Riddles and secrets of Lyudmila Gurchenko: What fans don't know about the legendary actress

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

On November 12, the famous actress and singer, People's Artist of the USSR Lyudmila Gurchenko would have turned 85, but 9 years ago she passed away. Her name has long been overgrown with myths, and she herself often gave reasons for rumors, either keeping silent about some facts of her biography, then suddenly confiding in the public. Something had to be kept silent so as not to incur trouble, but about something - because of the typically female coquetry. But that is precisely why she was always called a woman-legend and a woman-mystery, which is why she continues to amaze, delight, intrigue and bewitch even after her departure.

Relatives called her Lucy - she really liked this name, because her father chose it for her. A few hours before her birth, he went to the cinema to pass the time, watched the American film "Sharks of New York" and decided to name his daughter after the main character Lucy. The registry office told him that they could not register the girl as Lucy and offered to name her Lyudmila. Without knowing it, having chosen a name associated with cinema for his daughter, he seemed to predetermine her fate from the very beginning.

Lyudmila Gurchenko was born and raised in Kharkov, her childhood fell on the war years. She was only 5 years old when the war began. The father went to the front, he and his mother did not have time to evacuate - there were not enough seats on the train - and remained in Kharkov, which in October 1941 was occupied by the Germans. For a long time, Gurchenko did not advertise the facts about her first "concerts", telling about them only in the late 1980s: in order to save herself and her mother from hunger, she went to a part of the occupiers and sang songs in German, which she learned by ear in cinemas, where German films were then shown. Her "fee" was the leftovers of food given to the girl by German soldiers. Thanks to this, she and her mother survived these 2 years. But from her peers Lyusya got it for this - they teased her for a long time with the "German shepherd" and arranged boycotts for her.

From childhood, Gurchenko was absolutely sure that she would become an artist. At the age of 17, she left Kharkov for Moscow. Later, she admitted that after moving she felt in the capital, as if in emigration - everything seemed alien, strange and unfamiliar. But her dream came true - she was admitted to VGIK, and after 3 years she played her first major role, which brought her all-Union popularity - Lena Krylova in Eldar Ryazanov's Carnival Night.

However, the meteoric rise brought about the same precipitous decline. The whole country knew her name, her songs were sung everywhere, and she lived in a hostel, took a trolley bus to the institute and lived on the income from concerts and recitals throughout the country in factories and mines. The first concert dress, which her father gave her, had to be given to the commission shop in order to pay off the debts. And then one day the newspaper published a feuilleton "Chechetka to the left", in which a young artist was ridiculed who shamelessly tried to "enrich herself" at concerts - a reckless student was not entitled to any fees at all for such performances, and Gurchenko several times received envelopes from administrators. The actress was accused of "capitalist approach to art" and receiving "unearned income." After that, angry letters began to come from fellow countrymen from Kharkov: ""

Later, Gurchenko said that the bullying in the press was dictated by other reasons: when she starred in the film "Girl with a Guitar" on the eve of the International Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow, she was offered to cooperate with the KGB, but she refused. After that, she was not offered major roles in the cinema for a long time, the audience, because of the devastating articles, condemned the artist for immoral behavior, and Gurchenko at that time even seriously thought about taking her own life. She confessed: "". Fortunately, there were directors who were not afraid to shoot the disgraced actress, and later she returned to the screens with triumph.

Few fans of the artist knew that she herself wrote the music for her songs since the mid-1960s. This fact had to be hidden for a long time. "" - said the actress years later. This "case" happened in 1965, when at the all-Union festival Margarita Suvorova sang the song "Victory Day", the music for which was written by Gurchenko. Critics accused the artist of speculating on people's feelings, and since then she has hidden what she writes songs.

Gurchenko never advertised that she wrote music for the songs "Maria" from the film "Moscow in Music", "Sleep" and "Why it became so empty" from the musical film "Motley Twilight", several songs from the film "My Sailor", a romance "More than once you will remember me" on the verses of Nikolai Gumilyov. In the comedy "My Sailor" Lyudmila Gurchenko starred with Mikhail Derzhavin in the lead roles. And the very song that his character performed several times, and for which the film was named, was also written by the actress herself. And many viewers were sure that "My Sailor" is a folk song. For the first time the name of Lyudmila Gurchenko as a composer appeared in the credits of her debut directorial work "Motley Twilight".

Her difficult character was legendary. They said that the artist had few friends because of her tough disposition. But she herself explained it differently: "".

Most often, she was asked questions about the secrets of her beauty and youth. She answered them the same thing: “” Gurchenko never really went on diets, and limited herself to food only before concerts. She did not recognize any cosmetic masks or special skin care products. She said that she even washed her face with ordinary soap. Her wasp waist, which remained the same thin even in adulthood, aroused envy among many fellow artists, because they had to make a lot of efforts to keep themselves in shape, and Gurchenko simply received it as a gift from nature. However, her school friend Nina Sweet believed that there should be no reason for envy here, and she explained such a physique of Lyudmila's hungry wartime childhood, calling her thinness painful.

But about “fewer movements” Lyudmila Gurchenko, of course, was cunning. There was so much energy in her that she would have been enough for several people, and until recent years she remained very active: she worked on television and radio, acted in films, performed in the theater and on stage, she directed her own shows. The artist said: ""

For a long time, the artist had to hide some facts about her origin: Descendants of the nobles on Soviet screens.