Who actually sang the song that became the hallmark of the movie "Amphibian Man", and why the audience did not see the singer

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The film "Amphibian Man", which was released in 1961, was the leader of the film distribution, gathering more than 65 million viewers, and has long become a classic of Soviet cinema. And absolutely everyone knew the song “Hey, sailor!”, Which was the hallmark of the film. But few knew about who actually performed this composition, because the singer herself was not shown in the film. Why the name of Nonna Sukhanova was forgotten, and why the director of the film was accused of vulgarity, worship of the West and bad taste because of this song - further in the review.

Little information has been preserved about Nonna Sukhanova. It is known that she was born in Leningrad in 1934, graduated from the music school. In 1950 In the 1960s she was a soloist of the orchestra-septet of the veteran of Soviet jazz Orest Kandat.

Nonna Sukhanova became the first Soviet jazz singer who, a year after Stalin's death, began to sing songs in English, for which she more than once heard criticism in her address. The singer said: "".

In the late 1950s. this jazz singer was called the Leningrad Ella Fitzgerald. Composer Alexander Kolker said that Nonna Sukhanova's performances were in many ways revolutionary at that time - she sang jazz compositions, sang English songs (with good pronunciation, staged at the philology department), and on stage "" that the Soviet country gave her an education, taught her languages, and now the singer is simply obliged to justify the money spent on her - in this way they tried to justify the performance of songs in English.

When it was required to record songs for the film "Amphibian Man", composer Andrey Petrov had no doubts about who should sing the composition "Hey, sailor!" Nonna Sukhanova told: "". In fact, the reasons were quite understandable - in the frame, the actress, in the process of performing the song, discarded one of the details of the costume, and her appearance seemed too frank to the censors, so they cut out a whole verse.

The song was recorded in record time - in just 20 minutes! At the same time, Nonna Sukhanova had to perform it 9 times before the composer liked the result. From the tension, her voice began to sound hoarse, and it was this ninth version of the song that entered the film. But no one saw the singer herself on the screens - the cabaret artist was played by Nina Bolshakova. She was not even an actress - she worked as a model at the Leningrad Fashion House, but she got to the shooting by chance, thanks to her spectacular appearance and the fact that she lived next to Lenfilm. In 1997, she played a cameo role in another film, and this was the end of her film career.

At the same time, Nonna Sukhanova herself looked like a fashion model, and would have completely coped with this role in the film, but she remained behind the scenes - for a jazz singer it could not be otherwise! But even though Sukhanova did not appear on the screens, difficulties arose with the song - it was necessary to defend both the manner of performance and the text itself. The censors were worried about the words "… we would all be on the bottom." Soviet people cannot get drunk - and to the bottom! And the vulgar song calls for this! Nevertheless, the "Westernizing" song remained in the film and went to the people. Her words were reworked more than once and sang: "".

The editor of the Lenfilm film studio, film expert, jazz lover Alexander Pozdnyakov recalled: "".

In the film "Amphibian Man", the name of Nonna Sukhanova was not indicated in the credits, and her voice was recognized only in a narrow circle of Leningrad jazz fans. She never became a star of the all-Union scale, none of the spectators knew her. There was only one reason - she played forbidden jazz. When Sukhanova was forced to retire, she began teaching English. In 2014, she passed away at the age of 80.