When I was in the third grade, my family went to New York City for the Christmas holidays. We travelled by car because passenger trains were rapidly disappearing in the United States. My parents had taken me on a brief train ride two years earlier because they believed I would never again have the chance to ride one.
My parents’ nostalgia. On this trip, my parents were absorbed with re-living their World War II experiences. When the war began, they were high school sweethearts who had married a year after my mother’s graduation. (My father, two years her senior, had been working, saving his money, and planning the house he wanted to build.) They had survived the Great Depression on their love and their hope for the future.
My father shared the same birthday with one of his brothers, who was two years younger. The day Daddy and Uncle Pete turned twenty-two and twenty, respectively, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, they went together to enlist in the army. My older sister was born a month later. Daddy was heartbroken at leaving my mother at such a time and having to leave without seeing his firstborn child, but men did what men had to do.
Separated by scary circumstances, my parents met up for my father’s furloughs in the big city nearest wherever Daddy was based. That city was usually Washington DC or New York City. In either case, Mother would arrive by train from Ohio, so our first stop when the family got to New York City in 1956 was Grand Central Station.
Mom explained what it was like during “The War,” traveling alone with my tiny sister on trains filled with servicemen going from one base to another or home on furlough. She wasn’t ever scared, because all those men either had wives or sweethearts or dreamed of having them. They showed my mother their snapshots and looked at hers. And they held my toddler sister so my mother could nap. They were men who looked after a fellow soldier’s or sailor’s family because they knew that man would look after their own loved ones.
Each of their three kids viewed the trip from a different perspective. My bratty four-year-old brother reached for shiny objects and stopped talking only to consume ice cream. My moody teenaged sister plotted her upcoming effort at running away from Dayton to the Big Apple. And, yeah, she really did it a few months later, at thirteen years old, passing herself off as eighteen and getting a job at a scarf counter at Macy’s. She came home on her own accord after two weeks because she decided she really ought to go to high school. Somehow she avoided predators. But then, in those days, even New York City was relatively safe.
Me? I was only a few months shy of my ninth birthday, and I was mystified by my precocious puberty. Mother just didn’t know what to say to me, other than to tell me that I was going to bleed every month and that I shouldn’t discuss the subject with anyone but her. In this befuddled and uncomfortable state, I went with my other family members to the theaters my parents had visited in the 1940s, including Radio City Music Hall, and we saw special previews of both Anastasia and The King and I, the movies that propelled Hollywood’s first bald sex symbol to superstardom.
I fell hard for Yul Brynner, his muscles, and his shaven head.
Yul Brynner was the topic of the times. All the popular magazines puzzled over the phenomenon of a bald man, a totally bald man, a guy who shaved off what hair he had on his head instead of wearing a toupee the way normal movie stars did, becoming Hollywood’s biggest sex symbol. Colliers, a magazine in every working class home, did a cover article entitled, “Yul Brynner: Why Do Women Find Him Irresistible?”
I daydreamed about Yul right along with the my favorite singers, Jackie Wilson and Don Everly. I wasn’t sure what sex was, but my sister said all three of them were considered sexy (a word she whispered), and I suspected their “sex appeal,” a term I rarely hear or read anymore, was somehow related to the attraction I felt for all three. I was, as I mentioned before, very young.
Yul and Andrew and the King of Siam. Now, as I ponder Andrew Tate, I can’t help but think about Yul Brynner’s appeal. Yul Brynner was forever associated with the king he portrayed on Broadway and hundreds of stages worldwide, both before and after he played the same character in the film version of The King and I. The Rogers and Hammerstein musical was loosely based on the book, Anna and the King of Siam, which described the real life Anna Leonowens. The woman was a nineteenth century English schoolteacher who journeyed to what is now Thailand to teach the English language to many of the children of the king of Siam. And also to some of his wives.
