What viewers did not know about Anatoly Papanov: A comedian with a tragic soul

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

October 31 marks the 98th anniversary of the birth of the remarkable Soviet actor, People's Artist of the USSR Anatoly Papanov. He has been dead for 33 years, but films with his participation are still incredibly popular. True, he became a favorite of the public thanks to those roles that he himself was ashamed of. His on-screen images were so far from his real one that colleagues and fans were often shocked by this …

His childhood and youth were probably the same as those of many of his peers. Anatoly Papanov's father worked at the plant, and after moving from Vyazma to Moscow and graduating from school, he also got a job at the plant as a foundry worker. True, most of all the young man was attracted there by classes in the theater studio at the plant. Once there was an incident due to which the future artist almost ended up behind bars: there was a theft in his brigade - someone took out a few details, and all the workers in the brigade were arrested. Fortunately for Papanov, the investigator was experienced and immediately realized that the naive guy had nothing to do with this theft. From there he was released without trial, but at home he was awaited by a court with partiality: his father, without finding out the details, poured him so much that he lay at home for a week.

All these misadventures soon seemed to him just childish play. At 18, his life changed once and for all, dividing into "before" and "after". This frontier was the war. From the very first days he went to the front, got to the front line, commanded an anti-aircraft battery. Papanov never liked to talk about this time, but he remembered all his life. On the Southwestern Front, he was seriously wounded and in the fall of 1942 he was discharged for disability. Anatoly returned home without two toes. No one guessed the reasons for his lameness - he did not recall his military past. At the same time, relatives said that the war left an imprint on his entire future life.

After returning to Moscow, Papanov immediately went to GITIS, and although the introductory campaign had long been completed, he was admitted to the acting department immediately for the second year. True, they immediately warned: the actor should not limp! After that, Papanov tortured himself so much with physical exercises that after six months he really got rid of lameness, and danced famously at the graduation ceremony.

In 1948 he became an actor in the Theater of Satire, but for a long time did not receive any significant roles. Before achieving recognition in the profession, Papanov experienced many setbacks and disappointments. When he started acting at the age of 30, his first roles went unnoticed. Due to creative lack of realization, the artist began to drink. His wife tried to fight this bad habit, but he stopped only in 1954, when their daughter was born, and when he got his first serious role in the play.

It seemed that a sharp turn was about to take place in his creative life after Eldar Ryazanov invited him to audition for his film Carnival Night, but in the end Igor Ilyinsky was approved for the role of director of the House of Culture. After 5 years, Papanov still starred in Ryazanov's other film - "A Man from Nowhere", but this picture was called "not corresponding to the high vocation of Soviet art" and was sent to the shelf. Only 5 years later - when Papanov starred with Ryazanov in the legendary "Beware of the Car", the collaboration finally turned out to be successful.

In the 1960s, only after 40 years, the long-awaited recognition came to the actor. But even after Anatoly Papanov became famous throughout the Union, starring in the films "The Diamond Arm" and "12 Chairs", he did not feel like a star. In everyday life, the artist has always remained very unassuming and unpretentious. His wife gave him new suits, and they all gathered dust in the closet, and Papanov wore his favorite old clothes. Once during a trip abroad, he appeared at an important reception in a denim suit. The Soviet delegation, of course, did not appreciate this trick, but the foreigners were delighted: "" Only at the age of 60 he was able to buy a car ("Volga"!), But at the same time left it a block away from the theater, explaining: "".

His characters on the screens were loud, cheerful jokes, grotesquely comical and not choosing expressions, and in real life Papanov was their complete opposite. Neither in the theater nor on the set, he never raised his voice, avoided acting gatherings, and generally was reluctant to make contact. Colleagues often called him strange and unsociable. In the 30-degree heat, the actor walked the streets in a long cloak with a raised collar, a cap pulled down on his forehead and in dark glasses - so that he would not be recognized and pestered with a familiar proposal to drink to the meeting.

Papanov was very worried that everyone in him saw only the close-minded Lelik from "The Diamond Hand" or associated with the Wolf from "Well, wait a minute!", Which he voiced. The actor lost his temper when in the streets they shouted after him: "Mustache, chief!" and “Wolf! The wolf has gone! " He lamented: ""

Most directors saw him only in a comedic role, in the images of caricatured ruffians and simpletons, and Papanov himself did not like such roles very much, although it was they who brought him nationwide fame and recognition. Probably, he remained real only in films about the war - "The Living and the Dead", "Belorussky Station". At the same time, even because of the comedic roles, he was very worried and every time he was afraid to disrupt the premiere in the theater. "", - explained Papanov.

The artist's wife Nadezhda Karataeva, with whom they played a wedding immediately after the end of the war in May 1945 and spent their entire lives together, said that behind the scenes Anatoly Papanov was a very reserved, modest, gentle, sensitive and even sentimental person. Only to her he could confess that in his heart he is a lyricist. No one knew that the actor was very fond of poetry and even wrote poems himself.

He often ended his creative evenings with the quatrain of Nikolai Dorizo:

What Anatoly Papanov really was, is evidenced by his last work in cinema: A touching incident on the set of the film "Cold Summer of 1953".