California

On August 30, 2003 we said goodbye to Charles Bronson. 🕯️ At 16 he went down into the coal mine. At 50 the world voted him the most popular film actor. 🤍 ⛏️ Charles Bronson was born on November 3, 1921 in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, the eleventh of 15 children of a coal miner. At 16 he went down himself. He was paid by the ton: 1 dollar a ton. 🥖 After the war he picked onions and worked nights in a bakery. He got his first film role in 1951 because he could burp on command. He kept his miners' union card even as a world star. 🎬 For 17 years Charles Bronson played the third or fourth lead. Once he got to stand in front: from 1958 to 1960 as photographer Mike Kovac in the ABC series Man with a Camera, 29 episodes. 🪨 About his face he said himself: „I guess I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited.“ Sergio Leone cast him as the man with the harmonica in Once Upon a Time in the West. His reason was the face: „a sort of granite block, impenetrable, but scarred by life“. 🌍 At 46 Charles Bronson left Hollywood and went to Europe. In France and Italy he got what America never gave him: the lead. What remains: • 95 films and 156 television appearances in a career of 55 years • Man with a Camera (ABC, 1958 to 1960): his only series in the lead • Adieu l'ami (1968): 2,639,713 admissions in France alone • Once Upon a Time in the West: the biggest film of the year 1969 in Germany, 13,018,414 admissions, half of them only between 1974 and 1976 • Hundreds of theatres in Europe brought back his old films and put his name above the title • A poll in 60 countries named him the most popular film actor in the world in 1971, Golden Globe 1972 together with Sean Connery The answer was the man from the coal mine. Thank you, Charles Bronson. Forever remembered. 🕯️ 📷 Footage: 4 episodes of the series Man with a Camera (ABC, 1958-1960), Public Domain Mark 1.0. 🎵 Music: Chopin, Marche funèbre op. 72 no. 2 - Aya Higuchi, public domain.