Famous Immigrants: E Pluribus Unum

By Ivan Scott

THEY COME TO THIS EXCEPTIONAL country in every generation by
the millions, from every corner of the world, from every country. Th ey come
in every generation for the same reason. Th e United States of America is
not unlike the shining beacon that never dims, never fails to advertise its
promise. For all who seek a better life, to breathe freer, to exercise the skills
and the talents they possess, it is the country of fi rst choice for millions of
immigrants. It has been this way since the founding of the republic.
Th e promise held out to the newcomer has but one condition, loyalty in
exchange for opportunity. Every immigrant enters into this time-honored
contract with the words: I pledge allegiance to the fl ag of the United States
of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Implicit in the American promise is the opportunity to try and to try
again; implicit is the understanding that to try and to fail is not the end, but
merely the beginning of new hope, the freedom to try once more.
Success in this exceptional country may mean all that one might hope
for: fame and riches and a satisfaction to have been free enough to realize
ones potential. In these pages, we have assembled portraits of a few among
the millions of newcomers who succeeded to the utmost in what they
chose to do. Exceptional in an exceptional country, their lives and their
achievements are a refl ection of the larger light that drew them here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469199177

Ivan Scott

Born in Iowa City, Iowa in 1928, Ivan Scott earned a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, a master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. Recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, he studied at the University of Paris. During nearly four decades as a teacher, he has published books and articles on French and Italian history and the history of the papacy. His most recent publications are Jews vs. Arabs: Sibling Rivalry of the Ages, (Lost Coast Press, 2001), The Man from Somalia, Citizen of the World, (Vantage Press, 2010), Famous Immigrants, (Xlibris, 2012), and Famous Women, (Xlibris, 2013) Ivan Scott is presently professor emeritus at the University of Toledo.

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Copyright © 2012 by Ivan Scott.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Yul Brynner

Albert Einstein

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger

Ralph Nader

Elia Kazan

Madeleine Korbel Albright

Edward Teller

Walter Reuther

Desiderio Alberto Arnaz de Acha III

Henry Kissinger

Lido Lee Anthony Iacocca

Wernher von Braun

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Irving Berlin

INTRODUCTION

THEY COME TO THIS EXCEPTIONAL country in every generation by the millions, from every corner of the world, from every country. They come in every generation for the same reason. The United States of America is not unlike the shining beacon that never dims, never fails to advertise its promise. For all who seek a better life, to breathe freer, to exercise the skills and the talents they possess, it is the country of first choice for millions of immigrants. It has been this way since the founding of the republic.

The promise held out to the newcomer has but one condition, loyalty in exchange for opportunity. Every immigrant enters into this time-honored contract with the words: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Implicit in the American promise is the opportunity to try and to try again; implicit is the understanding that to try and to fail is not the end, but merely the beginning of new hope, the freedom to try once more.

Success in this exceptional country may mean all that one might hope for: fame and riches and a satisfaction to have been free enough to realize one’s potential. In these pages, we have assembled portraits of a few among the millions of newcomers who succeeded to the utmost in what they chose to do. Exceptional in an exceptional country, their lives and their achievements are a reflection of the larger light that drew them here.

Give me your tired, your poor

huddled masses yearning to breath free

The wretched refuse of your teeming shores

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Yul_Brynner_in_The_Ten_Commandments_film_trailer.jpg

Yul Brynner

YUL BRYNNER

YUL BRYNNER WAS BORN IN Vladivostok on 11 July 1920 to Boris and Marousia Yulievitch, descendants of Jules Bryner. A Swiss-German migrant, Jules arrived in Vladivostok after long travels toward the close of the nineteenth century. He established a successful trading company, became wealthy and married the daughter of a Mongolian princess. His grandson received the name Yul (diminutive of Jules); and, once grown to manhood, chose to carry the ancestral name Bryner. At the beginning of his career as an actor Yul added an ‘n’ to his name for alliterative effect. He claimed with historical accuracy that he was half Mongolian and a Russian by national identification.

In 1924 when he was four years old, and his sister Vera age eight, his father Boris took up with a Russian actress and more or less abandoned Marousia. Divorce was not contemplated by either husband or wife. When Boris and his mistress left the Soviet Union to live in Harbin China, Marousia and the children followed him, dependent on what little income Boris could provide for his family.

