Tiburón Island
Tiburón Island is the largest island in the Gulf of California and the largest island in Mexico, with an area of 1,201 square kilometres. It was made a nature reserve in 1963 by President Adolfo López Mateos. Tiburón is Spanish for shark. Although the Seri name was first recorded by Alphonse Pinart in 1879, its etymology is unknown. Tiburón Island is part of the state of Sonora, as well as the municipality of Hermosillo, is located at the same latitude as the city of Hermosillo, it is located along the eastern shore of the Gulf of California, opposite Isla Ángel de la Guarda. It is part of the chain of islands known as the Midriff Islands or Islas Grandes. Tiburón Island is part of the traditional homeland of some bands of the Seri people for many centuries if not millennia. During the 1960s and early 1970s, a small hunting and fishing camp on the northern end of the island was operated by Jesus Olivas, a resident of Hermosillo, he constructed several buildings, a dock and an airstrip near the historic Seri encampment at Tecomate.
The camp was popular with American visitors to the area. The remains of the structures and airstrip are still in place. In 1975, the Mexican government, through a decree by President Echeverría, gave the Seri recognition and title of communal property with respect to Tiburón Island; the island is uninhabited and is administered as an ecological preserve by the Seri tribal government in conjunction with the federal government. Bighorn sheep were introduced to the island in the 1980s, it is home to a subspecies of Coyote, found nowhere but the island. The island can be reached from Punta Chueca, the nearest community inhabited by members of the Seri tribe, from Bahía de Kino, a non-Seri community 34 kilometres to the south; the distance from Punta Chueca to Punta Tormenta, the nearest point on the island, is 3 kilometres. The channel between the mainland and the island is called Canal del Infiernillo, because of the strong tidal currents and shoal water that occur there which can make navigation challenging.
The island has a prominent mountain system of volcanic origin. Two permits are required for day hiking and overnight stays on the island: one from the Seri Governor's office in Punta Chueca and another from the ISLAS office in Bahía de Kino. In 2012, a television episode of Survivorman Ten Days was filmed on Tiburón Island. "Mermaids of Tiburon"is a 1962 film about a diver looking for buried treasure who comes across mermaids.<ref>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Tiburón Island Tragedy Tiburón Island at gotosonora.com Map of Sonora at e-local.gob.mx
Bureau of American Ethnology
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research-intensive multi-year projects. It prepared exhibits for expositions and collected anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian United States National Museum. In addition, the BAE was the official repository of documents concerning American Indians collected by the various US geological surveys the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region and the Geological Survey of the Territories, it developed a manuscript repository and illustrations section that included photographic work and the collection of photographs. In 1897, the Bureau of Ethnology's name changed to the Bureau of American Ethnology to emphasize the geographic limit of its interests, although its staff conducted research in US possessions such as Hawaii and the Philippines.
In 1965, the BAE merged with the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology to form the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology within the United States National Museum. In 1968, the SOA archives became the National Anthropological Archives; the BAE's staff included some of America's earliest field anthropologists, including Frank Hamilton Cushing, James Owen Dorsey, Jesse Walter Fewkes, Alice Cunningham Fletcher, John N. B. Hewitt, Francis LaFlesche and Victor Mindeleff, James Mooney, William Henry Holmes, Edward Palmer, James Stevenson, Matilda Coxe Stevenson. In the 20th century, the BAE's staff included such anthropologists as Neil Judd, John Peabody Harrington, Matthew Stirling, William C. Sturtevant; the BAE supported the work of many non-Smithsonian researchers, most notably Franz Boas, Frances Densmore, Garrick Mallery, Washington Matthews, Paul Radin, Cyrus Thomas and T. T. Waterman; the BAE had three subunits: the Mounds Survey. At the time the BAE was founded, there was intense controversy over the identity of the Mound Builders, the term for the prehistoric people who had built complex, monumental earthwork mounds.
Archaeologists, both amateur and professional, were divided between believing the mounds were built by passing groups of people who settled in various places elsewhere, or believing they could have been built by Native Americans. Cyrus Thomas, the Bureau's appointed head of the Division of Mound Exploration published his conclusions on the origins of the mounds in the Bureau's Annual Report of 1894, it is considered to be the last word in the controversy over the Mound builders' identities. After Thomas' publication, scholars accepted that varying cultures of prehistoric indigenous peoples, Native Americans, were the Mound builders. History of indigenous peoples of North America Native American history Moon eyed people National Anthropological Archives Fagan, Brian M. Ancient North America. Thames & Hudson. New York, 2005 Hinsley, Curtis M. 1994. The Smithsonian and the American Indian: making a moral anthropology in Victorian America. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. Hodge, Frederick Webb, Corinne L. Gilb.
