Yes, really.) He didn't become a huge star in the U.S. (To boil it down: Charles Bronson is an existentialist Mob hitman.
His adoring Italian fans called him "Il Brutto," or "The Ugly One," while the French referred to Bronson as the "monstre sacre," or "holy monster." In addition to turning in one of his strongest performances in the Italian film Once Upon a Time in the West, he also starred in the French thriller Rider on the Rain, which tore up European box offices and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film.īronson was still making American movies in the interim, including 1972's The Mechanic, a film I highly recommend as possibly the most bizarre American action movie ever made. In Europe, though, Bronson was a gigantic star. While Bronson was in several beloved high-profile films during the 1960s, many of them (like The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, and The Magnificent Seven) employed ensemble casts featuring much bigger names, like Steve McQueen or Lee Marvin. He Conquered Europe FirstĪlthough Bronson's film career began in 1951, he wouldn't become a huge star in the U.S. (Instead, Lee Van Cleef unforgettably played the role.) Eventually, though, the two men worked together when Bronson turned in one of his best performances as a haunted harmonica-playing gunfighter in Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in the West. Leone allegedly offered Bronson the role of the sadistic mercenary Angel Eyes in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, but Bronson had to back out due to his commitment to The Dirty Dozen. Eventually, Leone offered the role to Clint Eastwood, a decision that worked out fairly well.īronson wasn't through turning Leone, down, though. Bronson thought the script was terrible and refused.
When Leone started production on A Fistful of Dollars, the first film in the "Dollars trilogy" and the first to feature the "Man with No Name" character, he tried to get Bronson to take the lead role. Legendary Italian director Sergio Leone was an early fan of Bronson's, and the director relentlessly tried to get the stoic tough guy to appear in his films. He Indirectly Helped Launch Clint Eastwood's Career However, when Senator Joe McCarthy cranked up the Communist witch hunt of the 1950s, Buchinsky thought he might be wise to settle on a name that sounded less Eastern European and thus less potentially Communist, so Charles Buchinsky became Charles Bronson. So why did Charles Buchinsky originally become Charles Bronson? He'd broken into the film world as Charles Buchinsky with roles in films like the Gary Cooper vehicle You're in the Navy Now and House of Wax, where he played Vincent Price's deaf-mute henchman Igor.
(The ensuing teasing would turn anyone into a world-class tough guy pretty quickly.) By age 16, Bronson was working in the mines himself. The family was so incredibly poor that when Bronson was six years old the only school outfit his mom could muster for him was one of his sister's old dresses. It would be a gross understatement to say he was from a large family Bronson was the 11th of 15 children born to a pair of Lithuanian immigrants. The man we all recognize as Charles Bronson was actually born Charles Buchinsky in the coal-mining town of Ehrnenfield, PA. He Changed His Name for Joe McCarthy (Well, Sort Of)
Since the forthcoming July/August issue of mental_floss contains a picture of Bronson, we thought he would make a good second installment for our new series "Five Things You Didn't Know About" Here's what you might not have known about one of film's most menacing presences: 1. A New York Times profile of Charles Bronson once noted that "Bronson looks like as if at any moment he's about to hit someone." It's tough to think of a better way to summarize Bronson's five-decade film career than that.