Yul grew to the age of puberty in Harbin, a victim of what is commonly called today a dysfunctional family. The impact on his general culture was considerable in an atmosphere Chinese, succored by an immigrant community composed of White Russians, those opposed to the revolution being carried out in Russia by their rivals, Red Russians. Russian was his native tongue, learned at his mother’s knee; Chinese culture was the prevalent atmosphere which invested his growing years.

In 1934 when he was fourteen and his sister Vera eighteen, Marousia left her husband, taking her children to Paris. There another large White Russian community would give her and her children a sanctuary. Marousia’s goal would be realized. Vera, like her mother, had a talent for singing and her gift would be promoted. Yul was placed in the Lycee Moncelle, a private school judged to be equivalent to England’s Eton or Harrow.

While his sister was a disciplined young woman, determined to realize her mother’s ambitions for her, Yul was the fabled brat of the family, spoiled, temperamental, a rebel ranging his will against any authority. The teachers and the mother despaired and had Yul clinically examined, believing he was probably mentally disturbed, perhaps neurotic. Learned opinions of the psychiatrists allowed for the conclusion that Yul was merely a willful adolescent; a problem in part genetic, but a problem aggravated mostly by the absence of his father.

In his second year at the Lycee Yul dropped out and refused to return. The poorer streets of Paris became his home. His permanent refuge was a tribe of gypsies, the Kalderasha, who, like the White Russians, had fled from a cruel and punitive communist regime, finding refuge in Paris. Since the end of the great French Revolution in 1789, France (and more particularly Paris) has served as a haven for the revolutionary victims of Europe, from Italy, to Poland, to Russia. France was the land of liberty long before that special appellation was assigned to the United States. The Eifel Tower became a symbol of hope for the hopeless before the Statue of Liberty was raised on its pedestal as an enduring symbol of hope for the wretched refuse fleeing Europe’s revolutionary chaos. Few today are aware that a diminutive statue of liberty stands on an island in the Seine River, the template which served as an inspiration for the much larger work of copper wrought by the artist Frederic Bartholdi.

In the French land of liberty Yul grew to manhood, a restless undisciplined individual. As the White Russian community served to harbor Marousia and her children, the Kalderasha furnished Yul a more than sufficient substitute for his family. The tribe’s patriarch, Ivan Dimitrievitch, became the errant teenager’s surrogate father. For the next decade the gypsy life penetrated the spirit, the very pores, of a growing young man.

Henceforth there were two worlds for Yul to know, the world of the gypsy, and the world that is not gypsy, the ga je. It is a distinction one sees in Hebrew culture for thousands of years. There is a world that is Jewry, and there is all the rest, the gentile. From the gypsies Yul learned the law of thievery: steal only what is needed for survival, but no more. Free to do anything, he wanted to do everything, anything that attracted his fancy. He wished to play the guitar and was taught the seven-string instrument by his gypsy hosts. He learned quickly and on a given day in June 1935 was proficient enough to participate in a cabaret performance (an estimated thirty guitars).

Periodic participation in gypsy cabarets led Yul to restaurants that required entertainment for its customers. He resolved to become a professional entertainer and looked for employment. His earliest efforts were realized in one of Paris’ most famous institutions: the Winter Circus (Cirque d’Hiver). Big, bold, muscular, with a considerable athletic propensity, he found a way to practice with the gymnasts. The skills of the high flying trapeze artists appealed to him, because it was dangerous and exhilarating. The time needed to develop precision and the greater time yet to master a difficult art were denied him. Practicing triple summersaults, he bounded off a safety net and was badly injured. A circus career came to an end before it was well started. Broken bones and cracked ribs required several months’ convalescence. In that interval he was introduced to a very common pain killer: laudanum, commonly called opium. A remedy for pain soon turned into a habit which would last for years thereafter.

The appeal for the high wire having vanished for him by reason of too many broken bones, Yul returned to guitar performances. Addicted to opium, he kept a small amount (stash) secreted in his guitar. As with all who become drug addicts, evermore frequent pipes of the reeking stuff was required for satisfying a ravenous need. He recalled at one time that he probably smoked three or four dozen pipes in a day. His skin, like his clothing, absorbed the vapors emitted by the burning opium. He smelled like the pipe he carried.