1956. Frederick Webb Hodge, ethnologist. Berkeley, Calif: University of California. Judd, Neil Merton; the Bureau of American Ethnology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967. Thomas, Cyrus. Report on the mound explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology. Pp. 3–730. Twelfth annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1890–91, by J. W. Powell, Director. XLVIII+742 pp. 42 pls. 344 figs. 1894. List of Publications of the Bureau of American Ethnology National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution A History of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, 1897–1997 Digitized copies of the BAE Annual Reports at Gallica Digitized copies of BAE Bulletins No. 1 – 24 Digitized copies of BAE Bulletins No. 25 – 200 Register to the Records of the Bureau of American Ethnology, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Gulf of California
The Gulf of California is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja California Peninsula from the Mexican mainland. It is bordered by the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur and Sinaloa with a coastline of 4,000 km. Rivers which flow into the Gulf of California include the Colorado, Mayo, Sinaloa and the Yaqui; the gulf's surface area is about 160,000 km2. Depths range from fording at the estuary near Yuma, Arizona, to in excess of 3,000 meters in the deepest parts; the Gulf is thought to be one of the most diverse seas on the planet, is home to more than 5,000 species of micro-invertebrates. Home to over a million people, Baja California is the second-longest peninsula in the world, after the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia. Parts of the Gulf of California are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. AreaThe International Hydrographic Organization defines the southern limit of the Gulf of California as: "A line joining Piastla Point in Mexico, the southern extreme of Lower California".
The Gulf of California is 1,126 km long and 48–241 km wide, with an area of 177,000 km2, a mean depth of 818.08 m, a volume of 145,000 km3. The Gulf of California includes three faunal regions: the Northern Gulf of California the Central Gulf of California the Southern Gulf of CaliforniaOne recognized transition zone is termed the Southwestern Baja California Peninsula. Transition zones exist between faunal regions, they vary for each individual species. Geology Geologic evidence is interpreted by geologists as indicating the Gulf of California came into being around 5.3 million years ago as tectonic forces rifted the Baja California Peninsula off the North American Plate. As part of this process, the East Pacific Rise propagated up the middle of the Gulf along the seabed; this extension of the East Pacific Rise is referred to as the Gulf of California Rift Zone. The Gulf would extend as far as Indio, except for the tremendous delta created by the Colorado River; this delta blocks the sea from flooding the Imperial Valleys.
Volcanism dominates the East Pacific Rise. The island of Isla Tortuga is one example of this ongoing volcanic activity. Furthermore, hydrothermal vents due to extension tectonic regime, related to the opening of the Gulf of California, are found in the Bahía de Concepción, Baja California Sur. Islands The Gulf of California contains 37 major islands – the two largest being Isla Ángel de la Guarda and Tiburón Island. Most of the islands are found on the peninsular side of the gulf. In fact, many of the islands of the Sea of Cortez are the result of volcanic explosions that occurred during the early history of Baja California; the islands of Islas Marías, Islas San Francisco, Isla Partida are thought to be the result of such explosions. The formations of the islands, are not dependent on each other, they were each formed as a result of an individual structural occurrence. Several islands, including Isla Coronados, are home to volcanoes; the gulf has islands which together total about 420 hectares.
All of them as a whole were enacted as "Area Reserve and Migratory Bird Refuge and Wildlife" on August 2, 1978. In June 2000, the islands were given a new category "Protection Area Wildlife". In addition to this effort by the Mexican government, for its importance and recognition worldwide, all islands in the Gulf of California are part of the international program "Man and Biosphere" and are part of the World Reserve Network UNESCO Biosphere as Special Biosphere Reserve. Due to the vast expanse covered by this federal protected area conservation and management is carried out through a system of four regional directorates by way of co-direction. There is a regional directorate in the states of Baja California, Baja California Sur and Sinaloa. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the work of direct and indirect conservation is done in the islands is governed by a single Management Program, published in 2000, complemented by local and specific management programs archipelagos; the Directorate of Protection Area Wildlife California Gulf Islands in Baja California is responsible for 56 islands located off the coast of the state.
