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Le Jazz Hot. The great-grandson of Anna's King of Siam, King Bhumibol is the world's first monarch to be born in the U.S.: in Cambridge, Mass., on Dec. 5, 1927, where his father, Prince Mahidol, was studying at Harvard. Mahidol died two years later, and Bhumibol, with his older brother Ananda and his sister, were taken back to Bangkok by his mother. After the 1932 coup, she moved them from the uncertainty of the capital to Switzerland, and there Bhumibol grew up in a modest villa in Lausanne, chauffeuring off each day to the Ecole Nouvelle de Chailly, where he learned English, French and German.
In 1945, Ananda, only 20, returned to Bangkok to be crowned King. His reign lasted just six months. Early one morning he was found dead with a bullet in his forehead. The gun was his own, but whether he or someone else pulled the trigger has never been known to the public. At the age of 18, Bhumibol, the most fun-loving of the royal family, suddenly found himself King of Thailand.
As a teen-ager in Europe, he had shown himself mostly interested in le jazz hot, Hitchcock thrillers and swift sports cars—one of which he smashed up on a Swiss road, very nearly losing an eye. To this day he seldom appears in public without tinted glasses. He had been studying science; when he assumed the throne in 1946, he went back to Switzerland to finish his studies and switched to law. He first saw his beautiful second cousin Sirikit when she was only 14, at a reception in Paris, where her father was the Thai ambassador. When he returned to Europe as King, he pursued her in earnest. The wedding took place in April 1950, one month be fore Bhumibol's formal coronation.
A Tune on Broadway. The early years of royal rule in Bangkok were quiet. Both the King and Queen learned to paint, and some of their canvases adorn the walls of Chitralada Palace. The King perfected his considerable skills as a saxophonist and composer; one of his tunes, Blue Night, made the Broad way scene in Mike Todd's 1950 production Peep Show. The royal couple had four children, three girls and a boy, Prince Vajiralongkorn, who is now studying in England, prepping for Rug by school and kingship as Rama X. And like his ancestors, Bhumibol in the tenth year of his reign shaved his head, retired briefly to a monastery, and went out at dawn's light to beg for his food.
Bhumibol's first big test came in 1957, when he tacitly supported Army Chief Sarit Thanarat's takeover as Premier. Partly in gratitude, partly to rally public support for his own rule, Sarit consciously set out to build up the image of the tall, spare King and his comely Queen. He soon found the maturing King to be far more than a complaisant figurehead. When the World Court awarded a frontier temple to Thailand's traditional enemy, Cambodia, Sarit was ready to refuse to hand it over. Bhumibol said the court's order would be obeyed, and it was.
Something of a Puritan. During Sarit's five years of rule, he and the King worked closely together to boost the Thai economy, set up development programs for the troubled northeast. It was an unlikely partnership. Sarit,