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Yul Brynner
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Yul Brynner (July 11, 1920[1] – October 10, 1985) was a 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.
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Yul Brynner stars as the legendary King Solomon in what is considered to be the most spectacular motion picture of its time. When Solomon is chosen to succeed his father, King David, he vows to rebuild Jerusalem and lead Israel to greater strength. However, his jealous brother Adonijah, the Egyptian Pharoah and the seductive Queen of Sheba conspire against Solomon to bring down his throne. This mighty epic was King Vidor’s final film and colourfully portrays some of the greatest rulers, kingdoms and battles in Biblical history.
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Yul Brynner, back in the late 1950's, wanted to direct an American version of the SEVEN SAMURAI, as an western. So he bought up the movie rights. He wanted to cast Anthony Quinn in the lead, as Chris. Brynner had been directed by Quinn in the remake of THE BUCCANEER. Quinn would have been great as Chris, the leader of the Seven; and what a different film it would have been. But, alas, Brynner himself took the part, and put his own stamp of individuality on it. He walked like a cross between a panther and a ballet dancer; light on the balls of his feet.
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When the film version of "The King and I," starring Yul Brynner, was released in the '50s, it was banned in Thailand for historical inaccuracy and disrespect toward the royal family. Anna Leonowens, whose books became the basis of the musical, has ... been criticized for inconsistencies in her portrayal of her own life story.
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Two years before he would be cast as the King of Siam in the Broadway hit "The King and I," Yul Brynner was featured as a drug running Russian gangster in this post-war police procedural. In his debut film Brynner plays Paul Vicola, boss drug smuggler and snappy dresser, working out of the New York City docks. Or, as he's introduced at the start of the film (in a bit of gangster nickname overkill) "Mysterious Paul the Yachtsman."
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During his lifetime, it was hard to determine when and where actor "Yul Brynner" was born, simply because he changed the story in every interview; confronted with these discrepancies late in life, he replied, "Ordinary mortals need but one birthday." At any rate, it appears that Brynner's mother was part Russian, his father part Swiss, and that he lived in Russia until his mother moved the family to Manchuria and then Paris in the early '30s. He worked as a trapeze artist with the touring Cirque D'Hiver, then joined a repertory theater company in Paris in 1934. Brynner's fluency in Russian and French enabled him to build up a following with the Czarist expatriates in Paris, and his talents as a singer/guitarist increased his popularity. And when "Michael Chekhov" hired Brynner for his American theater company, he added a third language -- English -- to his repertoire.
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Yul Brynner