These are grouped into four archipelagos: San Luis Gonzaga or Enchanted, Guardian Angel, Bahia de los Angeles and San Lorenzo. Shores and tidesThe three general types of shores found in the Gulf of California include rocky shore, sandy beach, tidal flat; some of the rich biodiversity and high endemism that characterize the Gulf of California and make it such a hotspot for fishing can be attributed to insignificant factors, such as the types of rocks that make up a shore. Beaches with softer, more porous rocks have a higher species richness than those with harder, smoother rocks. Porous rocks will have more cracks and crevices in them, making them ideal living spaces for many animals; the rocks themselves, however need to be stable on the shore for a habitat to be stable. Additionally, the color of the rocks can affect the organisms living on a shore. For example, darker rocks will be warmer than lighter ones, can deter animals that do not have a high tolerance for heat. The
Catlow
Catlow is a 1971 Western film, based on a 1963 novel of the same name by Louis L'Amour. It stars Yul Brynner as a renegade outlaw determined to pull off a Confederate gold heist, it co-stars Leonard Nimoy. Nimoy mentioned this film in both of his autobiographies because it gave him a chance to break away from his role as Spock on Star Trek, he mentioned that the time he made the film was one of the happiest of his life though his part was rather brief. The film contains a lot of tongue-in-cheek and sardonic humor between Brynner and Crenna's characters. Jed Catlow and Ben Cowan served together in the Civil War and became friends, but now Catlow is a thief and Cowan a marshal tracking him down. Catlow is accused of rustling cattle from the wealthy rancher Parkman. Parkman has hired Orville Miller, to kill Catlow. Offering to turn himself in, Catlow joins Cowan on a stagecoach to Fort Smith, but his men stage an ambush. Catlow heads for Hermosillo, where a woman named Rosita is in love with him and a $2 million shipment of gold is arriving soon by mule train.
The ranchers send Cowan after him along with Miller. After a confrontation, Catlow tosses the bound marshal across a horse with a badge pinned on his backside and turns him loose, he is bushwhacked by Miller and Cowan avoids a plunge to his death off a cliff. Allowed to recover at General Calderon's grand hacienda, Cowan becomes attracted to Christina, the general's daughter. Catlow gets the drop on Miller during a bath and hits him with a jug that shatters, cutting Miller's vocal cords. After stealing the army's gold, Catlow flees toward the scorching desert and into dangerous Apache territory, he rejects Rosita, who angrily recruits men to kill him. Cowan follows, but Miller shows up and shoots Cowan, wounding him. Catlow picks up shoots Miller. Christina will take care of Cowan. Meantime, a smiling Catlow puts on his friend's badge and gives an indication that he will turn to the right side of the law; the film was produced by Euan Lloyd, who had made a film of Shalako. In June 1968 he announced he had bought the screen rights to Catlow.
The script was written by Scott Finch. In June 1970, L'Amour said the film would be the first of five made from his novels starring Stephen Boyd, the others being Down the Long Hills, Fint and Hanging Woman Creek. Raising the finance for Shalako had been complicated but Lloyd managed to get the entire budget for Catlow from MGM; the film was to have been directed by Peter Hunt. However Sam Wanamaker ended up doing the job. In March 1971 Yul Brynner signed to star. Within the month Richard Crenna, Leonard Nimoy and David Ladd had been cast. Filming took place in Almeria, Spain in August 1971. "This picture has a sense of humour but that's not the same as being a comedy Western," said Wanamaker. Lloyd ended up producing The Man Called Noon based on a L'amour novel, he bought the rights to ten more for $1 million. However he produced no further L'Amour adaptations. List of American films of 1971 Catlow on IMDb Catlow at AllMovie Catlow at Rotten Tomatoes
Museo de Arte Popular
The Popular Art Museum is a museum in Mexico City, Mexico that promotes and preserves part of the Mexican handcrafts and folk art. Located in the historic center of Mexico City in an old fire house, the museum has a collection which includes textiles, glass, piñatas, alebrijes and much more. However, the museum is best known as the sponsor of the yearly, Noche de Alebrijes parade in which the fantastical creatures are constructed on a monumental scale and paraded from the main plaza or Zocalo to the Angel of Independence monument, competing for prizes; the Museo de Arte Popular opened in March 2006. Its purpose is to serve as a reference for Mexican crafts as well as promoting them through workshops, other events to both Mexico and foreign tourism, and dignify Mexican crafts though restoration of older works and the promotion of their creation both inside and outside the museum itself. The permanent collection contains both older and newer craft pieces from the various traditions that make up Mexican culture.
