He had the physique of a college wrestler or Samurai warrior, a visage that might have been discovered on an Inca tomb. His manner was looming, even in normal conversation. He was the anti-Hollywood hero. He had a menacing face worth millions. He was Charles Bronson.
Charles Bronson's Early Years
Bronson was born Charles Bunchinsky in 1921 at Ehrenfeld, "Scooptown," Pa., one of 15 kids of Russian and Lithuanian immigrants. After six years in the mines, Bronson was drafted, and for three years during WWII was a B-29 tail gunner. Others complained, but he thought that the Air Force was a fine place to be: food, clothes, lodging.
After the war Bronson left home, went through a series of jobs — bricklayer, lifeguard, waiter, baker's helper, boxer, truck -driver, farmhand, and boardwalk pitchman — before he joined an experimental theater group. Bronson soon got some walk-on parts, some summer stock, some off-Broadway. To get rid of the accent which he was ashamed of, he went West to the Pasadena Playhouse, and on the GI Bill studied phonetics and elocution. Soon he got small character roles in films: tough guys, Indians, two-bit misfits. Then the parts got bigger, and in time he had over 50 film credits. For his work in pictures such as The Great Escape, The Magnificent Seven, and The Dirty Dozen, Bronson was pulling $50,000 per movie. He did some TV: Man with a Camera, Empire, and The Travels of Jamie McPheeters.
In 1968, Bronson went to Europe to star in an Alain Delon film, Adieu 1' Ami, which went right to the top in France. For Sergio Leone, Bronson did Once Upon a Time in the West, and that hit the top in Italy. A few more pictures — The Family, Rider on the Rain, Red Sun and The Valdez Horses — a few more years, and Bronson's name was on every marquee in Europe. He was winner of the 1972 Golden Globe Award as the most popular actor in the world.
At one point in the 1970s, if you put Bronson's name on a picture, you were guaranteed five to 20 per cent return on your money. If you had his name on a contract, backers stood in line.
Harriett Bronson's Charlie & Me
We diehard Bronson fans are a curious lot; perhaps as curious as the man himself. We've never found a suitable replacement for his presence. We are left needing to know more. Harriett Bronson’s newly released memoir Charlie & Me gives wide insight as to not only Charles Bronson’s earliest days in Hollywood but his life and upward mobility from 1947 to 1968.
The former Harriet Tendler’s love story with Charlie Buchinsky (changed from "Bunchinsky" by family members) – the man who would someday be known as Charles Bronson – began in September 1947 at the water fountain at The Bessie V. Hicks School of Stage, Screen and Radio in Philadelphia. Tendler, the only child of a widowed Jewish cattle breeder and dairy farmer named Sam Tendler, had recently turned eighteen; Charlie was twenty-six. Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Tendler’s mother, Frances, died when she was only two.
Charlie confided in Harriett his motivation for wanting to become an actor: the pull and prospect of money. “Charlie wasn’t in movies for the creative art,” said Harriett Bronson, in an interview with the author, May 17, 2011, "but the money. He didn’t care about that creative side of acting, but was more into acting as a way out of poverty. Though, he liked working once he was there. No matter how successful he got as an actor, Charlie continued to maintain that he was in the acting profession for the money and not for the art. It was strictly business. It was straightforward.”
Reticence, Complexity of Charles Bronson
Most casual Bronson fans know the basics or elemental truths of his domestic history: he and Harriett divorced in 1965 and he married actress Jill Ireland - whom he began seeing while both were married - in 1968. Jill admitted to falling in love with Bronson in Bavaria during the filming of The Great Escape in 1962. They mingled their six children, three from Jill's marriage to TV actor David McCallum, two from Charlie’s first marriage, and one child of their own, Zuleika. In the book, Harriett explains how she was the party who filed for divorce. Charlie didn’t want the divorce; she couldn’t keep the sham of marriage going knowing Jill was very much in the picture, so she pressed for separation. We also learn that contrary to the public perception fostered by Charlie and Jill, Harriett shared joint custody with her children. The kids split time with both parents and weren't exclusively awarded to one parent. Contradictory intimations in the press and misleading statements by Jill often unfairly portrayed Harriett as remiss or slack.
Bronson’s philandering was for the most part detached, or as Harriett said “compartmentalized.” “What I didn’t understand at the time was that he was able compartmentalize our marriage. He was generous, loving and devoted at home, but was also able to see women outside the marriage. Jill Ireland wasn’t the only one. I always thought I knew him, but I didn’t. Like many wives, I was stunned by his infidelities.”
Deliberately or not, Charles Bronson encouraged the belief that there were secrets in his life. He was instinctually shy. He seems to have found face-to-face encounters with other people very difficult, even boring. Likewise, he hated being photographed. Up close, it was the immobility of his face — the motionless combination of intimidatingly drooped eyelids, permanently thinned lips and wispy moustache — that chilled.
But Bronson was not just a pretty face. He was a silently astute actor and businessman who quickly gave up an early tendency towards light comedy on discovering he could frighten people by just looking at them. He was a coal miner’s son who reinvented himself in a powerfully explosive way.
“Yes, Charlie was tormented by his childhood,” said Harriett. “Out of fifteen children, Charlie was one of just two to actually graduate high school. He was determined to make something respectable and successful of himself and his life. But, he remained angry about his past, his childhood, his family’s poverty, and he was the only child of the fifteen who stayed resentful and angry.”
Charlie & Me is the engaging story of two amazing intersecting lives - a splendid portrait of the Bronsons' life and times, at once poignant, inspiring, and saddening. It's the story of a woman's rebound from a public divorce with a famous man and how she found the acceptance and understanding necessary to heal confidential wounds. It's about Harriett's redemptive spiritual sojourn and how Charles Bronson, with the love and support of Harriett, not only lived the adventure of Hollywood, but helped create the robust American style of masculinity of the imagination. It is an illuminative narrative and a mandatory read for anyone interested in the evolution of the Bronson myth.
Sources
- Harriett Bronson, Interview with Author, May 17, 2011
- Charlie & Me, Harriett Bronson, Timberlake Press, 2011
- American Film Heritage, "Right Face at Right Time," October 2003
Brian D'Ambrosio - Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 500 published articles and seven books, including From Haikus to Hatmaking: A Year in the Life ...
