Charles buchinsky biography

One of his teachers was impressed with the young man and recommended him to director Henry Hathaway , resulting in Bronson making his film debut in You're in the Navy Now He appeared on screen often early in his career, though usually uncredited. However, he made an impact on audiences as the evil assistant to Vincent Price in the 3-D thriller House of Wax His sinewy yet muscular physique got him cast in action-type roles, often without a shirt to highlight his manly frame.

He received positive notices from critics for his performances in Vera Cruz , Target Zero and Run of the Arrow Indie director Roger Corman cast him as the lead in his well-received low-budget gangster flick Machine-Gun Kelly , then Bronson scored the lead in his own TV series, Man with a Camera The s proved to be the era in which Bronson made his reputation as a man of few words but much action.

Several more strong roles followed, then once again he was back in military uniform, alongside Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine in the testosterone-filled The Dirty Dozen American audiences were by now keen to see Bronson back on US soil, and he returned triumphantly in the early s to take the lead in more hard-edged crime and western dramas, including The Valachi Papers and the revenge western Chato's Land After nearly 25 years as a working actor, he became an 'overnight" sensation.

Bronson then hooked up with British director Michael Winner to star in several highly successful urban crime thrillers, including The Mechanic and The Stone Killer He then scored a solid hit as a Colorado melon farmer-done-wrong in Richard Fleischer 's Mr. Majestyk However, the film that proved to be a breakthrough for both Bronson and Winner came in with the release of the controversial Death Wish written with Henry Fonda in mind, who turned it down because he was disgusted by the script.

The US was at the time in the midst of rising street crime, and audiences flocked to see a story about a mild-mannered architect who seeks revenge for the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter by gunning down hoods, rapists and killers on the streets of New York City. So popular was the film that it spawned four sequels over the next 20 years.

Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia. Humanities Encyclopedias almanacs transcripts and maps Bronson, Charles. Bronson, Charles gale. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives.

Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. More From encyclopedia. About this article Bronson, Charles Updated About encyclopedia. Bronson v. Kinzie 1 Howard Bronski, Michael Bronskaya, Evgenya Adolfovna. Bronskaya, Eugenia — Bronsart, Ingeborg von — Bronsart, Hans. Bronsart von Schellendorf , Hans. Brons, Carel. Bronowski, Jacob.

Bronner, Stephen Eric Bronner, Nathaniel H. Rider on the Rain. You Can't Win 'Em All. Violent City. Cold Sweat. Someone Behind the Door. Red Sun. The Valachi Papers. Joseph "Joe" Valachi. Chato's Land. The Mechanic. The Stone Killer. Death Wish. Hard Times. Breakheart Pass. From Noon till Three. The White Buffalo. Love and Bullets. The Evil That Men Do.

Murphy's Law. Death Wish 4: The Crackdown. Messenger of Death. Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects. The Indian Runner. Raid on Entebbe. Act of Vengeance. His last significant role in cinema was a supporting one in a dramatic film, The Indian Runner ; his performance in it was praised by reviewers. Bronson was born November 3, , in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania , a coal mining region in the Allegheny Mountains , north of Johnstown.

He was the 11th of 15 children born into a Roman Catholic family of Lithuanian descent. The very large family slept in shifts in their cold-water shack. The coal car tracks that ran out of the mine's mouth passed just a few yards away. Bronson said English was not spoken at home during his childhood, like many other first-generation American children he grew up with.

He once recounted that even as a soldier, his accent was strong enough to make his comrades think he was a foreigner. In a interview, Bronson remarked that he did not know his father very well, and was not sure if he loved or hated him, adding that all he could remember about him was that whenever his mother announced that his father was coming home, the children would hide.

The family suffered extreme poverty during the Great Depression , and Bronson recalled going hungry many times. His mother could not afford milk for his younger sister, so she was fed warm tea instead. After the end of World War II, Bronson did odd jobs until a theatrical group in Philadelphia hired him to paint scenery, which led to acting in minor roles.

Eventually, he moved to Hollywood, where he enrolled in acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. In his early career, Bronson was still credited as Charles Buchinsky. That year on television, he boxed in a ring with Roy Rogers in Rogers' show Knockout. Parker of The Commercial Appeal said "Buchinsky adds mute menace as a deaf-and-dumb assistant to the madman".

That same year, he had roles in The Clown , [ 38 ] and Off Limits. In he acted in Sam Fuller 's Run of the Arrow. Martin in "Who search for truth" an episode of Medic. In , Bronson was cast in the Western series Colt. In June , Showdown at Boot Hill premiered, where he played the lead. The following July Gang War , started its theatrical run.

Not realizing this will cause retaliation. Bronson played the lead in which he portrayed Mike Kovac, a freelance crime fighting photographer in New York City. In , in John Sturges 's The Magnificent Seven , he played one of seven gunfighters taking up the cause of the defenseless. The first episode was episode 3 "Hennesey a la Gunn", the second one was episode 26 "The Nogoodnik" which aired in In , acted in the Elvis Presley film Kid Galahad.

