Here’s What Happened to ‘The King and I’ Star Yul Brynner Before, During and After the King of Siam

He was born Yuliy Borisvoch Briner in Russia. His father, Boris Briner, was a mining engineer and investor of Swiss-German and Russian descent, while his mother, Marousia Dimitrievna, was an aspiring actress and singer. In 1923, Boris fell in love with an actress and abandoned his family. Yul, his mother and his older sister, Vera, made the move to China, where they were educated in a YMCA school. In 1932, the trio moved to Paris out of fear of a war between Japan and China. There, Yul played his guitar in Russian nightclubs. He also spent five years as a trapeze acrobat as part of a French circus troupe, but a back injury sidelined him from that possible career. In 1940, they moved to America.

During World War II he worked for the U.S. Office of War Information as a French-speaking radio announcer, broadcasting to occupied France. During this period, he studied acting with Russian teacher Michael Chekhov in Connecticut. In 1941 he scored a small role in a Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, followed two years later with The Moon Vine. He had a much larger part in the 1946 production of Lute Song.

In 1949 he was cast in a small role in the feature film Port of New York, but had really begun making his mark on television appearing on anthology shows and, more interestingly, directing and producing them as well. His credits in the early ‘50s include Studio One, Starlight Theatre, The Robert Q. Lewis Show, We Take Your Word, Sure as Fate, Mr. I. Magination and Danger.

Yul pointed out to The Los Angeles Times, “I was the first video director who attempted to make women look beautiful in that medium. TV has done for actors what stock and touring companies did in the old days, when actors had a new play every week. Some actors have grown up strictly on television — I can point to Grace Kelley as getting training there.”

While he would occasionally revisit the medium, he was drawn back to Broadway with The King and I, a musical that looks at what happens when the King of Siam brings into his home a widow (Patricia Morison) to serve as governess of his children. It’s based on the novel Anna and the King of Siam and was loved by both the critics and the audience.

“Before this play,” Yul told the Visalia Times-Delta in 1951, “I was doing all right. I was directing a drama series on television. I put in 14-hour days, made a thousand dollars a week and wasn’t a bit unhappy. Matter of fact, I was having a good time, doing just what I’d always wanted to do. Then came this offer. I hadn’t read the book, so it didn’t mean anything to me. I turned it down. But it turned up again and again and, finally, I was convinced that it was for me.”

One question he was asked at the time was whether or not it was difficult to keep the performance fresh night after night. “It’s not so much of a problem for me,” he replied. “For one thing, I have fun in this play. I really enjoy it. If I didn’t, I’d be exhausted. It’s long; it runs three hours. I don’t use my own voice; I speak on a high, shrieking note. The makeup and the costumes and everything about the production are complicated. So I never play the role exactly the same way twice. For one thing, the audience is never the same and my mood varies in ratio to the audience. That makes a difference in keeping the role fresh. Circumstances keep the role fresh. Circumstances are different each time I step onto the stage.”

In September 1951, and thanks to the sensation that the musical had become, Yul was signed to a multi-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Movies he saw as the next big step for him, telling The Los Angeles Times, “The motion picture is the most effective means for the actor to establish himself both nationally and prominently. I do not want to limit even my stage horizon to New York. I know of no quicker and more sure way to broaden it in this country than through the rather closely related film medium. What is more, working in pictures offers the great thrill of a new adventure, as far as I’m concerned. I have had experience in both radio and television, but almost none in the motion picture studios.”

His movie contract got off to an impressive start. To begin with, director Cecil B. Demille brought him aboard his second version of The Ten Commandments (the one starring Charlton Heston) for the role of Rameses II. “About a year-and-a-half ago,” DeMille told The Post-Star of Glen Falls, New York in 1954. “My granddaughter and my secretary were urging me to see a show called The King and I. I didn’t want to go, but they were so persistent that I had to. When we arrived at the theatre, they sat on each side of me so they could nudge me if I fell asleep. During the first act, I realized I was seeing a rare theatrical experience — a performance of dramatic integrity.”

The director went backstage between acts to speak to Brynner and concluded their conversation by offering him the part. A handshake sealed the deal. Yul reflected, “In four years, I have never had a visitor between acts of the show — except for Mr. DeMille. There are only seven-and-a-half minutes between acts, but he started talking and I was impressed by the tremendous amount of research that had been done on this picture. By the time I had to go on stage again, I had not only agreed to do The Ten Commandments with him, but another picture following it.”

