Charles Bronson

Tough guy Hollywood actor Charles Bronson—whose plaintive grave is set on the high ground of a small cemetery looking south to Mt. Ascutney in Vermont—never forgot his early years living in the hardscrabble coalfields of southwestern Pennsylvania. Described as a "man with a face like an eroded cliff," Bronson was a true American blue-collar loner. "I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited," he once admitted to a talent agent early in his career. Beginning during the 1970s, and until his death in 2003, Bronson was lucky to have escaped paparazzi flashbulbs and autograph seekers—all to lead a very private, quiet life on a magnificent 400-acre rural spread he and his wife dubbed Zuleika Farm, located off an unmarked dirt road in West Windsor, Vt. Apparently, the forested hills of West Windsor were evocative of the Allegheny Mountains of the late actor's boyhood; the green hills helped "center" Bronson by reminding him of his rugged Appalachian roots. Although the Bronson's also owned upscale homes in California and Colorado, Vermont was where they appeared to be the happiest; it was in the Green Mountain State where Charles and his second wife put down roots on an 18th-century farmstead filled with horses, dogs, garden flowers, and laughing kids. Built in 1791 by a country squire who was a Tory during the Revolution, the Bronson's farm was tucked behind a copse of beautiful white, paper birch trees. "No one sits at the head of our (round dinner) table," Bronson told American Home magazine writer Muriel Davidson in an April 1975 article about the Vermont estate. "Charlie and I enjoy being here alone," Bronson's wife told Davidson. "We rarely bring guests, just the children." The couple fell in love with their six-bedroom Vermont farmhouse at first sight; a friend and realtor—living in nearby Woodstock—took them on a Sunday drive to inspect the farmhouse before they bought it. For nearly 30 years following, Bronson and his beautiful wife, the late British actress Jill Ireland, raised their children in Vermont—all of the children were from the couple's previous marriages, save one girl, named Zuleika, the couple had together. It was in Vermont where the Bronson's let down their hair, so to speak, to enjoy running in the autumn leaves, horseback riding, skiing at Mt. Ascutney, hiking on the Long Trail, and collecting antiques at places such as Brookside Farms in Orwell. According to popular radio commentator Mark Steyn, a resident of New Hampshire, "Charles Bronson made a few good movies, a lot more lousy ones, and, either way, piled up enough dough to buy a horse farm in West Windsor, a little way's down the Connecticut River from me. I wish I could say I'd seen his great craggy face and weary eyes hunched over a steaming mug of coffee in the booth of the local diner. But, as far as I can tell from reported local sightings, he tended to favor the tonier joints, like the basement café at Rosey Jekes in Hanover, N.H., and the chi-chi boutiques of Woodstock, Vt. If these retail patterns are accurate, he would appear to have had the conventional tastes of the celebrity rich. Nonetheless, Bronson was a most unconventional celebrity. ..." "I don't have friends," Bronson once told a Hollywood reporter. "I have thousands of acquaintances. No friends. I figured I had a wife and children." Born Nov. 3, 1921 as Charles Buchinsky of Lithuanian immigrant parents, the future actor grew up in the Allegheny coalfields of Ehrenfeld, Pa. He was number 11 of 15 Buchinsky children. Life in Ehrenfeld had its challenges during the Depression years of the 1930s—physically, financially and psychologically. At an early age, Bronson displayed artistic talent as well as a dramatic flair. "When I was a kid," he told film critic Roger Ebert during a rare, unfiltered 1974 interview, "I was always drawing things. I'd get butcher paper or grocery bags and draw on them. And at school, I was the one who got to draw on the windows with soap—turkeys for Thanksgiving, that kind of thing. It seemed I just knew how to draw I could draw anything in one continuous line without lifting the crayon from the paper. I had a show of my stuff in Beverly Hills and it sold out in two weeks —and it wasn't because my name was Charles Bronson, because I signed them Buchinsky." When his father died suddenly in 1931, 10-year-old Bronson went to work in a coal mine owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Coal & Coke Co. (the company also owned the family's house). Down in the mine, the craggy-faced lad who spoke broken English, earned money for his mother and family. The child miner earned $1 for every ton of "black diamonds" hauled to the surface in horse-drawn ore carts. "Times were poor," Bronson