Male acting friendship: What brought Boris Galkin, Vladimir Kachan and Leonid Filatov together

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

Each of them is a famous actor, with their fans, their viewers and directors. But Boris Galkin and Vladimir Kachan always, without a shadow of a doubt, gave the palm to their friend Leonid Filatov. He has always been more talented, more creative and sensitive. Boris Galkin and Vladimir Kachan are still loyal to this strong male friendship, although more than 17 years have passed since the departure of Leonid Filatov.

Room number 39

It seemed that they were very different, but once fate decided to combine them at the same time and in one place.

Leonid Filatov was born in Kazan, graduated from school in Ashgabat. It was there, in Turkmenistan, that he began to write and, at the age of 15, received his first fee for a fable published in the newspaper "Komsomolets Turkmenistan". Around the same time, he became interested in theater and cinema and firmly decided to become a student at VGIK. True, he was not accepted at VGIK, but he was enrolled in the Shchukin school at the acting department.

Boris Galkin was born in Leningrad, at the age of 6 he moved to Riga with his family. He grew up as a very athletic boy, was fond of volleyball and wrestling, skiing and swimming, and even became the silver medalist of Latvia in sambo. As a child, Boris often visited the Opera and Ballet Theater, where his father served as a shoemaker. But the boy became interested in art already in high school, began to attend a literary studio, which was led by actor Konstantin Titov. He advised the boy to think about the profession of an actor. As a result, Boris Galkin entered the Shchukin School.

Vladimir Kachan was born in Ussuriisk, graduated from school in Riga, where he studied in the same class with the future comedian Mikhail Zadornov. He did not enter Shchukinskoe immediately, but as a result of additional recruitment, when he had already become a student of the philological faculty of the University of Latvia.

In the student dormitory of the theater school, all three ended up in room 39 on Trifonovskaya Street, where Leonid Pärn and Sergei Varaksin also lived with Filatov, Kachan and Galkin. In this composition, the guys lived until the third year, and then three friends rented a small two-room apartment on Bolshaya Nikitskaya.

The foundation of the basics

In their trio, Filatov and Kachan were creators. Leonid Filatov could write around the clock, forgetting about everything in the world. In general, he was somehow very indifferent to material goods. I ate what was at hand, if there was nothing, just smoked cigarette after cigarette and wrote, wrote, wrote. Vladimir Kachan constantly sang and composed music. And Boris Galkin was among the top three in the household. He cooked some kind of simple food: potatoes, buckwheat or a completely royal dish - cod with potatoes, fried in an omelet. As a rule, they did not have extra money.

They worked as loaders at the Rizhsky railway station, receiving in the form of a fee most of all grapes, occasionally potatoes or cabbage and some money. Despite the rather meager "provision", the students never quarreled, lived very amicably, and their relationship was based on one simple rule: if a friend is in trouble, everyone should come to his aid.

When their roommate Sergei Varaksin got into the police and was shaved bald there, Filatov, Kachan and Galkin also cut their hair so that the school could not understand who was to blame for what. They could not find out why the four students became bald, so no punishment followed. And the educational institution was not informed about the misconduct of one of them.

In the Central Committee of the Komsomol, where three friends were summoned for an interview before the planned trip to Hungary, they almost answered all the questions, but at the end the Komsomol worker suggested discussing the article by Yevgeny Tyazhelnikov, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. And Leonid Filatov suddenly asked: "Who is this?" The surprised look of the Komsomol leader made Vladimir Kachan and Boris Galkin tense up, and then confirm: they also do not know Yevgeny Tyazhelnikov. They were never released to Hungary at that time, considering them unreliable.

All three considered it a matter of honor to intercede for the girl in a difficult situation and even get involved in a fight with a presumptuous boor. None of them, except for Boris Galkin, who was engaged in wrestling during his school years, was not distinguished by a heroic physique, but they were not used to leaving friends in trouble.

At the end of the fourth year, Irina Aleksandrovna Lileeva, a teacher on the history of foreign theater, with whom Leonid Filatov was especially close, told Boris Galkin: the three of them were very lucky to find each other. And she advised them to always value this friendship.

Memory of the heart

They walked shoulder to shoulder all their lives, trying to resort to help in difficult times. Later, each of them had their own life. Their families, children, concerns, their own line of creativity. But the student friendship did not disappear, they continued to meet, although not as often as they would like.

Boris Galkin often visited the house of Leonid Filatov and Nina Shatskaya. I came both myself and with Vladimir Kachan, rejoicing in the harmonious family of a friend. Leonid Filatov was famous, and even became a secretary and head of the acting department in the Union of Cinematographers, although he categorically did not accept honoring and he himself never aspired to positions. He considered his work in the Union solely as an opportunity to help those who would need it.

When Leonid Filatov died, Boris Galkin and Vladimir Kachan, it seems, began to take even more care of their friendship, which originated in their student years. They gladly come to the programs that are filmed in memory of their friend. But if suddenly during the broadcast it turns out that this is not about the work of Leonid Filatov, but the plot is entirely built on attempts to find unsightly facts in the biography of the actor and poet and to publicize his personal life, they just get up and leave. They value a different memory of a friend, disinterested and light.

And, as once upon a time in youth, we are ready to defend the honor and dignity of each other. Even if one of the friends is no longer alive.

On the stage and on the set, Leonid Filatov often had to play his own death, but in reality the last 10 years have become for him an exhausting struggle for life. He died at the age of 57 after a serious long illness. The tests that fell to his lot, he considered not accidental and said that he deserved this punishment.