Both on Broadway and in the film, Brynner wore extraordinary costumes made of gleaming Thai silk. The knee-length pants appeared to be loosely draped fabric, gathered at his waist, twisted and passed between his legs to be fastened in the back. Like a kickboxer’s, Brynner’s feet were bare. Most of the shirts he wore were not shirts, but rather unfastened silk jackets that revealed his muscular chest. The colors dazzled, much like those red-and-gold Muay Thai trunks that Top G sometimes wears.
A young Irene Sharaf first worked with Yul Brynner on the garments for the Broadway production of The King and I. She would later become a Hollywood legend by designing the costumes for the film version. As she was draping Yul’s stunning physique with bright silk, a still youthful Yul was pondering whether or not wear a hairpiece onstage, as he was balding prematurely. Irene said he shouldn’t do it, that he should just shave his head instead. At first skeptical, he ultimately trusted her aesthetic judgment. Huge move–and an excellent decision.
Every Hollywood star who has since shaved his head, right down through Bruce Willis and The Rock, owes Sharaf a debt of gratitude for encouraging Yul to take a such a bold step.
Muscles. In his teens, Brynner had been a lifeguard on the French Riviera in summer and a trapeze artist in Paris at the winter circus. Later, in the US, he became a first-rate water skier, making close-to-record jumps despite being an amateur. When asked about his muscular frame, he replied that “the physique is set in youth,” and claimed he did nothing in particular to keep it up. I believe Mr. Tate has made a similar claim, stating that all his training as a young kickboxer set his gorgeous body on a track that even bad diet and booze couldn’t destroy.
Great lover(s). Another form of exercise in which Brynner indulged is another trademark he shares with Mr. Tate. Yul was one of Hollywood’s greatest lovers, a status well documented by the offspring of several Hollywood legends, including Yul’s own son, Rock, and the daughters of three of Hollywood’s most famous leading ladies.
Brynner probably bedded more iconic Hollywood actresses than all the producers in that town put together. He was the great love of Marlene Dietrich’s life, despite her being almost two decades older than Yul. Their affair lasted many years, much of it taking place while Bynner was married to the beautiful and brainy actress, Virginia Gilmore, Rock’s mother. Rock has said that his parents were comfortable with the concept of “open marriage.” Dietrich, who discovered Brynner playing gypsy guitar in a club before he was known as an actor, later purchased and furnished a special NYC apartment so that Yul could screw her between the matinee and evening performances of The King and I. Dietrich’s diaries are full of adoring comments about Yul, and her only child, a daughter who was a working adult during the latter stages of the affair, said that La Dietrich couldn’t face up to her menopause because she wanted to have a baby with Yul. Rock Brynner said that the legendary beauty sometimes babysat him.
Yul had one-night stands with Marilyn Monroe and with Joan Crawford, who invited him to her home and greeted him in a negligee. Her daughter, who opened the front door, noted that Brynner arrived still in stage makeup and partial king costume. The girl directed Yul to her mother’s bedroom.
A still young and attractive Judy Garland fell in love with Yul when he moved to Hollywood; she conducted an affair with Yul while Rock and Liza Minelli became friends at school. Judy and Yul ended their affair by mutual agreement to save their respective marriages.
Brynner also had an extended affair with Ingrid Bergman. Rock says he always knew when his father was talking to the Swedish legend because the language they spoke to each other was French.
Yul was, in fact, rumored to have seduced virtually all his leading ladies, but he was not the kiss-and-tell sort. (Thank God for the offspring of the stars and their tell-all books. By the way, Dietrich’s daughter says that her mom never forgave Brynner for ultimately ending the affair.)
Clearly, considering the slutty sorts Tate is pictured with online, Brynner had a more exciting head count. I’m afraid Yul, not Top G, gets the W.
On stage and on The King and I movie set, Brynner would strut, casually pulling the front halves of his silk jacket apart, hands on hips, enjoying the appreciative response to his athletic body. Deborah Kerr, who played Anna in the film version, put it bluntly: “Every woman on the set was in love with him.”
The King of Siam and Andrew. But I honestly don’t know whether Andrew Tate is best matched with the real life Brynner or the character most associated with Yul, the king of Siam. The king was not only a womanizer who has trouble remembering exactly how many wives and children he has, but he was also a misogynist.
The king is trying to bring the best of Western culture to his people, having brought in a printing press and other inventions. He decides get much of the court speaking English. Just to move things along, he is even willing to hire a woman to teach “the children of the wives currently in favor with the king.” When he makes a sudden decision to have Anna help Lady Thiang, his “head wife,” improve the English she learned from a missionary, Thiang prostrates herself at the king’s feet. He looks down at her and explains to Anna, “She is grateful to me for my kindness.” And when he spots Anna’s copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the king is astounded, “A woman has written a book?”
Ultimately, the king notices that Anna, whom his wives address as “sir” because she is “not lowly, like a woman,” is indeed a woman.
The king explains the natural order of things to Anna: a girl, he says, is like a flower, with nectar for just one man, whereas “man must be like honeybee and gather all he can.” The king is possessive. He begins questioning matters such as whether the off-the-shoulders evening dress Anna wears to an official function is appropriate. (I hear Andrew Tate, in mock astonishment, stating that you “can’t even tell your own bitch she can’t go drinking with the guys from her office.”)
Although he disapproves of English women dancing with men who are not their husbands, the king tells Anna to teach him to dance, seducing her in the musical’s grandest number, “Shall We Dance?”.
Yul and Andrew have exceptional fathers. But the real life Brynner was more fascinating than the fictional king of Siam. Brynner’s Swiss father was a significant figure in the history of far eastern trade. His Russian mother was descended (through Yul’s maternal grandmother) FROM GHENGIS KHAN!
Tate’s father had great skill in language acquisition, learning Russian in a matter of weeks. Brynner’s father spoke a dozen languages that he learned from sailors after leaving home, barely in his teens, because his family could no longer afford to educate him. Eventually, the elder Brynner founded the city of Vladivostok.
Yul Brynner was born just as the Russian Revolution spread to the country’s eastern border. He moved with his mother and sister as refugees, first to China, and then to Europe, eventually settling in Paris before coming to the US. The senior Brynner was never permitted to leave Russia.
Unlike Tate, Brynner never mentioned his father. The Cold War raged during Yul’s stardom, and to acknowledge his Russian lineage would have been disastrous to his career. Instead, Brynner created various biographical scenarios, offering journalists and fans a selection of birthplaces and a variety of youthful experiences. Brynner himself spoke French, Russian, and Rom. Although there seems no real evidence gypsy blood, Brynner was considered an “adopted” Rom. But Yul Brynner’s actual life story known to the public until after his death.
Egos. Oh, one more thing: Brynner freely acknowledged that he had “an ego the size of an aircraft carrier.” That just could be true, but I feel certain gets Andrew gets the “W” in this category.
My obsession with Brynner has never died. Some time ago, nude photos of a twenty-one-year-old Yul appeared on the Internet. Shot when the impoverished young man first came to New York, the pictures, taken by a noted photographer and intended for a gay calendar, show Yul with hair on his head as well as his pubes. I chose the reclining pose for my iPhone’s wallpaper. I didn’t bother cropping the photo, so it is relatively tame in portrait view but quite racy if the phone shifts to landscape.
Three years ago, as I lay on a gurney in an emergency room, drifting in and out of consciousness, I heard the voices of the team saving my life. “Have you seen the pictures on this woman’s phone? She’s in her seventies, for pity sakes.” The male doctor overseeing my care tried to tell everyone that the wallpaper photo was him in his youth. “I have put on a few pounds,” he acknowledged. I wanted to tell them is was Yul Brynner, but I couldn’t speak.
Now I’m seventy-five. The MacBook Air I’m typing on has Andrew Tate as its wallpaper, but he’s on a yacht, wearing baby blue bathing trunks. Best photo I could find.
Cyclonejane
November 30
Conundrum Andrew Tate 