Charles Bronson, one of the toughest guys in cinema, retired at the peak of his popularity to take care of Jill Ireland.
Charles Bronson was one of the "tough ones" of action cinema throughout his career. Considered one of the best paid in Hollywood more than for the quality of his films, for the number of titles he filmed, some of them in Almería: Villa Cabalga, Until his time came, The red sun... This happened at the end of the years 60.
They are still usually programmed on television along with many B series films and other TV movies, series in which he almost always starred in the roles of a gunman or defender of justice, embodying the "sheriff" of the place where the story took place. In 1984, at the height of his popularity, he decided to retire from it when doctors diagnosed his second wife, Jill Ireland, with breast cancer.
He remained attentive to her for six years, until he died in 1990. Charles Bronson would die in 2003, from "Alzheimer's disease", without remembering the great love of her life, without knowing that he had been a famous actor in everything. the world. He would have been one hundred years old now.
His name was Charles Dennis Buchinsky; of Lithuanian origin. A family of fifteen brothers established in the United States, in Pittsburg, where the men worked hard to get ahead. Charles worked in a mine; This led him to suffer from claustrophobia years later; There he strengthened his muscles. He wanted to progress and with what he earned he paid for his drama classes, until he was able to enroll in film.
From his first films we remember his silent role in the disturbing The Wax Museum Murders. He still appeared in the distributions with his real last name, which brought him certain problems in the mid-1950s, as he was accused of being a communist at that time known as "the witch hunt" undertaken by Senator McCarthy, whom the incident supported. FBI Director Hoover. And then Charles forcibly traded Buchinsky for Bronson. He took that artistic surname forced by circumstances, chosen at random when looking at the name of a street near the studio.
Charles was already married when what was told happened. He with the actress Harriet Tendler, who gave him two children. His marriage lasted from 1949 to 1967. He specialized in shooting Western films, with a physique that favored him for action films, sometimes acting as a vigilante and other times as a villain. The rudeness with which he acted was only in appearance because in real life his colleagues and friends considered him a kind guy.
I myself was able to notice it on a couple of occasions when I interviewed him. The longest conversation I had with him was one hour, in the Tabernas desert of Almeria, inside his caravan. Present was his beautiful wife, Jill Ireland. To separate himself from her as little as possible because of her profession, given that Jill was a notable actress, Charles agreed with her, when they married in 1968, that they would do everything possible to work together.
Jill Ireland was British. At the age of twelve she was a dancer at the Chiswick Empire Theater in London. She performed in a few London cabarets. Since she was very tall, she was aware that she could not be a relevant professional. Performing in Monte Carlo she dislocated her foot, "and that was where my dreams ended and I decided to be an actress." In the mid-1960s she settled in the United States where she appeared in popular television series, such as Mannix and Daniel Boone.
In 1962 she married the handsome blonde David McCallum, the "CIPOL agent." They had three offspring. They divorced in 1967. The following year is when Jill married Charles Bronson. She brought three children from her and he two from her previous marriage. Then they would have two more. So the Bronson family had seven children. Charles was a great father to them because he considered those from Ireland as his own.
Jill and Charles loved each other very much. Despite his rough appearance, he had acquired a special sensitivity that led him to cultivate painting and sculpture. Do you remember that in The Wax Museum Murders, in his early days in the cinema, he appeared as an assistant to the murderous sculptor? She, for her part, designed his dresses and also painted. They told me that they had opened an art gallery in Beverly Hills, the neighborhood of Los Angeles, in Hollywood, where they exhibited their work. Ireland added to me that she had written a play.
I thought they were a lovely couple. Nothing could foreshadow that the beautiful Jill was going to leave this world early. Charles turned down many contracts to be by her side, supporting her after her harsh treatment so she could beat cancer, undergoing a mastectomy, and terrible chemotherapy and radiotherapy sessions. It was six agonizing years for Charles Bronson waiting for a miracle that, fatally, did not occur.