The collection was gathered through the generosity of individual donors. Some of the principal private donors include Alfonso Romo of Grupo Savia, who had promoted crafts for a number of years, he donated 1,400 pieces towards the opening of the museum. The second donor was Carlota Mapeli, who came to Mexico from Italy in the 1970s and dedicated herself to collecting embroidered garments and other textiles, she donated. The collection is organized into five permanent halls divided by theme, two dedicated to “grand masters” each of which contains various kinds of crafts; the five themed halls are called “Las raices del arte mexicano”, “Las raices del arte popular”, “Lo cotidiano”, “Lo religioso” and “Lo fantasmagico”. The collection fills three of the four levels of the building, for a total of 7,000 square meters. There is a temporary exhibit hall and an “interpretation” room which has pieces from all 32 federal entities of Mexico. Crafts displayed here are of many different types including pottery, wood carving, precious metal working, textiles, papier-mâché and others.
The museum has a research center with a library and a periodical archive. Every weekend the museum has workshops for children between six and twelve in various crafts with the aim of preserving these crafts. Workshops include those on paper cutting, amate paper and papier-mâché. For special occasions such as Dia de Muertos, workshops have included those on making Catrina figures, sugar skulls and traditional candies; the gift shop contains a wide variety of crafts for sale from the most traditional to the most recent reinterpretations of various crafts, containing items such as furniture and toys from all parts of the republic of Mexico. The museum’s store is non-profit, designed to help artisans get better prices for their products. Many of the products come from villages in Michoacán populated only by women and children as the men go to places like the United States to work. Sales of their products have been good enough to entice a number of men to return home and work at the crafts; the building is considered to be the second most important Art Deco building in Mexico City, with the first being the main offices of the Secretariat of Health in Chapultepec.
It was donated to the museum project by the government of Mexico City. The building was constructed in 1927 by architect Vicente Mendiola as part of the government’s efforts to modernize the city’s infrastructure at the time; the building has a central patio in which the fire trucks were parked, three floors for offices and quarters. In its exterior, it has tower on the corner facing the intersection with a light at the top to be used to signal an emergency. Another feature of the building is the relieves with pre-Hispanic motifs that decorate the facade in stone; the inner courtyard is covered by a modern glass cupola. By the 1980s the growth of the city had rendered the station inadequate and it was abandoned, it deteriorated afterwards because of the 1985 earthquake and the general deterioration of the historic center. In the 1990s, the city government decided to rescue the building and use it to collect and store a major collection of Mexican crafts; this project was given to Teodoro Gonzalez de Leon.
The museum is best known for its yearly parade of “monumental alebrijes” which began as a yearly event in 2007. An alebrije is a fantastical creature, which include various parts of real-life or fantastic creatures; these not only include creatures such as flies with dragon tails and multi-headed lions, the works carry fantastic names such as “La Mula de Seis”, “Alebrijos”, “AH1N1” and “La Gárgola de la Atlántida”. Normal alebrijes are small sculptures made of cardboard or wood, painted in bright colors and made in central Mexico and Oaxaca state. Monumental alebrejes are floats with the tallest one so far being four meters tall by three meters wide; the event is called La Noche de los Alebrijes and organized by the Museo de Arte Popular in collaboration with the Mexico City government with the support of CONACULTA and various private institutions and individuals. The purpose of the parade is to promote the work of artisans; the process of creating the alebrijes begins in June, with the parade taking place at the end of October.
