Rock Brynner is dead: Yul Brynner’s son, writer, teacher, band roadie and Muhammad Ali’s bodyguard was 76

Rock Brynner, who escaped the shadow of his legendary actor father Yul Brynner to launch a diverse career, died on October 13 in Salisbury, Connecticut. According to family friend Maria Cuomo Cole, he was 76 years old and in hospice care, battling complications from multiple myeloma.

Like many children of big celebrities, Rock Brynner tried to forge his own path. This included time as a road manager for The Band, as a bodyguard for Muhammad Ali, as a farmer, pilot, street performer, novelist and professor of constitutional history at various universities.

Rock Brynner studied at Yale, Trinity College Dublin, and Columbia, where he received his doctorate in American history in 1993, before teaching at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY for over a decade.

His life was full of fascinating stations in various roles. He wrote a one-man play based on French playwright Jean Cocteau’s addiction memoir, “Opium,” which he performed briefly on Broadway in 1970. Cocteau was Brynner’s godfather.

From there he traveled Europe as a mime and developed drug and alcohol problems. During this time he wrote his first novel, The ballad of habit and accident (1981).

During his stay in Europe, he joined the entourage of Muhammad Ali, who was stripped of his championship at the time because of his anti-war stance. Ali called him his “bodyguard”, although the roles were unlikely.

Brynner served as Ali’s press contact, and Brynner’s connections in Dublin enabled Ali to secure a high-profile fight against Al “Blue” Lewis in that city in 1972.

After returning to the United States, Brynner befriended Robbie Robertson, the band’s guitarist and primary songwriter, and often rode on the band’s tour bus. Brynner is credited with introducing Robertson to a friend, director Martin Scorsese, which led to… The last waltza multi-award winning concert documentary.

A little further away, Brynner met Isaac Tigrett at a bar. Tigrett had an idea for a rock and roll restaurant and Brynner and his father became early investors in the Hard Rock Cafe, founded by Tigrett and Peter Morton .

Morton’s father owned the Morton’s steakhouse chain, and when Tigrett expanded to New York in 1984, he hired Brynner as manager. For a while, the restaurant was the place to see and be seen in Manhattan. It took a year.

Brynner returned to writing in the mid-1980s. He wrote a biography of his father, Yul: The man who would become king (1989) while earning his doctorate in American history from Columbia University, specializing in constitutional history.

After receiving his doctorate, Mr. Brynner taught at Marist and Western Connecticut State University. He also continued to write, adding another novel: The Doomsday Report (1998) and a study on the controversial drug thalidomide (Dark medium: The effects of Thalidomide and its resurgence as an essential medicine).

He also traced his family’s roots to Eastern Russia Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in the Far East, Russia and Beyond, and with Andrew Cuomo, the brother of Maria Cuomo Cole, then governor of New York, he explained the state’s water policy Natural Energy: The Origins of the New York Power Authority and the Path to Clean Energy

He is survived by his sisters Victoria, Mia and Melody Brynner, and Lark Bryner, who uses the original spelling of the family name.