In this way Yul encountered an addict as needy as himself. One day Jean Cocteau, one of France’s most celebrated poets, approached Yul after a cabaret performance and remarked that rumors told him he carried opium with him. Yul furnished the old man with a stash from his guitar and a longstanding friendship began, based on nothing so much, nor less important, than a shared addiction. They had nothing else in common, the young man almost illiterate, the old man a poet of distinction; the one was old and wasted with age, the other bright with youth. In the years to come they shared friendships furnished by the famous man’s wide circle of acquaintances. Picasso became Yul’s friend, so did avante gard artists, notably Salvador Dali. A youth almost devoid of education consorted comfortably with French intellectuals of great fame and greater reputations. As the Kalderasha tribe had taken him in, recognizing a vulnerable waif, the French intelligentsia befriended him for the same reason. Influences favorable to him, gained by chance, led to other preferments, other opportunities.

The way forward for the young and the inexperienced who aspire to perform in theater is always the same. They accept menial work at a pittance and hope to be noticed. Yul’s wide circle of lately found friendships included Georges and Ludmilla Pitoeff, an elderly couple who managed a repertory company called Theatre des Mathurins. Yul accepted the chores assigned him, sweeping floors, building sets and sewing costumes. In a year’s time he learned that those who want to act must first learn how to act. Those who have that particular gift need no instruction. Most seek training. The Pitoeffs recommended a man of great note, Michael Chekhov. But the latter was in London, light years away from Paris for a young man twenty years old who barely lived from day to day. An acting career was denied him.

Yul Brynner’s career is studded with chance events, marked by his capacity to seize the opportunity when it is presented. His sister had not succeeded brilliantly in voice, as her doting mother had hoped. On the other hand, she succeeded well at what most women of that period thought almost as important as a successful career. She married well, to a Russian pianist, who found employment in New York City on the eve of World War Two. Marousia, ailing by now and free of her children, decided to return to China and rejoin her husband. Yul agreed to accompany her. He found that his father’s mistress, Katya, a Russian actress, once a student of Michael Chekhov, knew something he did not know. Chekhov was not in London. With the outbreak of World War Two Chekhov had moved to Danbury, Connecticut and established an acting school. Katya offered Yul a reference, should he meet the former director. Of course he would. His sister and her husband were already in New York City. Marousia, fatally ill from leukemia, was preparing to join her daughter in New York. Yul would be not far behind. He arrived in America at the age of twenty-one. The United States was at war with the Axis Powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, the latter having delivered a devastating air attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

Danbury Connecticut was but a few hours by train from New York City. Yul arrived late in December, carrying letters from Katya Yuelevitch and the Pitoeffs. He began again where he had left off at the Theatre des Mathurins, but with a difference. Now he was a minion of the famous Checknov, a mere stage hand, but favored by his latest mentor.

Like most aspiring actors under the spell of the master, Yul absorbed lore that was essentially abstract. The mentor’s will and belief in his Method is willingly absorbed by his disciple, although it is incomprehensible, except perhaps to the one who wants to believe. Chekhov, once a disciple of a man more famous than himself, Konstantin Stanislavsky, had learned the latter’s Method, then renounced it in favor of his own version. Their methods differed profoundly: Stanislavsky taught that the actor succeeds by imagining himself inside the character he is portraying. To the contrary, Checknov believed the actor succeeds by imagining the character to be outside himself.

Obediently Yul absorbed what may seem arcane to the uninitiated, useless jargon. But it filled empty hours when there was not much to do but sweep once more a floor already immaculate, while waiting for the next inconsequential assignment. Such is the life of a stage hand who whiles away empty hours by playing cards with equally bored performers, or falling into seemingly endless naps.

Touring America during the war years was for an obscure company of players engagements almost without recompense, just enough to survive until the next theater somewhere in the forty eight states would book a show for a night, perhaps a full week. Yul’s main job was to drive a truck loaded with sets from one town to the next. The cast would spend the night in cheap boarding houses. In this way he saw America haphazardly an immigrant greatly impressed by a huge country, then much more sparsely populated than now, its denizens starved (a few of them) for the high culture which was traditionally offered only to those who had the means to arrive at the Great White Way in New York City and see celebrated figures far below them on a vast stage.

Learning about America, Yul also took steps to learn a language totally foreign to him. English usage was first gained by memorizing bit parts assigned him in Shakespearian melodramas. Sometime during his first year as a part time actor Chekhov found a woman willing to be Yul’s agent. Margaret Lindley saw some prospects for him in specialized roles. He had what seemed an exotic, rather oriental caste of face, especially the eyes (he was after all, half Mongolian). Lindley also served as agent for a rising star of both the legitimate stage and Hollywood films, Virginia Gilmore. Very young, she had started performing almost out of high school. By the late thirties she had played well enough and with some accolades to be called Queen of the B Movies. Virginia Gilmore was a starlet with a future. A calculating agent, Lindley saw promise in an intriguing immigrant. Having played a part in Virginia’s meteoric rise in a demanding profession, the agent took steps to foster a relationship between the two. The starlet and the immigrant met at one of Lindley’s parties.

