In 1941, just one year after moving to the United States from Russia, Yul Brynner made his Broadway debut in Shakespeare’s The Twelfth Night. This proved to be a successful Broadway opening and helped lead Brynner to future roles, despite newly learning English. However, the show closed at the start of WWII, which caused Brynner to need to find other jobs in the interim. One of these in-between jobs was this photoshoot with George Platt Lynes. Prior to moving to America, Brynner worked as a musician in Parisian nightclubs as well as having a brief career as a trapeze artist in France. After his time in The Twelfth Night, Brynner got the role of King Mongkut in The King and I. This proved to be one of his most famous and successful roles of his lifetime. 

Brynner was often viewed as a sexual icon throughout his career, as well as one of, if not the first, bald person that was viewed as a sexual icon. He was married four times between 1944 and his death in 1985. The longest time between the end of one marriage and the start of his next marriage was four years between his second and third wives. He also had many affairs with different women (and some people suspect he had affairs with men as well) throughout his career.

Biography.com Editors. "Yul Brynner Biography". A&E; Television Networks, 2 Dec. 2021, https://www.biography.com/actors/yul-brynner. Accessed 1 Apr 2024.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Yul Brynner". Encyclopedia Britannica, 19 Feb. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yul-Brynner. Accessed 18 March 2024.