America made Charles Bronson a star after his first youth

Charles Bronson

He became a star unexpectedly after his 50th birthday and is proof that the American public chooses its movie heroes for reasons other than their good looks. Short and muscular, with a threatening visage, Bronson captured the imagination of international movie audiences as a man who could not be pushed around. Charles Buchinski was the fifth child in a brood of 15. Three years after his debut in You’re in the Navy Now (1951), the actor changed his name to Bronson because his Eastern European name was a liability in the Red Scare years of the early fifties.

Bronson the villain

With his menacing look, Bronson was often cast as a villain, but like HUMPHREY BOGART, JAMES COBURN, and LEE MARVIN, actors who play bad guys occasionally make the leap to stardom.

Though he didn’t know it at the time, Bronson’s first big break came when he played a major supporting role in SAMUEL FULLER’s “B” MOVIE production of Run of the Arrow (1957). Fuller’s films were gaining in popularity in Europe, and the movie’s overseas success gave Bronson a modest cult following. European interest in Bronson grew the following year when another “B” movie, ROGER CORMAN’s Machine Gun Kelly (1958), played in overseas theaters with Bronson in the title role.

Supporting roles

In the late 1950s and throughout most of the 1960s, Bronson appeared regularly in “A” MOVIEs but in supporting roles. For instance, he was one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), tried to tunnel his way to freedom in The Great Escape (1963), and played a suitably dirty character in The Dirty Dozen (1967). Between his movie career and frequent guest shots on TV (he even had his own series in the late 1950s, A Man with a Camera), his face had become instantly recognizable, even if most people didn’t know his name.

Bronson might have achieved fame much sooner—and he might have aborted CLINT EASTWOOD’s career in the bargain— had he not turned down the lead in Sergio Leone’s international hit western, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). But stardom came to him through yet another Leone epic, Once upon a Time in the West (1969). Bronson played the role of “Harmonica,” a mysterious man intent upon revenge for a murder committed when he was a boy. The character was cooly dangerous, self-contained, yet thoroughly likable. Despite a cast that included HENRY FONDA, JASON ROBARDS JR., and Claudia Cardinale, Bronson held center stage. The film was a huge hit outside America. In fact, an international poll in 1972 showed that Bronson was the most popular actor in the world! Hollywood finally took notice, and starring roles came flooding in his direction.

Good films

The most memorable of his films immediately after his initial success were Red Sun (1971), Chato’s Land (1972), and The Valachi Papers (1972), but he also made a number of truly awful films that diminished his star value.

He needed another hit movie. His masterful performance in Death Wish (1974), one of the decade’s most controversial and successful films, restored his preeminence. The story of a man who takes the law into his own hands by killing New York City muggers, the film was an angry, frustrated audience’s dream come true.

Bronson appeared in only a few good movies after Death Wish. Hard Times (1975) and From Noon Til Three (1976) are certainly among his best. His career faltered somewhat despite the making of Death Wish II (1982), Death Wish III (1985), Death Wish IV (1987), and Death Wish V (1994). With the last film, the formula, which had earlier been exhausted, finally died. Another was born, this time for television, with Family of Cops (1995), in which Bronson played Inspector Paul Fein; he reprised his Inspector Fein role in Family of Cops 2: Breach of Faith (1997). Other television films were The Indian Runner (1991) and The Sea Wolf (1993), an adaptation of the Jack London novel, in which he played the lead, Captain Wolf Larsen. Bronson died of leukemia in 2003.

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