Considered one of the first Russian-American film stars,[1] he was honored with a ceremony to put his handprints in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood in 1956. He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

In 1956, Brynner received the National Board of Review Award for Best Actor for his portrayals of Rameses II in the Cecil B. DeMille epic The Ten Commandments and General Bounine in Anastasia. He was also well known as the gunman Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its first sequel, Return of the Seven (1966). He had roles as the android “The Gunslinger” in Westworld (1973) and its sequel Futureworld (1976).[2]

In addition to his film credits, he worked as a model and photographer, and wrote several books.[3]

Early life

In Russia

Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920,[4][5][6] in the city of Vladivostok.[7] He had Swiss-German, Russian, and Buryat (Mongol) ancestry. While he also claimed Romani ancestry, no evidence has been found to support this.[8][9][10][11] He was born at his parents’ home, a four-storey house on 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, into a wealthy Swiss Russian family of landowners and silver mining developers in Siberia and the Far East. He was named after his grandfather merchant Yuliy Ivanovich Brinner.

The Briner family enjoyed a good life at their four-storey mansion. At the time of his birth, Vladivostok was under Japanese occupation, while the territory was controlled by the Far Eastern Republic—a communist Russian buffer state. The Red Army occupied Vladivostok in October 1922, and most of the Briner family’s wealth was confiscated by the state at the end of the Russian Civil War. The Briner family, including Yul’s elder sister Vera, continued living in their house under a temporary status, even though the house had been seized.[12][13][14][15]

Later in his life, Brynner humorously enjoyed telling tall tales and exaggerating his background and early life for the press and others, claiming that he was born Taidje Khan of a Mongol father and Roma mother on the Russian island of Sakhalin[16][17] or that he was a nephew of Nicholas II.[17] He occasionally referred to himself as Julius Briner,[4] Jules Bryner,[note 1] or Youl Bryner.[5] The 1989 biography by his son, Rock Brynner, clarified some of these issues.[how?] [16]

Brynner’s father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer and inventor of Swiss German and Russian descent. He graduated from Mining University in Saint Petersburg in 1910. The actor’s grandfather Jules Briner (Бринер, Юлий Иванович) was a Swiss citizen who had moved to Vladivostok in the 1870s and established a successful import/export company.[18] Brynner’s paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, was a native of Irkutsk and a Eurasian of partial Buryat ancestry.

Brynner’s mother, Maria (Marousia) Dimitrievna (née Blagovidova, Мария Дмитриевна Благовидова),[19] hailed from the Russian intelligentsia and had studied to be an actress and singer. According to her son, she was of Russian Roma ancestry,[8] but documents examined by modern historians of Vladivostok claimed the Briner family had no blood connections with Roma. Yul came into close contact with Roma culture in exile while working with his sister, singer Vera Brinner, and they were looking for a stage image. Vera later sharply objected to this appropriation.[10][11] Brynner felt a strong personal connection to the Roma. In 1977, he was named honorary president of the International Romani Union, a title he kept until his death.[20][21]

In 1922, after formation of the Soviet Union, Yul’s father, Boris Briner, was required to relinquish his Swiss citizenship. All family members were made Soviet citizens. Brynner’s father’s work required extensive travel, and in 1923 in Moscow, he fell in love with actress Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova. She was the ex-wife of actor Aleksei Dikiy and the stage partner of Michael Chekhov at the Moscow Art Theatre. Many years later, Katerina Kornakova would help Brynner with her letter of recommendation asking Michael Chekhov to employ him in his theatre company in the United States.

In 1924, Yul’s father divorced his mother, Marousia, but continued to support her and their children. His father also adopted a girl because his new wife was childless. Many years later, after the death of his father, Brynner took this adopted sister into his care. The father and son relationship remained complex and emotionally traumatic for Brynner.

After leaving his children and his former wife in Vladivostok, Boris Briner lived briefly in Moscow with Katerina Ivanovna Kornakova, but eventually they moved to Harbin, Manchuria. At that time, Manchuria remained under Japanese control. Briner established a business in international trade.[12][15]