Yul Brynner

Yul Brynner, born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920, in Vladivostok, was a Russian-American actor whose Broadway career spanned from 1941 to 1985. His father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer of Swiss-German and Russian descent who had graduated from Mining University in Saint Petersburg in 1910. His paternal grandfather, Jules Briner, was a Swiss citizen who had relocated to Vladivostok in the 1870s and built a successful import/export business there. His paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, was a native of Irkutsk of partial Buryat ancestry. His mother, Maria Dimitrievna, had studied to be an actress and singer and came from the Russian intelligentsia. The family had been landowners and silver mining developers in Siberia and the Far East, though much of their wealth was confiscated by the state following the Red Army's occupation of Vladivostok in October 1922.

In 1927, Brynner's mother moved with her children to Harbin, China, where Yul and his sister Vera attended a school run by the YMCA. His father gave him an acoustic guitar as a birthday present in 1930, and Brynner subsequently studied music under the guidance of Vera, a classically trained opera singer, eventually becoming an accomplished guitarist and singer. In 1933, the family relocated to Paris, and on June 15, 1935, the fourteen-year-old Brynner made his performing debut at the Hermitage cabaret, playing guitar and singing in Russian and Roma languages. He continued performing at various Parisian nightclubs and also trained as a trapeze acrobat with a French circus troupe, which he left after sustaining a back injury. During this period he met Jean Cocteau, who introduced him to Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Josephine Baker, and Jean Marais. Brynner spent a year in Lausanne, Switzerland, receiving treatment for a drug dependency at a Swiss clinic and at Lausanne University Hospital, with financial support from his aunt, physician Vera Dmitrievna Blagovidova-Briner.

Brynner's Broadway career encompassed a range of productions, including the comedy Twelfth Night, the comedy The Moon Vine, and Lute Song, among others. His most consequential stage role came with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, which opened in 1951. His portrayal of King Mongkut earned him the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1952, and he went on to perform the role 4,625 times on stage. He maintained a shaved head as a personal trademark long after first adopting the look for that production. In 1956, he received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film adaptation of The King and I. That same year, the National Board of Review named him Best Actor for his portrayals of Rameses II in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments and General Bounine in Anastasia, and he was honored with a handprint ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Beyond The King and I, Brynner starred on Broadway in Home Sweet Homer and Odyssey. His stage work was recognized a second time when he received the Tony Award Special Award in 1985. Outside of theater and film, he worked as a model and photographer and wrote several books. In 1977, he was named honorary president of the International Romani Union, a title he held until his death. His film credits also included the role of gunman Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven in 1960 and its first sequel, Return of the Seven, in 1966, as well as the android character known as the Gunslinger in Westworld in 1973 and its sequel Futureworld in 1976. Brynner died on October 10, 1985.