What famous people became the prototypes of Captain Vrungel from the popular cartoon

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

The fantastic adventures of Captain Vrungel in the TV version had all-Union glory. The main characters turned out to be much more popular than their author Andrei Nekrasov. A prose writer from Soviet fitters wrote many different texts, but he remained famous as the author of a novel about the Troubles team. Moreover, the characters created by the writer are far from fictional. Each of them had its own real-life prototype, and the collective image of Vrungel combined several at once.

Fantastic story of the author of the hero

The literary surname of Nekrasov is immediately associated with the legendary Nikolai Alekseevich among literature lovers. But another Nekrasov lived in Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. Andrei Sergeevich gained fame after the release of the comic novel "The Adventures of Captain Vrungel", the adaptation of which brought the author great fame. The animated series is still called the classics of children's cinema today. Andrei Nekrasov wrote for about 30 years, creating fairy tales, short stories, novels and novellas, and few people know what events anticipated his writing career.

After school, Nekrasov worked as a fitter-technician at a tram station in Moscow. After moving to Murmansk in 1926, he mastered a new profession - a sailor of a fishing vessel. Dreams of big water all grew stronger in the head of the future writer, and after 7 years in Vladivostok he graduated from the naval school. A new diploma allowed Nekrasov to get a job as deputy head of the maritime department of a local trust. It was then that the first collection of Nekrasov's stories "Sea Boots" was published. In short prose, the author presented in an original form the stories of the life and work of the Far Eastern fishermen. Even then, the first fantasies about Captain Vrungel were born in the author's head. And already 3 years later, an abbreviated version of the story in the form of comics was published in "Pioneer". The illustrations for the story were prepared by the eminent Soviet artist Konstantin Rotov.

Later, the war broke out, and the prose writer had the everyday life of an ordinary Western Front and a correspondent for a front-line newspaper. But in 1944, Andrei Sergeevich was sentenced by a military tribunal to 3 years in a forced labor camp. There is not much reliable information about that period. It is known that Nekrasov was serving his sentence at the construction site of Norilsk Nickel, and already in 1953 a new collection of stories, the story The Destiny of a Ship, was published, numerous articles for young men about technology, electricity and oceanology were published. In a circle of friends, Andrei Nekrasov, being somewhat similar to his main character Vrungel, bragged about the badge of the head of a closed captain's yacht club, kept secret about the yacht Eva Braun had inherited. But all these facts remained at the gathering level.

Captain and crew prototypes

According to the writer's own testimony, mainly from whom the unforgettable captain Vrungel was written was his Far Eastern whaling chief Andrei Vronsky. The latter literally gushed with stories of incredible adventures on a trip around the world. Subsequently, Nekrasov used in the novel the fantasies of the energetic Vronsky, endowed with an original sense of humor. And his surname in a distorted version with an ironic connotation ("liar") formed the basis of the captain's surname. After all, all the subordinates of the fishing vessel knew that there was no circumnavigation in Vronsky's life, and all his tales were invented. As a sailor cadet, Vronsky listened to the lectures of the navigator Lukhmanov. A great connoisseur of Jules Verne's prose, a navigation teacher with experience in sea voyages, he assisted the student in creating a yacht to participate in the circumnavigation. The 10-meter Krasnaya Zvezda, built in a year, was never admitted to the round-the-world races, remaining at the school. But the ground for Vronsky's fantasies was firmly laid, and Nekrasov, in turn, subsequently also received literary ideas. In the book, "Red Star" turned into "Victory", which, as you know, became "Trouble". So even the yacht actually existed.

Another, much more serious, prototype of the captain of the "Trouble", literary analysts suggest the famous traveler Ferdinand Wrangel. A representative of a noble family became known for his research expeditions and discoveries of the northern Russian outskirts. The island is named after Wrangel, which was accurately marked by the navigator on the map 45 years before the American Long discovered it. The Russian traveler traveled around the world twice, wrote a book report with unique geographic information, and then took the chair of the ruler of Alaska.

Captain Vrungel's senior mate Lom was born by the writer from the image of Ivan Mann, Vronsky's friend. The original surname was disguised by Nekrasov by juggling lexical idioms. Translated from the German "mann" - "man", which in French sounds "scrap".

From a comic book story to a legendary telepicture

As already mentioned, the first printed version of The Adventures came out in the form of illustrations with extended signatures from the author's original excerpts. With the release of the full version of the work, critics split into two camps. For example, Lev Kassil saw potential in the story and predicted Nekrasov's glory. But there were also literary critics with recognizable names who smashed the book to smithereens. With additions and clarifications, the book was republished in 1958. Now it included the "Explanatory Dictionary for Stupid Readers", figurative parallels with the execution of Mussolini and even mentioned the "Aryan race". So to speak, adaptation to the spirit of the times. Because the first pre-war edition in the international context included only Japanese enemies in the person of Admiral Kusaki, who intended to seize Siberia.

Adapted to the era and the film adaptation of the late 70s: both the musical and the animated series were filmed "based on". Here, the confrontation with foreign countries has been softened, replacing the officials with private ones. The role of the Japanese Kusaki, whose image sent the reader to the unfriendly emperor, was taken by the chief of gangsters and the chairman of the yacht club.