Charles Bronson

Lore & Background

Bronson was born November 3, 1921, in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, a coal mining region in the Allegheny Mountains, north of Johnstown. He was the 11th of 15 children born into a 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. His father, Walter Buchinsky, was a Lipka Tatar from Druskininkai in southern Lithuania. Bronson's mother, Mary (née Valinsky), whose parents were from Lithuania, was born in Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, in the Anthracite Coal Region. Bronson said English was not spoken at home during his childhood. He could speak Lithuanian and Russian. In a 1973 interview, Bronson remarked that he did not know his father very well. In 1933, after his father died of cancer, Bronson went to work in the coal mines. He later said he earned one dollar for each ton of coal that he mined. The family suffered extreme poverty during the Great Depression. Bronson was the first member of his family to graduate from high school. Bronson worked in the mines until enlisting in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943 during World War II. He served in the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron, and in 1945 as a Boeing B-29 Superfortress aerial gunner with the Guam-based 61st Bombardment Squadron within the 39th Bombardment Group, which conducted combat missions against the Japanese home islands. He flew 25 missions and received a Purple Heart for wounds received in battle.

Reader's Guide

Bronson had sizeable co-starring roles in The Magnificent Seven (1960), The Great Escape (1963), This Property Is Condemned (1966), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Bronson also performed in many major television shows, and was nominated for an Emmy Award for his supporting role in an episode of General Electric Theater. Actor Alain Delon hired him to co-star with him in the French film Adieu l'ami (1968). That year, he also played one of the leads in the spaghetti Western, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Bronson continued playing leads in various action, Western, and war films made in Europe, including Rider on the Rain (1970), which won a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film. After this period, he returned to the United States to make more films, working with director Michael Winner. Their early collaborations included Chato's Land (1972), The Mechanic (1972) and The Stone Killer (1973). At this point, he became the world's top box-office star, commanding a salary of $1 million per film. In 1974, Bronson starred in the controversial film Death Wish (also directed by Winner), about an architect turned vigilante. Until his retirement in the late 1990s, Bronson almost exclusively played lead roles in action-oriented films, such as Mr. Majestyk (1974), Hard Times (1975), St. Ives (1976), The White Buffalo (1977), Telefon (1977), and Assassination (1987). During this time he often collaborated with director J. Lee Thompson. He also made a number of non-action television films. His last significant role in cinema was a supporting one in a dramatic film, The Indian Runner (1991); his performance in it was praised by reviewers.

Did You Know?

• Bronson was the 11th of 15 children.
• He changed his surname from Buchinsky to Bronson in 1954 at his agent's suggestion due to the Red Scare.
• He flew 25 combat missions as a B-29 aerial gunner in World War II.
• Bronson was the most popular American actor in Europe during the late 1960s and early 1970s.