TEENAGE ADDICT GOES ON TO STARDOM

 

It was like a scene from The Exorcist. Vera rushed into the bedroom, drawn by the terrified and terrifying cries of her nephew. The boy was writhing in the bed, his own daughter, Irene, trying desperately to hold him down. His screams were mostly incoherent, making little sense even when one could understand them—something about somebody trying to kill him.

Meanwhile, the neighbors, frightened but curious, began gathering outside, sharing their bewilderment in urgent whispers. After a while, the ravings finally subsided. Vera emerged to try to calm her friends. Her nephew, barely 17, she explained, was suffering from an endocrine imbalance. He had only recently been discharged from the hospital where he had undergone radiation treatments. After a few days convalescing in her home, she assured them, the boy would be as good as new.

Her explanation seemed to satisfy the worried eavesdroppers, and they dispersed. But unfortunately, it was all a lie.

This is the rest of the story from the very beginning.

Vera’s nephew had been a problem child, impossible to control both at school and at home. By the age of 14, he was out on his own, playing guitar with Gypsy musicians in Parisian cabarets. He even joined a circus act for a while but quit after being injured in a trapeze accident.

It was then the boy’s real problems began. While recovering from his injuries, a doctor prescribed opium for the pain. And even after the broken bones had mended, he continued taking the opium. Soon, completely hooked, he would procure the drug from dealers on the docks, smoking as many as three dozen pipes a day.

After several months of such dissipation, the boy instinctively sought help. He went to see his Aunt Vera in Switzerland and collapsed in her home. The frantic woman rushed her nephew to a private sanitarium. In a few weeks, the worst of the withdrawal was over. Thereafter, he was to recuperate in the care of Vera and her daughter, Irina.

And yet, as you now know, the nightmare continued. The boy would not be on his own for an entire year.

When he did finally return to Paris, everything had changed. His old jobs had been taken by others, his contacts had dried up, and his friends had moved away. In fact, the only connections he retained got him the only work available: sweeping floors, sewing costumes, and building sets at a little theater.

For you see, the reckless youth who had barely survived his own excesses, the teenage addict who was straightened out by the loving care of a couple of women, never knew he was countering his destiny as a humble stagehand for a tiny repertory company. It was from there that he blossomed into one of the most distinctive figures in all of entertainment history.

This could have been any troubled teenager’s story of redemption. But now, I hope you’ll always remember this young man for having been pulled back from the edge of the abyss—Moses to Pharaoh’s son, the king in The King and I, Yul Brynner.

Now you know the rest of the story.