Most of the monumental alebrijes are created with cardboard except for those fro
Spaniards
Spaniards, or the Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group that are indigenous to Spain. They share a common Spanish culture, history and language. Within Spain, there are a number of nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history and diverse culture. Although the official language of Spain is known as "Spanish", it is only one of the national languages of Spain, is less ambiguously known as Castilian, a standard language based on the medieval romance speech of the Kingdom of Castile in north and central Spain; the Spanish people's heritage includes the pre-Celts and Celts. There are several spoken regional languages, most notably Basque and Galician. There are many populations outside Spain with ancestors who emigrated from Spain and who share a Hispanic culture; the Roman Republic conquered Iberia during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. As a result of Roman colonization, the majority of local languages, with the exception of Basque, stem from the Vulgar Latin; the Germanic Vandals and Suebi, with part of the Iranian Alans under King Respendial conquered the peninsula in 409 AD.
In turn, the Visigoths established themselves in Spain. The Iberian Peninsula was conquered and brought under the rule of the Arab Umayyads in 711 and by the Berber North African dynasties the Almohads and the Almoravids in the 11th and 12th centuries. Following the eight century Christian Reconquista against the Moors, the modern Spanish state was formed with the union of the Kingdoms of Castille and Aragon, the conquest of the last Muslim Nasrid Kingdom of Granada and the Canary Islands in the late 15th century. In the early 16th century the Kingdom of Navarre was conquered; as Spain expanded its empire in the Americas, religious minorities in Spain such as Jews and Muslims were either converted or expelled and the Catholic church fiercely persecuted heresy during a period known as the Spanish Inquisition. A small number of Spaniards descend from converted Jewish and North Africans, as a result of the 800 years of Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula. In parallel, a wave of emigration to the Americas began, with over 1.86 million Spaniards emigrating to the Spanish Americas during the colonial period and the population of the Spanish Empire had risen to 16.8 million by the end of the 18th century In the post-colonial period, a further 3.5 million Spanish left for the Americas Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico and Cuba.
Spain is home to one of the largest communities of Romani people. The Government's statistical agency CIS estimated in 2007 that the number of Gitanos present in Spain is around one million; the Spanish Roma, which belong to the Iberian Kale subgroup, are a formerly-nomadic community, which spread across Western Asia, North Africa, Europe, first reaching Spain in the 15th century. The population of Spain is becoming diverse due to recent immigration. From 2000 to 2010, Spain had among the highest per capita immigration rates in the world and the second highest absolute net migration in the World and immigrants now make up about 10% of the population; the prolonged economic crisis between 2008 and 2015 reduced both immigration rates and the total number of foreigners in the country, Spain becoming once more a net emigrant country. The earliest modern humans inhabiting Spain are believed to have been Neolithic peoples who may have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula as early as 35,000–40,000 years ago.
In more recent times the Iberians are believed to have arrived or developed in the region between the 4th millennium BC and the 3rd millennium BC settling along the Mediterranean coast. Celts settled in Spain during the Iron Age; some of those tribes in North-central Spain, which had cultural contact with the Iberians, are called Celtiberians. In addition, a group known as the Tartessians and Turdetanians inhabited southwestern Spain and who are believed to have developed a separate civilization of Phoenician influence; the seafaring Phoenicians and Carthaginians successively founded trading colonies along the Mediterranean coast over a period of several centuries. The Second Punic War between the Carthaginians and Romans was fought in what is now Spain and Portugal; the Roman Republic conquered Iberia during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC transformed most of the region into a series of Latin-speaking provinces. As a result of Roman colonization, the majority of local languages, with the exception of Basque, stem from the Vulgar Latin, spoken in Hispania, which evolved into the modern languages of the Iberian Peninsula, including Castilian, which became the main lingua franca of Spain, is now known in most countries as Spanish.
Hispania emerged as an important part of the Roman Empire and produced notable historical figures such as Trajan, Hadrian and Quintilian. The Germanic Vandals and Suebi, with part of the Iranian Alans under King Respendial, arrived in the peninsula in 409 AD. Part of the Vandals with the remaining Alans, now under Geiseric in personal union removed themselves to North Africa after a few conflicts with another Germanic tribe, the Visigoths, who established in Toulouse supported Roman campaigns against the Vandals and Alans in 415–19 AD and became the dominant power in Iberia for three centuries; the Visigoths were romanized in the eastern Empire and Christians, so their integration withi
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner was a Russian-American film and stage actor. Brynner was best known for his portrayal of King Mongkut of Siam in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won two Tony Awards and an Academy Award for the film version, he played the role 4,625 times on stage. He starred as Ramesses II in the Cecil B. DeMille epic The Ten Commandments, played General Bounine in the film Anastasia, the gunman Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven and its first sequel Return of the Seven, the android "The Gunslinger" in Westworld and its sequel Futureworld. Brynner was known for his shaved head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it in 1951 for his role in The King and I. Earlier, he was a model and television director, a photographer and the author of two books. Yul Brynner was born Yuliy Borisovich Briner on July 11, 1920 in the city of Vladivostok in the Far Eastern Republic, a puppet state controlled by Soviet Russia before being merged into the wider USSR two years later.
