Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond [Hardcover]

Rock Brynner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 4, 2006

For millions of his fans, there is only one Yul Brynner, the most mysterious and exotic star in Hollywood history. But in fact four men were given that same name in successive generations, beginning with Yul’s Swiss-born grandfather, Jules, and ending with his son born in New York, Yul Jr., better known as author and historian Rock Brynner. Their lives compose a global odyssey that has come full circle in present-day Vladivostok in Far East Russia, the city built by Jules in the 1880s, where Yul and his father, Boris Julievitch, were born, and which Rock first visited on a lecture tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

This is a vast family epic, teeming with exotic adventures, that begins aboard a pirate ship bound for Shanghai; like the fiction of Michener or Clavell, this true story is closely interwoven with history. Within twenty years of his arrival, Jules was the leading industrialist in the Far East, and the empire he created involved tiger hunters, Asian emperors, and most significantly, Tsar Nicholas II; it is revealed here exactly how their business association – and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok – triggered the Russo—Japanese War that ended three centuries of Romanov autocracy. Under Lenin’s government, Boris was the only mine owner to regain control of his vast operation; but his personal dramas in China, Manchuria, and North Korea rivaled the ordeals of Dr. Zhivago. With the Russian diaspora, Yul’s childhood took him from Vladivostok to China and then to France, where, as a teenager, he performed in nightclubs with Russian Gypsies while becoming a trapeze acrobat in the circus. He moved to America before he spoke English and within five years was starring on Broadway; ten years later he received the Academy Award for The King and I. Yul’s only son, Rock, has been a European street clown and a Broadway star, road manager for The Band and bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, as well as a novelist and historian. His numerous visits to Vladivostok, along with his research, have earned him an enduring place in its social history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A four-generation family saga—featuring one of the world's sexiest movie stars—would usually signal a fluffy beach read, but the story of the Brynner patriarchs is too historically complex and fascinating to fall into that genre. Great-grandson Rock Brynner opens by introducing Swiss-born Jules, who started in the import-export business out of Shanghai and then Yokohama, before establishing himself in Vladivostok in the 1870s. Jules took advantage of the city's Wild West character and the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad to expand from shipping into mining and forestry, and created an extraordinary commercial empire. It was Jules's son Boris who had to negotiate the socialization of the family businesses in the newly created Soviet Union. Boris's émigré son Yul learned show business in France before turning his much-touted Genghis Khan genes—and his Russian method acting—into American box office gold. Yul's American son Rock concludes the volume with his own adventures in the counterculture before becoming an academic. The odyssey comes full circle in 2003 when the city of Vladivostok invites Rock to come and celebrate as a native son. An enthralling family chronicle, the Brynner perspective on Far East Russian history should be important for Pacific Rim historians as well. Photos. (Apr.)Look for PW's upcoming q&a with Rock Brynner.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Most of us know the name Yul Brynner, the Russian-born movie star who won an Academy Award for his performance in The King and I, and who was one of the most enigmatic and exotic actors of his time. Less well known are the other members of his illustrious family: Jules, the actor's Swiss-born grandfather, who built the Russian port city of Vladivostok; Boris, Yul's father, an industrialist who negotiated with Stalin to keep the family's mines operating after the Russian Revolution; and Rock, Yul's son, an accomplished writer who can boast, among many other unusual accomplishments, that Marlene Deitrich babysat him. Rock's engrossing book is a sprawling, epic-size chronicle of the lives of these four men, a globetrotting family saga that captures our imagination and paints a vivid picture of life in Russia before, during, and after the Revolution. A fascinating mix of personal and cultural history. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Steerforth; 1ST edition (April 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586421026
• ISBN-13: 978-1586421021
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,086,377 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 150 Years of Solitude... from Russia, April 26, 2006