told Ebert. "I wore hand-me-downs. And because the kids just older than me in the family were girls, sometimes I had to wear my sisters' hand-me-downs. I remember going to school in a dress. And my socks, when I got home sometimes I'd have to take them off and give them to my brother to wear into the mines." From the age of 10 until 20 Bronson, with fossil carbon staining every young wrinkle and scar on his face, literally inhaled and exhaled tons of coal dust just to earn his keep down in the mines. On his 20th birthday—and after dealing with bouts of claustrophobia exactly like his POW "Danny" character in the watershed, action-packed 1963 war movie "The Great Escape"—Bronson reckoned he was done with axe picking, timber shoring and mine-tunnel collapses for good. By the time of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the nation had been slowly emerging from the Great Depression. And until America joined the war effort, Bronson left the mines to work as a Pennsylvania postal carrier, a bread baker and an onion picker—ironically reflecting a future acting role in the 1974 movie "Mr. Majestyk." In 1943, Bronson was drafted in the U.S. Army Air Force. He served as a tail gunner aboard a B-29 bomber in the Pacific Theater of World War II. He rarely talked about his war experience in later years, but he sported a shoulder wound from attacking Japanese fighter planes. "Getting drafted was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me," he admitted to Ebert in 1974. "I was well fed, I was well dressed for the first time in my life, and I was able to improve my English." After the war, Bronson attended art school in Philadelphia on the G.I. Bill. He drifted from art to theater —as a scene painter, then as a budding actor—where he met his first actress wife, Harriet Tendler. The couple—who had two children together—moved to Los Angeles to break into the motion-picture business along with Philly pal Jack Klugman of TV's "Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.D." fame. Charles and Harriet later divorced over Jill Ireland. Tendler wrote in her 2010 autobiography, "Charlie and Me"— "I put my ambitions aside willingly. That's what women did in those days. I was in love… He once called me, 'Com'er' (he said)… Nobody ever talked to me that crudely." Always leaning to the right of Hollywood's liberal politics, the young actor changed his name to "Bronson" (supposedly taken from a gateway to the old Paramount Studios) during the Communist "Red Scare" days of the late 1940s and '50s. Newly christened Bronson, the young actor didn't want to taken as a Russian. Soon, credited motion picture and television appearances became a regular thing: "Red Skies of Montana", "House of Wax", "The Twilight Zone", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "X-15", even a starring role in the series, "Man with a Camera". But Bronson's big screen breakthrough came in 1960 in the Western classic, "The Magnificent Seven". He earned $50,000 for the role when all doors began to open. Two years later, Bronson's part in "The Great Escape" earned him kudos and the friendship of fellow star David McCallum (who starred in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "NCIS" on the small screen). It was during the filming of the true story of "The Great Escape" in Germany when Bronson first met McCallum's wife, Jill Ireland. Later, in 1968, after Jill divorced McCallum, the couple wed. Bigger and bigger box office hits, featuring Bronson, followed—"4 for Texas" with crooners Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, "The Dirty Dozen", "Chino", "Once Upon a Time in the West", "The Mechanic", "Chato's Land", "Mr. Majestyk, "Hard Times", "Death Wish" and many more. In Europe, Bronson assumed superstar status during the 1970s. At the height of his stardom, he signed multi-million dollar contracts and was increasingly cast in violent, action-oriented films. "...He's very bright, very perceptive about people," said co-star Jacqueline Bisset during a 1970s publicity interview. "He holds back a little and watches. People who watch tend to be interesting." "Bronson did all his own stunts, like dangling in an elevator shaft 12 stories up," according to the late English director J. Lee Thompson. "My stunt coordinator said to me, 'Ask him and he may do it.' And he did!" Bronson met physical challenges head-on as part of his craft. "As long as it isn't violent for violence sake, it's worth taking a few risks," he said while making Thompson's action-thriller "St. Ives" released in 1976. "Acting isn't just speaking. You can run, ride horses, swim—everything you can possibly do with that body. You entertain with it; you just don't use tongue." As a husband and wife team, Charles