WHEN ELIA BULAKH opened his eyes he saw dead bodies and dirt. He was one of eight White Russian soldiers in a 10-foot-deep pit that had been carved out of the frozen Siberian earth. He was the only one still alive. It was dusk, or dawn, depending on how long he had been unconscious. He could see an overcast sky straight up out of the vertical dirt walls that made up a 15-by-13-foot hole that served as his cell. A Communist soldier was looking down at him.

The man in the pit was my father. He was an eighteen-year-old Russian cossack serving in the Czar’s Army. After graduating from a prestigious military academy at the age of seventeen, he had been assigned to the Siberian border guards as a cavalry officer. It had taken more than a year for the Revolution to find its way into Siberia, but when it arrived the Communist troops had shown little mercy on the infamous cossacks who had been known to ride through villages with flashing sabers keeping law and order for the now overthrown Czar Nicholas II.

Elia had been making his escape toward China hoping to reach the White Russian settlement of Harbin when his horse was shot out from under him. Riding a white horse across a freshly plowed field was a mistake, but he had little time to select his escape route. The Bolsheviks had a cavalry officer on the run and their pursuit had been relentless.

His guess was that he was in for some interrogation about the numbers and whereabouts of his fellow border guards and then a quick death by firing squad. Elia had no intention of waiting around to be questioned. He looked closely at the dirt walls for a root which would enable him to climb out of the pit. Perhaps he could use his belt buckle to scratch out a foothold. He could not hear any talking coming from above and assumed that the guard was alone.

He had been sitting in the pit for an hour when a missile splashed into the mud beside him. It was a half-empty can of beef stew that the guard had tossed down as Elia’s last meal. A kind gesture that would cost the guard his life. The idea to cut the guard’s throat with the jagged edge of the half-open lid came when Elia cut his finger trying to scrape out the last of the stew

It was after midnight when he began piling up the dead bodies of his cellmates. There was no need to carve out footholds in the walls or try to hoist himself out by using roots. Elia made a stairway of fallen soldiers, walked up, slit the guard’s throat with the beef stew can, and hightailed it to China.

Using his plan, Elia escaped from Communist Russia into China and one year later he arrived in Glendale, California, as a Russian emigrant. He spoke very little English, but had one major skill. He could ride the hell out of a horse. From Glendale it was a short trip across town to Hollywood where they were making a film a day in the new bustling business of “moving pictures.” Elia was perfect for the part of a Western villain. He was tall, six-foot-one, and could ride well. He changed his name to Boris Bullock for his first big role as a villain in The Rawhide Terror. Soon after, the director called him in and said, “Boris, get a white hat and find a new white horse. We’re making you a star and your new name will be William Barrymore.”

Lionel, Ethel and John Barrymore were famous actors and Hollywood had no conscience when it came to stealing big names if it meant bigger box office receipts.

William Barrymore spent ten years starring in silent class B movies, but his acting career came to a sudden halt when moton pictures advanced to “sound on film.” With the arrival of the “talkies” there were few roles available for a Western star who spoke with a Russian accent.

In 1929, Blanche Winger was an attractive nineteen-year-old who caught Bill Barrymore’s eye when she was visiting relatives in Los Angeles. They were married in 1930 and my brother. Douglas, was born a year later at my mother’s home in Preston, Idaho.

Any written record of my family tree on my father’s side never existed outside Russia, but Mom’s family is carefully recorded in the Mormon genealogy books and dates back to the Dicksons in Mouswald, Scotland (1727). The families migrated by way of Cumberland, England; Ontario, Canada; Geneva, Illinois, and finally to the Western United States.

In 1835 my great-grandfather. Henry Dixon, was twelve years old when he crossed the Plains in a covered wagon and settled in Preston, Idaho.

By the time I was born, in 1933, my father had become a U.S. citizen and a deputy sheriff and was assigned to the Los Angeles County jail.

When the United States entered World War II dad enlisted in the navy. He never came back. After the war he divorced my mother, moved to West Covina, and returned to his job as a sheriff.

I saw very little of my father during my formative years. I did spend one night with him at work when I was seventeen for a school assignment and received an A on a civics paper titled, “A night in the County Jail.” One lasting impression was the way they served breakfast to the inmates. They pushed a cart down the aisle, stopped at each cell, and splashed sticky mush onto a metal tray with a chrome ladle. Clang, splat. Clang, splat.

It was the last time I ever saw the inside of a jail and I’ve never been able to eat oatmeal since.

William Barrymore died at the age of eighty. He was in perfect health except for his lungs, which gave out at sixty-five from forty years of heavy smoking.

My father was not instrumental in my in my upbringing. He never threw a ball with me and I can never remember him sitting me down to pass on any words of parental wisdom. He did leave me some good genes and a name, but I would have to go through life answering the question, “Any relation to the ‘famous’ Barrymores?”

To which I now reply: “I am the ‘famous’ Barrymore.”