Yul Brynner was a man of many lives—some real, some colorfully invented.
(It’s true that Brynner, who died in 1985, was a trapeze artist in his
youth; his multiple birth dates, however, are still a source of
controversy.) The Russian-born actor became Hollywood’s first
bald-headed idol after scoring an Oscar for his King of Siam in the 1956
film version of The King and I. But Brynner was too free a creative
spirit to be typecast, as a new four-volume set of books dedicated to
his life as a photographer proves. More than 8,000 of Brynner’s
self-portraits and portraits of famous Hollywood friends (Audrey
Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor) fill Yul Brynner: A Photographic Journey
(Edition 7L), which was authored by his daughter Victoria Brynner. To
celebrate, there will be a show of 70 photographs at New York’s Lehmann
Maupin Gallery (September 12 to 25).