverty to stratospheric success, and endured decades of movie failure only to be embraced by theatre audiences all over again.

Or as King Mongkut might, more economically, have put it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera!