Charles Bronson

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Charles Bronson, 1987

Charles Bronson (born November 3, 1921 in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania , as Charles Dennis Buchinsky ( Lithuanian Karolis Dionyzas Bučinskis ); † August 30, 2003 in Los Angeles ) was an American actor of Lithuanian descent.

From the late 1960s, Bronson was one of the world's most popular stars for a good decade. He mostly played taciturn heroes in westerns and action films . He achieved particular fame in 1968 in the western epic play me the song of death in the role of the mysterious harmonica player. One of his most successful films was the thriller Death Wish (1974), the vigilante had on the subject.

Life

Charles Bronson was born in 1921 as the eleventh of a total of 15 children to a Lithuanian , Roman Catholic immigrant family. His mother, Mary Valinsky (Lithuanian Marija Valinskis ), was an American citizen, his father Valteris Bučinskis (English Walter Buchinsky ), a miner of Lipka-Tatar descent, was later naturalized.

In his youth, Russian and Lithuanian were spoken in the family. Bronson graduated from high school , while his siblings remained without high school diplomas. He was fluent in Russian, Lithuanian and Greek. When his father died he was ten years old. To support his family, he worked with his brothers in a coal mine at the age of 16 , as their father had done. He is said to have hated the hard piecework underground that he did for four years. During that time, Bronson was jailed twice for shoplifting and a brawl.

During World War II , Bronson was a gunner of a B-29 bomber and was awarded the Purple Heart for one wound . After the war ended he worked as a boxer and casual laborer, then studied art in Philadelphia . He was interested in painting all his life and, when he was already a movie star, successfully exhibited pictures under his maiden name Buchinsky.

He worked as a stage worker and went to the Pasadena Playhouse , where he took on minor roles. In the late 1940s he temporarily shared an apartment with his colleague Jack Klugman , with whom he became friends. After film director Henry Hathaway became aware of him, he gave him his first small Hollywood role in 1951.

Charles Bronson was married to Harriet Tendler between 1949 and 1967. The marriage had two children. In 1968 he married his colleague Jill Ireland ; with her he appeared in 17 films. Bronson had met her through his colleague David McCallum , with whom he could be seen in 1963 in Broken Chains . Ireland divorced McCallum in 1967.

Bronson and Ireland formed an extended family with the three children from their first marriage as well as Bronson's two children from their first marriage and their daughter Zuleika (* 1971). In 1983, the couple adopted another child named Katrina Holden after his mother died. Bronson's adopted son Jason died of a drug overdose in 1989. Bronson lived with his family alternately on a large farm in Vermont and on his estates in Bel Air and Malibu .

Jill Ireland, with whom Bronson was married for 22 years, died of longstanding cancer in 1990.

In 1998 the actor married television producer Kim Weeks, 40 years his junior. He contracted Alzheimer's disease in the late 1990s and ended his acting career. Charles Bronson died on 30 August 2003 at the age of 81 years at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles at a pneumonia . Two weeks earlier, the media had reported that he was dying.

Bronson has often been described by colleagues as silent and inaccessible. Sometimes he would sit in a corner for a long time, let the director explain the instructions to him and only speak when the camera was running. Bronson explained that his hard and hard childhood had shaped his character. The actor hermetically shielded his private life from the public and was reluctant to give interviews.

plant

1949 to 1967

In 1949 Charles Bronson made his debut as a television actor and in 1951 as a cinema actor. At first he appeared under his family name “Buchinsky” and played, for example, in the horror classic Das Kabinett des Professor Bondi (1953), the assistant “Igor” of the mad wax sculptor Professor Jarrod ( Vincent Price ). He was used in westerns like Vera Cruz (1954), but was always low on the cast list and failed to establish himself in Hollywood during the 1950s. Bronson appeared several times in western films as an Indian ( Maasai , 1954, Hell of a Thousand Tortures , 1957). He played minor roles in several dozen of films and was frequently used as a villain during this time because of his physical appearance.

In order not to be mistaken for a Russian during the McCarthy era , the actor changed his last name in 1955 and from then on appeared on the cast lists as Charles Bronson (this name he took from Bronson Gate near Paramount Studios). Between 1949 and 1967 Bronson completed dozens of TV appearances and was seen in well-known TV series such as Twilight Zone , At the foot of the blue mountains , Smoking Colts , Bonanza or On the Run , although he never appeared as a leading actor. (In a 1965 episode of A Thousand Miles of Dust , he acted as an adversary to Clint Eastwood .) In 1958, Bronson starred in the B-movie The Predator , in which he played the infamous bank robber George R. Kelly , directed by Roger Corman .

In 1960 Bronson made a decisive career leap when director John Sturges cast him as "Bernardo", one of the Magnificent Seven . The western classic of the same name, starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, was a resounding success at the box office. Bronson first played a prominent role in a major Hollywood film. He also changed his image and from then on could almost only be seen in the cinema in positive roles.

Director Sturges gave Bronson 1963 Escape also the role of a claustrophobic prisoners of war during World War II, who fled along with several dozen comrades from a German prison camp. This epic, star-studded flick also became a classic and a huge commercial hit.

In 1962, Bronson starred alongside Elvis Presley in the entertainment film Kid Galahad - Harte Fäuste, HOT LOVE its boxing coach, he also took on roles in films such as Four for Texas (1963), ... That Desire Everything (1965) or The Last Battle (1965) ). In 1967 he was one of the Dirty Dozen and, alongside Lee Marvin, was the only survivor of the well-known commando. Although the established star Marvin played the lead role, Bronson's part seemed almost equal. The tough war film, in which upcoming stars like Donald Sutherland or Telly Savalas also appeared, was one of the greatest film successes of the late 1960s and brought Bronson's career forward. In 1968 he was finally established as a popular leading actor, whose name was prominently featured on the movie posters.

1968 to 1979

In the mid-1960s, Charles Bronson had refused several times to appear in a spaghetti western by director Sergio Leone ( for a handful of dollars , etc.). In 1968 Leone finally managed to hire him for his western epic Spiel mir das Lied von Tod . In 1967, when the film went into production, Bronson was not yet a popular star in Hollywood and Leone had to assert himself against much opposition. With comments like: “Charley Bronson? You want to pick us up ?! ”the producers would have responded to his request to give the actor one of the four leading roles in the prestigious, highly budgeted western project. But they tried in vain to convince the director to hire an established star.

Leone finally switched with his project from the originally planned production company United Artists to Paramount Pictures . The reason for this should have been the discrepancies in the choice of the main actor.

Play me the song of death shows Bronson in the role of a gunslinger playing harmonica who brings down a sadistic villain ( Henry Fonda ). Leone had left Fonda, the film's biggest star, to decide whether to play the villain or the hero. After Fonda Bronson had left the positive part, he found a perfect image in the role of the silent avenger. Director Leone staged Bronson as a larger-than-life character to the sounds of Ennio Morricone's famous harmonica melody, thus reinforcing the myth of the actor who was nicknamed The Holy Monster in France, for example .

Play Me a Song of Death became a huge success outside of the USA and went down in film history as a classic. In France and Germany (where it became one of the most successful films to date, with 13 million viewers), Leone's Western sometimes ran in cinemas for years. Especially in Europe and Asia, Charles Bronson became one of the most popular stars after this success as an action and western actor. The muscular actor with the furrowed features and the impenetrable facial expression mostly played men who seemed self-confident and latently threatening.

In 1968, Bronson starred alongside Alain Delon in the French thriller You Can Begin to Pray, a former Foreign Legionnaire who is embroiled in criminal activities. In the 1971 western Rival Under the Red Sun by director Terence Young , Bronson played alongside Delon, Ursula Andress and Toshirō Mifune , who was seen here as a samurai in the Wild West.

In 1972, in the western Chatos Land , Charles Bronson played a half-Indian who took revenge for the rape of his wife by attacking the perpetrators (a group of depraved whites) in the desert. His image as a silent avenger was extremely condensed in the role of the almost mute half-Indian who slaughtered his enemies one after the other. The well-trained star appeared over long distances wearing only a loincloth. With Chatos Land , Bronson began his successful collaboration with director Michael Winner , with whom he made six films and who also directed the action thriller Cold Breath (1972), in which Bronson was seen as a hit man who was training a young successor.

In the early 1970s Bronson had reached his career high point and was successful with numerous films worldwide. With the vigilante justice thriller A Man Sees Red (Death Wish) , again directed by Michael Winner, he landed his biggest box office hit in 1974 and was able to make a name for himself as a leading star in his home country USA for the first time. The controversial film showed Bronson in the role of a peaceful architect who becomes an avenger on the streets of New York after his wife was murdered and his daughter raped.

Together with other well-known New York films of this era ( French Connection , Stop the Death Ride of Subway 123 , Taxi Driver, etc.), A Man Seeing Red reflected a then widespread discomfort about the uncertain life in the world-famous metropolis. In the role of the average citizen Paul Kersey, who takes the law into his own hands, Bronson hit the zeitgeist and obviously personified the secret longings of numerous cinema viewers. The German film title went into everyday language.

In his mid-50s, Bronson was one of the Hollywood superstars and was successful for years in his typical genre films. He has made westerns ( Nevada Pass , 1975, The White Buffalo , 1977), action thrillers ( The Law I Am , 1974, Phone , 1977), and adventure films ( Caboblanco , 1979, Yukon , 1981) and was with Clint Eastwood until the end of the decade and Steve McQueen the most popular star of these genres.

1980 to 1999

In the 1980s, when Bronson passed 60, his popularity waned. He appeared in action films until the 1990s, but during this time the audience turned to new genre stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger , Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis , some of whom were decades younger.

During the 1980s Bronson made numerous films for the production company Cannon Films , which at the time was heavily involved in the action genre and promoted the careers of actors such as Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme . Cannon produced low-cost films on an assembly line, based on great Hollywood successes. These productions, including the one with Bronson, were received mostly negatively by the critics - and Cannon filed for bankruptcy in the late 1980s.

By 1994 Bronson made four sequels to his hit film A Man Sees Red , but they weren't nearly as successful as the original 1974 film. In the last few episodes, Bronson had already passed the retirement age. In 1987 he stood in front of the camera with his wife Jill Ireland one last time for The Assassination .

In the 1990s Bronson was mostly seen in television films and played, for example, the sea ​​wolf Wolf Larsen. In 1991 he appeared in the demanding social drama Indian Runner , the directorial debut of Sean Penn , a Bronson admirer who was able to win the veteran star for a prominent supporting role. In 1999 Charles Bronson stood in front of a camera for the last time.

The actor Bronson

"I suppose I look like a block of stone that has been blown up," said Bronson of himself. From the late 1960s onwards, he acted as a western and action hero in a relatively narrowly defined role. He was not rated as a high-class actor by the film critics, but was considered a pure genre star with no special acting skills. In many cases he was even denied any acting talent. Bronson was never nominated for an Oscar during his long career and did not win any of his roles for any of his roles except for a Golden Globe in 1972. He remained a pure public star who could never convince the criticism.

Obviously, the actor also had no particular ambitions or the desire to play important leading roles in artistically high-class films. Bronson was generally not hired by leading directors for high-profile roles - with the exception of Sergio Leone (Play Me a Song of Death) . For example, he never worked for the directors of the New Hollywood cinema, who were very successful with artistically ambitious films in the 1960s and 1970s. The actor, who had been waiting for his breakthrough for decades, was primarily interested in the commercial success of his films: “We don't make films for the critics, because they don't pay admission.” In an interview he explained: “I'm just as much a commodity as I am a bar of soap that should be sold as well as possible. "

Especially after his appearance as the mystical gunslinger in Spiel mir das Lied von Tod , Charles Bronson became a kind of cult figure among the cinema audiences in the late 1960s. In 1972, alongside Sean Connery, he was awarded a Golden Globe as the world's most popular film actor. In the 1970s he was one of the highest-paid stars and received some $ 100,000 pay per day of shooting. During this time, Bronson typically made two to three films a year, almost all of which were tailored to the image of a silent action hero.

At an advanced age, Bronson showed no interest in expanding his range of roles or in questioning his image through ironic depictions, as did Clint Eastwood or Sean Connery , for example . When he was over 70, he played his typical action roles - albeit with little response from the cinema audience. Nor was he ever involved as a producer or director in the making of the films in which he appeared as an actor.

Others

Parodies / tributes

Bronson's image as a larger-than-life macho hero also gave rise to parodies. In an episode of the animated series The Simpsons from 2002, the Simpson family accidentally finds themselves in the small town of Bronson, whose residents only communicate in brief Charles Bronson dialogues and they all look like him. In another episode from 1995 there is a message from a new Charles Bronson movie called "Death Wish 9" in which he just lies in the sick bed and says "I wish I were dead, Ui!"

Director Quentin Tarantino , an avowed Charles Bronson fan, posthumously dedicated his two-part series Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill 2 to the actor .

Voice actor

Before he became a star, Charles Bronson did not have a standard voice actor . He was spoken by Harald Juhnke , Claus Biederstaedt , Arnold Marquis and Günter Pfitzmann , among others .

From 1968 Michael Chevalier (* 1933; † around 2006) was the permanent spokesman for Charles Bronson. Chevalier can be heard, for example, in Spiel mir das Lied von Tod , his deep voice is generally associated with the star (he can also be heard in Udo Lindenberg's song Cowboy-Rocker ). Chevalier dubbed Bronson in a total of 30 films until 1994. Arnold Marquis , the standard speaker for John Wayne , spoke to him eight times between 1962 and 1982. Wolfgang Hess , Bud Spencer's standard speaker , was heard seven times as Bronson's voice between 1964 and 1988. At the end of his career, Bronson was spoken by Klaus Kindler three times (1997-1999).

Filmography

until 1955 as Charles Buchinsky , if listed in the actor's information

Awards

  • In 1972 Charles Bronson received a Golden Globe in the World's Most Popular Male Actor category (along with Sean Connery ).

Web links

Commons : Charles Bronson  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael R. Pitts: Charles Bronson: the 95 films and the 156 television appearances . McFarland & Company, Inc., 1999, ISBN 0-7864-0601-1 , pp. 1 .
  2. ↑ a b c d welt-des-wissens.com: Charles Bronson, accessed July 25, 2011
  3. ^ Lou Varricchio: Charles Bronson - “Do not stand by my grave and weep”. In: suncommunitynews.com. September 1, 2015, accessed on March 11, 2019 .
  4. ^ Douglas Thompson: Charles Bronson Interview. (No longer available online.) In: dougiethompson.com. Archived from the original on June 21, 2006 ; accessed on July 27, 2020 (English).
  5. ^ Charles Bronson. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on December 29, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Bronson, Charles
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Buchinsky, Charles Dennis (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Ehrenfeld , Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 2003
Place of death los Angeles