and Jill starred together in 14 movies, a feat which helped cement their happy marriage—even the children joined mom and dad on movie locations around the world. Two long-time Vermont residents have fond memories of a very different, down-to-earth Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland, when they were relaxed and off the set. Beebe Pond, Vt., resident Nick Zeoli—no stranger to meeting New England celebrities such as the late actor Paul Newman and radio bad-boy Don Imus—met Bronson during the late 1980s, while skiing on the slopes of Mt. Ascutney. "I was skiing at Ascutney, waiting in the lift line, when I jostled against a kid with long blond hair," Zeoli recalls. "I said, 'Sorry young lady.' Then I heard a guffaw from behind. I turned. It was Charles Bronson. Then Bronson said to the young man, who turned out to be his son, 'I told you look like a girl with that long hair!' There was a second when I thought Bronson might take offense. I even imagined getting into a fist fight with him. But Bronson and I were about the same age and we ended up spending the afternoon skiing together. Bronson invited me up to the farm, but I couldn't make it for some reason." Zeoli didn't admit to regrets passing on the actor's personal invitation to visit Zuleika Farm. Former Hollywood film and television graphic designer Sandy Korda, now a resident of Orwell, Vt., recounts his California and Vermont connections with Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland. "I first met Charles Bronson and Jill in '76 when he was filming 'The White Buffalo' at the caves in the Hollywood Hills. Ms. Ireland was visiting the set, and in conversations with her I learned about their home in Vermont, and how they escaped the Hollywood scene. Little did I know that, a few years later, my own parents would do the same. I followed them to Vermont in 1983, during the film industry strikes in L.A. "But that wasn't the last time I saw the Bronsons," Korda recalls. "My parents ran an antique shop on the grounds of their estate, Brookside Farms, in Orwell and—wouldn't you know it—the one day I was working in the shop, Charles and Jill walked in. Being serious antique collectors, they were enjoying a summer weekend outing. Jill was first to notice that I looked familiar; she recalled having seen me in the Hollywood Hills a few years before. Charles was blown away, too, to find me 3,000 miles away. This impromptu visit was wonderful, but all too short; they had other shops to see before day's end. Through my parents', and my own work, in the film industry I've had the pleasure of knowing many celebrities; the Bronson's were affectionate, gracious and genuine—not only to one another, but to those around them. Rare finds these days. Even more so, now that they're gone." Charles Bronson's and Jill Ireland's halcyon days together in Vermont came to a close in 1980. At age 54, Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer. She died while at the Bronson's home in Malibu, Calif., and was cremated. While there is no grave marking Jill Ireland's life, her cremains are likely buried alongside her husband in Vermont. The actress's ashes, or so the story goes, were given to Bronson. For the next 33 years, the actor kept his second wife's ashes safely sealed inside a custom-made, partially hollow walking cane; purportedly, he used the cane until his death in 2003. Charles lived alone until 1988 when he married his third wife, Kim Week, a New York publishing executive. Even while in declining health during the early 1990s, the actor had popular, starring roles in several films. The 1994 movie, "Death Wish 5: The Face of Death", was his last appearance on screen. During the final years of life, the actor suffered from the ravages of Alzheimer's disease. On Aug. 30, 2003, Bronson died, at age 81, while at his California home. His body was returned to Vermont where family members buried him—along with the walking cane bearing Jill Ireland's ashes—in Brownsville Cemetery in West Windsor. He is survived by four children, two stepsons, and two grandchildren. A few days after Christmas 2007, auctioneer William Smith closed the books on the Bronson estate forever. Advertised price for Zuleika Farm: $4,895,000. Included were a giant indoor arena, 22 horse stalls, tack rooms, office quarters, a large jumping arena, fenced paddocks, sheds, and miles of riding trails. Included in the final sell-off of the actor's possessions was a large collection of antiques, china, original paintings, sculptures, Bronson movie memorabilia, a circa-1823 English piano, and even a sleek Ford Thunderbird convertible automobile. So ended the material life of Charles Bronson.

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