In 1956, Yul had a tremendous year at the box office. For starters, there was the film version of The King and I, which co-starred Deborah Kerr in the role of Anna Leonowens. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning five in the categories of Best Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Color; Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture; and Sound Recording. The other nominations were for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Cinematography, Color.

Next up was The Ten Commandments, Demille’s epic film with a cast of thousands, including Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, John Derek, Nina Foch, Vincent Price, John Carradine, Lawrence Dobkin and Fraser Heston, Charlton’s son, who nearly drowned as Baby Moses. Winner of the Academy Award in the category of Best Special Effects, The Ten Commandments became the highest-grossing movie of 1956.

Yul rounded out the year with the historical drama Anastasia, co-starring Ingrid Bergman (who won the Oscar for Best Actress). All three films were hits and launched the actor pretty spectacularly.

The hits continued in 1958 with The Brothers Karamazov and (not quite as much) The Buccaneer, which saw him teaming up again with Charlton Heston. Then what seemed like it would work on paper, but didn’t, was when he co-starred with Deborah Kerr again in 1959’s The Journey, but it failed at the box office — as did 1959’s The Sound and the Fury. Director Stanley Donen’s comedies Once More, with Feeling! and Surprise Party (both 1960) didn’t fare much better.

The Magnificent Seven (1960), the Western version of the film Seven Samurai, was critically well received, but did not do well in America — though overseas it did. Throughout the rest of the 1960s he starred in 18 movies, of which only 1966’s Return of the Seven was a success. His first few movies of the 1970s — and there were six of them — didn’t fare much better.

The TV series Anna and the King in 1972 may have seemed like a safe place to retreat to, but for a title that had had such an illustrious past, it was a colossal failure and was canceled 12 episodes in. What did turn things around a bit for Yul was 1973’s Westworld (inspiration for the HBO series of the same name), in which he plays a malfunctioning — and deadly — gun-slinging robot. The success of that film saw him play a similar role in The Ultimate Warrior, popped up briefly back in Western garb for 1976’s Futureworld and wrapped up his movie career with that same year’s Death Rage, an Italian action film.

In between there were returns to his role as the King of Siam in a 1977 to 1978 Broadway run, a 1979 London production, the 1981 to 1983 tour and then a return to Broadway in 1985. Appropriately he won the Tony Award as Best Actor, the second time he had done so for the same role.

In his personal life, Yul was an avid photographer and authored books of photos. He was married four times, to Virginia Gilmore (1944 to 1960), Doris Kleiner (1960 to 1967), Jacqueline Thion de la Chaume (1971 to 1981) and Kathy Lee (1983 until his death). Over the course of his life he adopted two children and fathered three.

A heavy smoker beginning at the age of 12, he finally quit in 1971, but the damage was done. In 1983 a lump was found on his vocal cords and he ended up dying of lung cancer on October 10, 1985 at the age of 65. Before that, he had pre-recorded an anti-smoking commercial that was broadcast on all the networks within a few days after his passing.

“Now that I’m gone,” says Yul Brynner in this 30-second spot, “I tell you: Don’t smoke. Whatever you do … just don’t smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer. I’m convinced of that.” Let’s hope that that final “performance” touched the audience as much as his others had.

For a quick look at some of Yul’s film career highlights, please scroll down. 

‘The King and I’ (1956)

‘The Ten Commandments’ (1956)

‘Anastasia’ (1956)

‘The Brothers Karamazov’ (1958)

‘The Buccaneer’ (1958)

‘The Journey’ (1959)

‘The Sound and the Fury’ (1959)

‘Solomon and Sheba’ (1959)

‘Once More, With Feeling’ (1960)

‘Surprise Package’ (1960)

‘The Magnificent Seven’ (1960)

‘Invitation to a Gunfighter’ (1964)

‘Return of the Seven’ (1966)

‘The Double Man’ (1967)

‘The File of the Golden Goose’ (1969)

‘The Light at the Edge of the World’ (1971)

‘Fuzz’ (1972)

‘Anna and the King’ (1972)

‘Westworld’ (1973)

‘The Ultimate Warrior’ (1975)

‘Death Rage’ (1976)