By 

D. Price (Airmont, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond (Hardcover)

Empire and Odyssey, by Rock Brynner, is a most delightful read of non-fiction. To tell the most extraordinary story of his family, starting with his great-grandfather, Jules, Mr. Brynner has masterfully woven in the last 150 years of Russian history. His eye-opening observations are clearly the product of a facile and scholarly mind, but the reader is unaware of this richness thanks to the author's obvious talent for storytelling. The book hits the ground running with Jules sailing aboard a pirate vessel to find his way to Shanghai, where he lays the foundation for a trading company. By way of Japan, he is one of the founders of the city of Vladivostok, and there he deals with Tsar Nicholas II, who determines to build a railroad from St Petersburg, to this Wild East seaport town. The author uncovers the reasons for the resulting war with Japan, that ultimately precipitated the Bolshevik Revolution. His grandfather Boris struggles to outwit the Soviet beauracracy, for the Brynner Empire, and for his family's survival.
The Brynner patriarchs' remarkable love lives counterpoint the politics and industry, as they surround themselves with beautiful, strong, intelligent women, who fight for what they want, alongside their husbands, or without them.
By the time the story focuses on Mr. Brynner's famous father, Yul (after Jules), the reader is treated to anecdotes of Mikhail Chekhov, Jean Cocteau, Cecil B. DeMille, Rogers and Hammerstein, Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, and other titans of 20th century show business, providing unique and candid insight into the nature of celebrity.
The author finally turns the lens on himself, and the weight his family's legacy has had on his own life, which is no less remarkable. Bartending for the Rat Pack, chauffeuring Sam Giancana, bodyguarding Mahummed Ali, road managing The Band, and poignantly returning, on invitation as the Brynner scion, to Vladivostok, wearing his father's cowboy boots from The Magnificent Seven.
Empire and Odyssey proves that fact is more fantastic than fiction. Fast paced and entertaining, I recommend it to anyone. It left me wanting more. I hope Mr. Brynner will return to extract additional exquisite ore from this mother lode.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True History that is more amazing the best fiction !!, July 4, 2006

By 

John Barbey (San Francisco, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond (Hardcover)

Rock Brynner's biographical history of his amazing family has to be one of the most exciting non-fiction books this year. This is not a tale that could have been told in a magazine article (unless it had filled the entire magazine) ! Yet this reads as swiftly as a really compelling article in Vanity Fair magazine. It is like Dr. Zhivago, Around The World In Eighty Days, and Horatio Alger all rolled into one, starring Yul Brynner no less, with equally superb supporting roles played by his own father, grandfather, and heroic scapegrace son. Heroic in the last case, because the latest Brynner is a first-rate historian who gives the reader a beautiful historical sketch of the fascinating but little-known part of the world that has been called 'Russia's Wild East.'

The actual story of all the members of this family is as, or more astounding than anything Yul Brynner performed on the screen, which is saying quite a lot. When the story moves to Yul and Rock it is peppered with new cameos of many of the most intriguing people of our times. As for Yul himself, his Superstar status is not in the least bit diminished by all this elaborate detail - it only becomes more awesome. Hollywood usually glamorizes it's subjects but Yul was that amazing exception, the real thing ! One also discovers that it was not such a stretch for him to play an unusually admirable King, or Pharoah since he had a good assist from his own life and from his own DNA. His immediate forebears also all looked as if they had stepped off movie screens, were natural leaders, and lived very thrilling, demanding lives. It is a something of a miracle that they all survived the swirl of major historic events that they did live through.

The biographical and historic material by Rock is beautifully researched, well balanced, and described with bright wit and economy of phrase. Yul and the ancestors would be truly proud !

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Family Saga, October 11, 2006

By 

Loves the View "Louise" (Hawaii) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond (Hardcover)

Rock Brynner proves himself to be a very capable historian and writer. To put this together was an amazing labor of love. Not only is the text riveting, the photographs are wonderful, and there are a lot of them.

The book's title clearly fits. The Bryners build an empire and travel widely. The book describes both across 4 generations.

This family was certainly where the action was over these generations: shipping, mining, and entertainment. (Now, Rock appears to be a free lance academic, similarly, a reflection of our times.) A fascinating timber deal may have been the precipitating element in a Russo-Japanese War, a war which sewed further disconent with the Tzar and spurred his downfall.

In this book we get glimpse of the founding of a Russian city, how a clever hardworking immigrant could make a fortune and how tenuous that fortune could be. We see how events in Moscow and St. Petersburg affected people across many time zones and countries.

The mobility of the early generations is interesting. They easily move from Hong Kong to Japan, to Russia, to China and back again. These foreigners found not only businesses, but cities in these places. The paperwork seems to be mininal to nonexistent. After the revolution, leaving was problematic (but solved). Later generations circumnavigate the globe, but citizenship is a mobility issue.

Due to her own personal heartache, Yul's mother moves and these moves keep Yul one step ahead of political upheaval. Living with his mother, he was exposed arts at home and in Paris. His uncle provided a stable father figure. Had the divorce not occurred, would his father's influence have prevailed and would he have been a businessman or have been purged along the way? Were it not for his eventual fame, this particular book, this amazing story, would never have been told.

Rock points out how art immitates life (or is it the other way?) through the irony of his sister singing Madame Butterfly which is a parallel story to her grandfather's. He shows the themes of "leaving behind" (otrecheniye) and returning to place through the generations. I love how he refers to Yul's status as a faux monarch, and how the real ones relate to him.

This is a wonderful book. In reading it you see the impact of history on people's lives. You learn more about Yul Brynner (didn't know he did so much directing, spoke so many languages, knew mobsters) and the interesting life of Rock.