Charles Bronson (1921-2003)

Charles Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky in the notorious Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania coal-mining neighborhood of Scooptown in the Pittsburgh Tri-State area. He was one of 15 children born to a Lithuanian immigrant father of Lipka Tatar ancestry and a Lithuanian-American mother.

Bronson's father died when he was only 10 and he went down to the coal mines like his older brothers until he was drafted. He earned $1 per ton of coal mined. His family was so poor that, at one time, he had reportedly been forced to wear his sister's dress to school because he had no other clothes. In 1943, Bronson joined the United States Army Air Forces and served in the Pacific theater as a B-29 Superfortress tail-gunner. After the war he decided to pursue acting, not from any love of the subject, but rather because he was impressed with the amount of money that he could potentially make in the business. His first screen appearance, which was uncredited, was as a sailor in "You're In The Navy Now" in 1951. During the McCarthy hearings he changed his surname to 'Bronson' as Slavic-sounding names were suspect. He took his inspiration from the Bronson Gate at Paramount Studios, situated on the corner of Melrose Ave. and Bronson St. One of his earliest screen appearances was as Vincent Price's henchman in the 1953 horror classic "House Of Wax". Although he began his career in the United States, Bronson first made a serious name for himself acting in European films. He became quite famous on that continent, and was known by two nicknames: The Italians called him 'Il Brutto' and to the French he was known as 'Le Sacré Monstre'. Even though he was not yet a headliner in America, this overseas fame earned him a 1971 Golden Globe as the 'Most Popular Actor In The World'. That same year, he wondered if he was 'too masculine' to ever become a star in the United States.

Bronson's most famous films include "The Great Escape" (1963), in which he played Danny Velinski, a Polish prisoner of war nicknamed 'The Tunnel King', and "The Dirty Dozen" (1967), in which he played an Army death row convict conscripted into a World War II suicide mission. In the westerns "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and the Sergio Leone epic "Once Upon A Time In The West" (1968), he played heroic gunfighters, taking up the cause of the defenseless. Sergio Leone once called him 'the greatest actor I ever worked with'. Leone had wanted Bronson for all three of what became known as the "Man With No Name" trilogy, but Bronson turned him down each time. In "Hard Times" (1975), he played a street fighter making his living in illegal boxing matches in Louisiana. During the 1980s, he made numerous films with smaller production companies, most notably Cannon Films. Ultra-violent films such as "The Evil That Men Do" and "Ten To Midnight" were blasted by critics but provided him with good-paying work throughout the 80s. Bronson's last starring role in a theatrically released film was 1994's "Death Wish V: The Face Of Death".

On August 30, 2003 Charles Bronson died of pneumonia while also suffering from Alzheimer's disease at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, aged 81. He had been in poor health since undergoing hip replacement surgery in 1998. He is buried in Brownsville, Vermont, near his home of thirty years in West Windsor. At the time of his death, he was survived by his wife Kim, three children, two stepchildren and two grandchildren.