Another life of Nikolai Rybnikov: What was the screen heartthrob and the "shirt-guy" behind the scenes

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

29 years ago, on October 22, 1990, the famous Soviet actor Nikolai Rybnikov, who became a real symbol of his generation and the No. 1 movie star of the 1950s, passed away. On the screens, he looked like a charming heartthrob, a cheerful joker, a simple and open "boyfriend", the soul of any company, and in life he was far from this image. Perhaps that is why his film career was very short-lived, and the audience forgot about him too quickly … And his premature departure 2 months before his 60th birthday went unnoticed by the general public.

Nikolai Rybnikov was born in 1930 in the provincial town of Borisoglebsk, Voronezh Region. When the war began, his father went to the front, and his mother, along with Nikolai and his brother Vyacheslav, moved to Stalingrad to live with his sister. Soon they learned about the death of their father, and after him the mother also passed away. At the age of 11, Rybnikov became an orphan. One of the worst memories of his childhood was the bombing of Stalingrad in August 1942, when he, along with other residents, tried to cross the Volga during the evacuation from the burning city. He did not get a place in the boat, he could not swim, and he had to swim across the river, clinging to the side of the boat, under fire from German attack aircraft. It was only by a miracle that he then managed to survive and escape.

After the end of the fighting, Rybnikov returned to Stalingrad. His parents dreamed that their son would receive a "serious" profession and become a doctor. Therefore, after graduating from school, he entered the medical institute, but since the time when Nikolai first visited the theater as a child, he was attracted by the stage, and in the end the craving for art won. In the second year, he took the documents from the institute and left Stalingrad, where for some time he was listed in the auxiliary composition of the drama theater, to Moscow. There, on the first attempt, he managed to enter VGIK.

Already a student at a theatrical university, Nikolai Rybnikov almost ruined a film career that had not yet begun. Then he could not only lose his future profession, but also run into much more serious trouble. And the reason was Rybnikov's love for practical jokes. He loved to parody famous people and skillfully imitated the voice of the announcer Yuri Levitan, hiding in a closet with a microphone from the speaker and making everyone believe that the radio was working. Once, having gathered students in his dorm room, Rybnikov read out in the voice of Levitan a government decree on the reduction of retail prices for food products.

Within a few days, this news was discussed throughout the district. Of course, no reduction was actually planned. But when this news reached the competent authorities, the jokers were exposed and brought to justice. Fortunately, the investigator took pity on the students and did not start a criminal case against them for anti-Soviet propaganda, but the perpetrators were expelled from the Komsomol, and Rybnikov was to be expelled from the institute. Fortunately, the course management took him on bail as one of the best students, and Rybnikov remained at the university. Later this story was told by a witness of the events, director Pyotr Todorovsky, in his film "What a wonderful game". True, on the screens everything ended tragically - all the participants in the rally were shot.

After graduating from VGIK in 1953, Nikolai Rybnikov was accepted into the troupe of the Theater-Studio of the film actor and began acting in films. At first he got episodic roles, but after 3 years he played the main role in the film "Spring on Zarechnaya Street", which brought him all-Union fame. However, Rybnikov was not ready for the popularity that hit him. In life, he was a modest person, even a little reserved, tried to avoid excessive attention to his person and always behaved very restrained.

At first, the management of the film studio did not want to approve Nikolai Rybnikov for the role of the foreman of steelworkers Sasha Savchenko - in their opinion, the actor did not look powerful and courageous enough for this image. But the director Marlen Khutsiev insisted on his own, and Rybnikov turned out to be so convincing in this role that later other directors began to offer him similar images: the foreman of the assemblers in the film "Height", the builder in the film "Girl without an Address", the foreman of the lumberjacks in the film " Girls". This played a cruel joke with the actor - he became a hostage to one role, a simple working guy.

In the cinema of the following years, the hard workers on the screens were replaced by the intellectuals of the sixties, and in the "brigadier" Rybnikov, by that time matured and stout, the directors no longer saw the hero of their time. Director Marlen Khutsiev said about him: "". Actress Irina Skobtseva called her colleague and friend Rybnikov "". In real life, he was a real intellectual, which the directors did not notice in him. The actor collected a huge library, buying up rare copies in bookstores in all the cities where he was on tour.

The sociable and relaxed "guy-shirt", as they used to see him on screens, was a completely different person behind the scenes. He did not know how to "knock out" roles, go to directors, achieve new works, weave intrigues. Rybnikov never enjoyed his incredible popularity among the people and did not ask anyone for himself either in the profession or in everyday life - he simply considered it immodest. And as a result, it turned out to be practically unclaimed. In the 1980s. both the directors and the audience completely forgot about him.

The times of unemployment in the cinema did not break Rybnikov. He had someone to live for, because the family always remained in the first place for him. While on the screens he looked like a womanizer who easily conquered women's hearts, and millions of women dreamed of him throughout the Union, the actor remained a monogamous person all his life and idolized only her one - his wife, actress Alla Larionova.

He sought her location for long 8 years, and once, desperate to wait for reciprocity, he even tried to commit suicide. Upon learning of this, Sergei Gerasimov shamed his student by saying that a woman needs to be conquered. Rybnikov listened to his advice and continued to look after Alla. He proposed to her, knowing that his chosen one was pregnant by another man, after the wedding he surrounded him with care and attention, and raised his daughter Alena as his own. After 4 years, the couple had another daughter, Arina. Rybnikov was very kind to his wife, but could not get rid of jealousy. They say that once he almost got into a fight with Yuri Gagarin himself, when he began to show signs of attention to Alla Larionova.

Alena said that the entire household in their family was on her father - he washed the floors, washed the linen, cooked well and chose food in the stores himself. His wife loved noisy companies and parties, and Rybnikov preferred to leave them no later than 22.00. Sometimes Larionova would bring guests into the house, and steam was coming down in the kitchen - her husband was boiling linen in a basin. He spent all his free time at the dacha, where he grew and canned vegetables on his own. Even in the most difficult times, he remained the main earner in the family, managing to get scarce goods "from under the counter." In recent years, the actor was very fond of going to the bathhouse, and thanks to his “bathing acquaintances” - from loaders to store directors - he got everything he needed for his family.

Unfortunately, this hobby had fatal consequences for the sauna lover. The actor had a bad heart, and Rybnikov did not pay due attention to his health. On October 22, 1990, he went to the bathhouse again, and then returned home and went to bed. When his wife came to wake him up, he was no longer breathing. The actor died in his sleep from a heart attack, two months before his 60th birthday. Alla Larionova survived him by 10 years and died, just like him, in a dream, from a heart attack.

Films with the participation of Nikolai Rybnikov have long become classics of Soviet cinema and have not lost their popularity to this day: Behind the scenes of the film "Spring on Zarechnaya Street".