Although best
known for his roles in slam-bang action movies such as The Great Escape
(1963), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Death Wish (1974), and Hard
Times (1975), Charles Bronson rode to glory in a stockload of Western
films and television shows.
Born November 3, 1921 to Pennsylvania based Lithuanian
immigrant parents who sired 15 children, Charles Buchinsky was the only
member of the family to complete high school. After working in the coal
mines with his brothers to help support the large brood, young Charles
served as a tailgunner in World war II. at the war's end he studied art in
Philadelphia via his G.I. Bill before enrolling at California's Pasadena
Playhouse to study acting.
It was there that an instructor recommended Buchinsky to
legendary director Henry Hathaway who cast him in his debut movie, You're
in the Navy Now (1951).
After uncredited bit parts in a string of movies and a more
substantial role as a mute assistant to Vincent Price in House of Wax
(1954), the future box-office champ landed his first Western, the 1954
Randolph Scott Oater Riding Shotgun. That same year he appeared in
three other Westerns: Apache and Vera Cruz, both of
which starred Burt Lancaster (and the latter of which also starred Gary
Cooper), and Drum Beat, with Alan Ladd and Anthony Caruso. Drum
Beat was the first movie to list the tough-as-nails actor as Charles
Bronson, a moniker that he adopted at the suggestion of the film's director
Delmer Daves and actors Ladd and Caruso in order to make the budding star's
name "user-friendly) on the marquee.
After supporting roles in Jubal (1956) with Glenn Ford
and Run of the Arrow (1957) with Rod Steiger, Bronson was given
top-billing for the first time in the 1958 release, Showdown at Boot Hill.
Bronson was well cast as a bounty hunter, but the film was strictly
run-of-the-mill. The actor had better luck two years later as one of the
title characters in director John Sturges' wonderful The Magnificent
Seven. As Bernardo O'Reilly, the gruff yet tender-hearted Mexican-Irish
gunman, Bronson turned in one of his best performances expertly mixing humor
with masculinity............................ |
