With his iconic bald head and rich singing voice, actor Yul Brynner made a splash as the exotic King Mongkut in the Broadway stage performance and film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, The King and I. Brynner was not the typical leading man of the Golden Age of Hollywood, but he proved that it was possible to find success by being different.
Yul Brynner, who was born in 1920, traveled around the world and lived in many countries before he came to the United States in his early twenties. He was born in Russia, but lived in Manchuria, Japan, China, Siberia, France, and Switzerland as a child and teen. He spoke Russian, French, Japanese, and Hungarian, but only a few words of English when he and his mother moved to the U.S. in 1940.
The next year, Yul Brynner made his Broadway debut when he was cast as Fabian in the production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. He had only a few lines in this show, which he delivered in his thick Russian accent. Brynner next took a job as a radio announcer for a French-language show on Voice of America, a gig that forced him to learn English.
In 1949, Yul Brynner, who had taken a few small film roles over the years, decided to return to the Broadway stage and audition for a starring role in a new musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein called The King and I. Cast as the title character, Brynner appeared in this role 4,625 time on Broadway. He earned a Tony Award for his performance.
Film producers Charles Bracket and Darryl F. Zanuck made plans to bring The King and I to the big screen for 20th Century Fox. Naturally, Yul Brynner was tapped to reprise his stage role for the movie version. He shared the screen with actress Deborah Kerr, who played Anna. The movie The King and I, which debuted in 1956, was a critical and box office success. Brynner earned a Best Actor Academy Award for his role. When he brought home the Oscar, Brynner became one of only a handful of people to have earned both a Tony and an Oscar for playing the same role.
When he was cast in the film version of The King and I, Yul Brynner shaved his head. He continued to shave his head for the rest of his life, making this his trademark look. It helped to distinguish him from other Hollywood leading men and helped to accentuate his exotic appearance. That look helped him land other film roles, including the role of Rameses II in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 epic, The Ten Commandments. Brynner also appeared in Anastasia, The Magnificent Seven, The Brothers Karamazov, The Buccaneer, Solomon and Sheba, Kings of the Sun, and Escape from Zahrain.
Yul Brynner was barely 20 years old when he began a long affair with Marlene Dietrich, one of the greatest actresses of Hollywood’s Golden era. She was 19 years older than her young Russian lover.
Brynner was married four times and fathered three children. He had his first child, a son named Rock, with his first wife, actress Virginia Gilmore. His second child, a daughter named Lark, was born to Brynner and his lover, Frankie Tilden, who was, like Dietrich, twenty years older than Brenner. Although Brynner and Tilden never married, Brynner provided financial support for his daughter. Brynner’s second wife was model Doris Kleiner. They had a daughter, Victoria. Brynner next wed a French socialist, Jacqueline Simone Thion de la Chaume and the couple adopted two youngsters from Vietnam, Mia and Melody. When Brynner was 62 years old, he married for the last time. His new wife was the 26-year-old ballerina, Kathy Lee.
A heavy smoker nearly his whole life, Yul Brynner died of lung cancer in 1985 at the age of 65.