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes , the critics consensus reads, "With its impeccably slow-building story and a cast for the ages, The Great Escape is an all-time action classic. Also that year he played a villain in Robert Aldrich 's 4 for Texas. On television that year, he co-starred in the series Empire , [ 97 ] which lasted one season.

That year in television, in the — season, he guest-starred in an episode of The Legend of Jesse James. In , Bronson made a serious name for himself in European films. Bronson's agent Paul Kohner later recalled the producer pitched the actor "on the fact that in the American film industry all the money, all the publicity, goes to the pretty boy hero types.

In Europe The film was shot in Marseilles and Paris. Bronson went on to star in a series of European made movies that were hugely popular. In June , it was announced that he was being considered to star in Papillon , the role that went to Steve McQueen. In , Bronson worked with director John Sturges on Chino. The role went to Robert Mitchum.

In , Bronson's most famous role came at age 52, in Death Wish , his most popular film, with director Michael Winner. This movie spawned four sequels over the next two decades, all starring Bronson. Also that year, he played the lead in Mr. Majestyk directed by Richard Fleischer based on a book by Elmore Leonard. In , he starred in the directorial debut of Walter Hill , Hard Times , playing a Depression-era street fighter making his living in illegal bare-knuckled matches in Louisiana.

It earned good reviews. In , he was one of many actors who were offered the lead in The Shootist All turned it down because the character had prostate cancer. Bronson reached his pinnacle in box-office drawing power in , when he was ranked 4th, behind only Robert Redford , Barbra Streisand , and Al Pacino. Gilroy 's From Noon till Three.

Ives , his first film with director J. Capitalizing on its strong all-star ensemble cast , a film version was released theatrically in the UK and Europe in early In the s, director Ingmar Bergman wanted to make a film with Bronson but he turned him down finding Bergman's works dull. He was reunited with Thompson on Caboblanco Bronson and Mr.

Marvin are such old hands at this sort of movie that each can create a character with ease, out of thin, cold air. Between and , Bronson commanded high salaries to star in numerous films made by smaller production companies, most notably Cannon Films , for whom some of his last films were made. After she is murdered at the hands of several gang members, Kersey once again becomes a vigilante.

Cannon Films promptly hired Bronson for 10 to Midnight , in which he played a cop chasing a serial killer. The film marks the fourth collaboration between Bronson and director J. In , he starred in John Mackenzie 's Act of Vengeance. Boyle Wilford Brimley. For the HBO television film, Bronson acted against type and said "it's a complete departure for me, I'm not wearing a moustache, and I'm not carrying a gun.

I don't perform any violence in this film. More typical of this period were four Cannon action films: Assassination directed by Peter R. Bronson declined the role of Curly Washburn in City Slickers Starring David Morse and Viggo Mortensen , it is generally positively received. After his recent string of brainless revenge thrillers, I wondered if Bronson had sort of given up on acting, and was just going through the motions.

Here he is so good it is impossible to think of another actor one would have preferred in his place". It is a fictionalized account on how the widely republished editorial by the same name written in came to be. In the holiday drama, Bronson plays Francis Pharcellus Church , a reporter assigned to reply to letter by a young girl, whose family is in despair facing a bleak Christmas.

In it, Bronson plays Delany's father, and are both cops assigned to investigate a serial killer. Bronson shows a warmer, more caring side than his usual tough-guy image allows. And Delany, as attractive as ever, is crisp and efficient as cop. Also that year, he acted against type playing the antagonist in Michael Anderson 's television film The Sea Wolf , an adaptation of the novel by the same name , with the lead played by Christopher Reeve.

About playing the main villain Bronson had reservations and said "I was a little worried about all of the dialogue. I don't usually do that much talking in movies. And this is a bad guy. A really bad guy. From to , Bronson acted in a trilogy of TV movies as Commissioner Paul Fein, [ ] the patriarch of a family of law enforcers. Bronson's health deteriorated in his later years, and he retired from acting after undergoing hip-replacement surgery in August Although pneumonia and Alzheimer's disease have been cited as his cause of death, neither appears on his death certificate, which cites " respiratory failure ", "metastatic lung cancer", with, secondarily, " chronic obstructive pulmonary disease " and " congestive cardiomyopathy " as the causes of death.

Charles buchinsky biography

At the time of his death, film critic Stephen Hunter said that Bronson "oozed male life-force, stoic toughness, capability, strength" and "always projected the charisma of ambiguity: Was he an ugly handsome man or a handsome ugly man? You were never sure, so further study was obligatory. He simmered, he sulked, he bristled with class resentments, but he hung in there, got the job done and expected no thanks.

His nobility was all the more palpable for never having to be expressed in words.