{"id":1184,"date":"2019-07-17T18:18:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T18:18:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wcsu.wpengine.com\/news-archives\/brynner\/"},"modified":"2019-07-17T18:18:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T18:18:02","slug":"brynner","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wcsu.edu\/news-archives\/brynner\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Rock Brynner to discuss family’s odyssey over four generations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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DANBURY, CONN. <\/strong>\u2014 Dr. Rock Brynner, a scholar in U.S. constitutional history and author whose wide-ranging professional experiences have spanned the gamut from restaurateur to road manager, will recount his family\u2019s roots in the Russian Far East and extraordinary odyssey over four generations in a lecture on Wednesday, March 28, at Western Connecticut State University.<\/p>\n

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Brynner will discuss his latest book \u201cEmpire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond\u201d in a talk at 6 p.m. on the first floor of Warner Hall on the university\u2019s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. His lecture, sponsored by the WCSU History Society, will be free and the public is invited.<\/p>\n

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The son of actors Yul Brynner and Virginia Gilmore, Rock Brynner\u2019s personal odyssey has taken him from a childhood in the United States and Switzerland to a multi-faceted career that has unfolded from Broadway to Vladivostok. He wrote and staged a one-man play based on the writings of his godfather, the French poet, playwright and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. <\/p>\n

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Brynner received a master\u2019s in philosophy at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, in the 1960s, and took up studies two decades later to earn a Ph.D. in American history at Columbia University in 1993. He has served since 2000 as a member of the history faculty at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and his specialization in U.S. constitutional history has made him a frequent guest lecturer at universities and other institutions in the United States, Russia, Europe and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

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Mirroring his eclectic professional career, Brynner has authored six books ranging from the novels \u201cThe Ballad of Habit and Accident\u201d and \u201cThe Doomsday Report\u201d to the biography of his father \u201cYul: The Man Who Would Be King.\u201d His previous nonfiction works include \u201cDark Remedy: The Impact of Thalidomide and Its Revival as a Modern Medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cEmpire and Odyssey,\u201d published by Steerforth Press in 2006, traces the personal journey of the Brynner family back to the life of the author\u2019s great-grandfather Jules, a Swiss \u00e9migr\u00e9 who launched a successful shipping agency in the Far East in the second half of the 19th century and eventually settled in the booming Russian Pacific port city of Vladivostok. The dawn of a new century brought diversification into mining and timber, but Jules\u2019 son and heir Boris struggled to defend the family\u2019s business interests before surrendering them to the state and emigrating to China and later France in the tumultuous aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Boris\u2019 son Yul embarked on a new path as a performing artist in Parisian nightclubs and theatre during the 1930s, preparing him for the launch of his celebrated acting career after the Brynner family\u2019s emigration to the United States.<\/p>\n

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As Yul gained international fame for his Broadway and Academy Award-winning film roles in \u201cThe King and I\u201d and subsequent Hollywood successes in movies including \u201cThe Ten Commandments\u201d and \u201cThe Magnificent Seven,\u201d his only son Yul Brynner, Jr. \u2014 nicknamed at age 6 as \u201cRock\u201d after boxing champion Rocky Graziano \u2014 set out to carve an independent career for himself. Aside from his adaptation of a Cocteau notebook for his one-man performance in 1970 on Broadway, Rock has eschewed acting for a diversity of life experiences. During the 1970s and 1980s, he became a manager for the original Hard Rock Cafes in London and New York, a bodyguard to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, a road manager for The Band and Bob Dylan, and pilot and owner of a charter air service based at Danbury Airport.<\/p>\n

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Brynner\u2019s return to academia and emergence as a leading constitutional scholar led him to visit universities across Russia in 2003 and again in 2006 on lecture tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department to promote wider understanding in that country of the origins and significance of the U.S. Constitution. These tours in turn brought Brynner back to his family\u2019s native city of Vladivostok, where he visited the birthplace of his father and grandfather and continued the exploration of his family\u2019s Russian experience retold in \u201cEmpire and Odyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201c\u2018Empire and Odyssey\u2019 is the \u2018Forsyte Saga\u2019 of the Russian diaspora, an absorbing story of an extraordinary family adapting to changing times,\u201d observed John Stephan, author of \u201cThe Russian Far East: A History.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWith this book, the historian, novelist and raconteur have come together,\u201d Brynner explained in a 2006 interview published in Library Journal. Looking back on his uncommonly varied life experiences, he told the interviewer that he has formed his worldview from the richness of these diverse perspectives.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMy restless curiosity has led me to become a writer, a musician, a computer programmer, a farmer, a pilot, a road manager, a bodyguard, and finally a professor of history,\u201d he said. \u201cI learned a while back, as we all do, that the rewards that matter can only come from within.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For more information, call the Office of University Relations at (203) 837-8486 or contact Dr. Brynner at (845) 855-3768 or rock@rockbrynner.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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