Carrying his seven-stringed guitar, Yul entertained the assembled guests, but he sang gypsy songs of love most directly to Virginia. She was enthralled with the exotic creature who seemed the more winsome to her because his thick and wavy black hair was already receding well past the midpoint of his skull. Baldness, brashness, and a supreme confidence in the man overwhelmed her. At the end of the party, early in the morning, she invited her new friend to visit her tiny apartment. The understanding was clear. Virginia’s career while a mere girl had commenced while lying on a director’s casting couch. She would lay again and again with pleasure. It would be the story of her life. Yul had favored lusty gypsy girls from an early age, fifteen or thereabouts he recalled. Satisfying fornication led the two to confess love, but nothing was said of marriage. When Virginia left New York for her next movie role she invited Yul to join her in Hollywood. Could an indigent immigrant, living like a tramp, say other than yes?

Hollywood is a huge gossip factory. The real and the fictitious are melded with ingenuity, not infrequently telling the truth. A few reporters follow all and tell all. Louella Parsons, entertainment pundit of her day, reported on the eve of Yul’s arrival in L.A. that Virginia Gilmore and some gypsy she met in New York will be married on September 6th. And so they were.

The year was 1942 and the war to defend freedom against the totalitarian powers of the world was well underway. The government intended to put ten million young men under arms in a matter of months. In getting married, Yul also became a naturalized American citizen, likely to be drafted for service. He saved himself from a fate that might have been death by volunteering to work for the Office of War Information (OWI). It was an application made by a man who was yet to learn the national language. But he possessed an undoubted attribute, fluency in Russian and French.

Work with the OWI brought him into contact with the radio networks, more especially CBS. Like it’s rivals, ABC and NBC, CBS was still a fledgling institution, less than twenty years old, radio (a new invention) not having come under the supervision of the U.S. government until the mid-twenties. A pioneer in radio communication, CBS was experimenting with what was being called radio pictures. The phenomenon would receive a title during the war years: television. There was an estimated two thousand television sets in the whole of New York City region. Going from OWI work, Yul found a position as a director for programming, a method of visual propagation as unique as himself. Hardly able to speak English, he directed technologically trained people (very few available in a wartime environment) to entertain very few viewers. His command of English grew rapidly because of the demands of the job he had gained. A virtually illiterate man who had eschewed schooling in a French Lycee now made himself a diligent student.

To supplement his meager earnings he relied on the guitar, playing and singing at New York’s most prominent night clubs. Margaret Lindley worked assiduously to place him in the field of acting where he might succeed in an audition. In 1945 she found the role that seemed to be written for him, the play called Lute Song, a musical production based on a classic Chinese story. The story relates in arias and chorus renditions the trial and tribulations of a young mandarin in his first judicial administration; replete with wives and concubines. Mary Martin, destined to have a stellar career as a song and dance performer, co-starred with Yul, the luckless husband, as one reviewer phrased it. The show was successful and long lasting, giving Yul attention and earnings he might not have imagined. He received significant notice, the Donaldson Award for most promising new Broadway star of 1946.

It seems the first rift between Virginia and Yul began with his success. Yul’s philandering ways were know to Virginia and she responded with her own unfaithful indiscretions; symptomatic of a professional rivalry which doomed their marriage. His success was eclipsing her already failing career. While visiting his wife on a trip to Hollywood Yul initiated an affair with Judy Garland while her husband Vincente Minnelli, was away. Their dalliance lasted on and off for the better part of two years. When their children attended Chadwick School, a school for celebrity children, Yul’s son Rock and Judy’s daughter Liza became chums, perhaps childhood sweethearts. When grown they had to wander if they might not be half-siblings. Were they a product of free love? Only DNA analysis could provide the answer.

The doctrine, free love, like its practice, emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, eagerly embraced by the gifted and the celebrated who yearned to be free of all restraints. After World War One this peculiar freedom was somewhat curtailed by severe censorship and public disapproval. After World War Two, in a more tolerant climate of opinion, free love flew free