Charles Bronson (November 3, 1921 – August 30, 2003)
On August 30, 2003, the actor Charles Bronson, best known
for his tough-guy roles in such films as The Dirty Dozen and
the Death Wish franchise, died at the age of 81 in Cedar-
Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Pneumonia and Alzheimer’s disease have been cited as his
cause of death.
Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky on November 3, 1921,
in Ehrenfeld, Pennsylvania, to Lithuanian immigrants. The
11th of 15 children, he worked in the Pennsylvania coal mines
as a teenager and later served in the U.S. Army Air Forces
during World War II.
After the war, he worked a series of odd jobs and took acting
lessons. He had an uncredited part in the 1951 film You’re in
Navy Now, starring Gary Cooper, and a small part (credited
as Charles Buchinsky) in 1952’s Pat and Mike, with Spencer
Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
In the mid-1950s, he changed his name to Bronson because
he believed it wasn’t smart for an actor to have a Russian-
sounding last name at a time when there was a strong anti-
Communist sentiment in America.
1974
