Yul Brynner (July 11, 1920 – October 10, 1985) was an Academy Award-winning Russian-born Broadway and Hollywood actor. He appeared in many movies and stage productions in the United States. He is best known for his portrayal of the Siamese king in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King and I on the stage and on the screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments and as Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven.
He was noted for his deep, rich voice and for his shaved head, which he kept as a personal trademark since adopting it in his role in The King and I.
Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances. Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease the gullible, and it was not until the publication Empire and Odysseu by his son Yul 'Rock' Brynner in 2006 that many of the details of Brynner's early life became clear. He sometimes claimed to be a half-Swiss, half-Japanese named Taidje Khan, born on the island of Sakhalin; in reality he was the son of Boris Bryner, a Swiss-Russian engineer and inventor, and Marousia Blagovidova, the daughter of a Russian doctor. He was born in their hometown of Vladivostok on 11 July 1915, and named Yuli after his grandfather Jules Bryner. When Yuli's father abandoned the family, his mother took Yul and his sister Vera to Harbin, Manchuria, where they attended a YMCA school. In 1934 Yuli's mother took her children to Paris. Her son was sent to the exclusive Lycée Moncelle, but his attendance was spotty. He dropped out and became a musician, playing guitar in the nightclubs among the Russian gypsies who gave him his first real sense of family. He met luminaries such as Jean Cocteau and became an apprentice at the Theatre des Mathurins. He worked as a trapeze artists with the famed Cirque d'Hiver company. He traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to study with acting teacher Michael Chekhov and toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. That same year he debuted in New York as Fabian in Twelfth Night (billed as Youl Bryner). After working in a very early TV series, "Mr. Jones and His Neighbors" (1944), he played on Broadway in Lute Song, with Mary Martin (I), winning awards and mild acclaim. He and his wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, starred in the first TV talk show, "Mr. and Mrs." (1948). Brynner then joined CBS as a television director. He made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later Mary Martin (I) recommended him for the part he would always be known for: the King in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (King and I, The (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor. For the next two decades he maintained a starring film career despite the exotic nature of his persona, performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the same shaved head and indefinable accent. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I". When he developed lung cancer in the mid-1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause, for broadcast after his death. The cancer and its complications, after a long illness, ended his life. He remains one of the most fascinating, unusual and beloved stars of his time.