He enjoyed telling tall tales and exaggerating his background and early life for the press, claiming that he was born "Taidje Khan" of a Mongol father and Roma mother, on the Russian island of Sakhalin. In reality of Swiss-German and partial Buryat ancestry, he was born at home in a four-story residence at 15 Aleutskaya Street, Vladivostok, he had Vera. He referred to himself as Julius Briner, Jules Bryner or Youl Bryner; the 1989 biography by his son, Rock Brynner, clarified some of these issues. His father, Boris Yuliyevich Briner, was a mining engineer and inventor, of Swiss-German and Russian descent; the actor's grandfather, Jules Briner, was a Swiss citizen who moved to Vladivostok in the 1870s and established a successful import/export company. Brynner's paternal grandmother, Natalya Yosifovna Kurkutova, was a native of Irkutsk and a Eurasian of part Buryat ancestry. Brynner's mother, Marousia Dimitrievna, hailed from the Russian intelligentsia and studied to be an actress and singer. Brynner felt a strong personal connection to the Romani people.
Boris Briner's work required extensive travel, in 1923, he fell in love with an actress, Katya Kornukova, at the Moscow Art Theatre, soon after abandoned his family. Yul's mother took his elder sister and him to Harbin, where they attended a school run by the YMCA. In 1932, fearing a war between China and Japan, she took them to Paris. Brynner played his guitar in Russian nightclubs in Paris, sometimes accompanying his sister, playing Russian and Roma songs, he trained as a trapeze acrobat and worked in a French circus troupe for five years, but after sustaining a back injury, he turned to acting. In 1938, his mother was diagnosed with leukemia, they moved back to Harbin. In 1940, speaking little English, he and his mother emigrated to the United States aboard the President Cleveland, arriving in New York City on October 25, 1940, where his sister lived. Vera, a singer, starred in The Consul on Broadway in 1950 and appeared on television in the title role of Carmen, she taught voice in New York.
During World War II, Brynner worked as a French-speaking radio announcer and commentator for the US Office of War Information, broadcasting to occupied France. At the same time, he studied acting in Connecticut with the Russian teacher Michael Chekhov. Brynner's first Broadway performance was a small part in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in December 1941. Brynner found little acting work during the next few years, but among other acting stints, he co-starred in a 1946 production of Lute Song with Mary Martin, he did some modelling work and was photographed nude by George Platt Lynes. Brynner's first marriage was to actress Virginia Gilmore in 1944, soon after he began working as a director at the new CBS television studios, directing Studio One, among other shows, he made his film debut in Port of New York released in November 1949. The next year, at the urging of Martin, he auditioned for Rodgers and Hammerstein's new musical in New York, he recalled that, as he was finding success as a director on television, he was reluctant to go back on the stage.
Once he read the script, however, he was fascinated by the character of the King and was eager to perform in the project. His role as King Mongkut in The King and I became his best known role, he appeared in the original 1951 production and touring productions, as well as a 1977 Broadway revival, a London production in 1979, another Broadway revival in 1985. He won Tony Awards for both the last of these Broadway productions, he reprised the role in the 1956 film version, for which he won an Academy Award as Best Actor and in Anna and the King, a short-lived TV version on CBS in 1972. Brynner is one of only ten people who have won both an Academy Award for the same role, his connection to the story and the role of King Mongkut is so deep that he was mentioned in the song "One Night in Bangkok", from the 1984 musical Chess, the second act of, set in Bangkok. In 1951, Brynner shaved his head for his role in The King and I. Following the huge success of the Broadway production and subsequent film, Brynner continued to shave his head for the rest of his life, though he wore a wig for certain roles.
Brynner's shaven head was unusual at the time, his striking appearance helped to give him an exotic appeal. Some fans shaved off their hair to imitate him, a shaven head was referred to as the "
Mexico
