Video: What's left behind the scenes of "Gentlemen of Fortune": how they looked for camels and came up with a new thug jargon
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
45 years ago, on December 13, 1971, the premiere of comedy "Gentlemen of Fortune", which was then viewed by 65 million people. In the first days after the premiere, speculators bought up all the tickets at the box office in the morning for 20 kopecks and sold them for 3 rubles. Today this comedy is the 12th most attended among all Soviet films. Few people know that completely different actors were supposed to play the main roles in "Gentlemen of Fortune", and during the filming there were many funny situations.
G. Danelia and V. Tokarev planned to shoot R. Bykov as a counterfeiter, Y. Nikulin as a gigolo, A. Mironov as a swindler who sells stolen cars, S. Kramarov as a petty pickpocket named Kosoy. As a result, everyone, except for Kramarov, refused for various reasons: Mironov was busy filming another picture, Nikulin refused to appear on the screen again in a comedic form, Bykov was busy with his own business. As a result, the script was rewritten, new characters were invented and other actors were invited.
The comedy was filmed in record time - in just three months, from February to April 1971. The kindergarten, the theater and the house in which the fugitives were hiding were filmed in Moscow, the professor's dacha - in Serebryany Bor, and all other episodes - in Samarkand. For some reason, everyone decided that there would be no problems with camels, but they managed to find the "actor" only in the zoo. And he didn’t want to give a damn about Kramarov, so the “spit” was painted using foamed shampoo.
Another problem arose with the camel: Evgeny Leonov categorically refused to climb on it during filming. Therefore, Kramarov and Vitsin rode on a real camel, and Leonov sat on the back of one of the members of the film crew. He hid behind a camel and walked with him next to the actor on his shoulders.
There was so much prison vocabulary in the film that they wanted to ban the comedy from showing, as there were fears that young people would perceive this as propaganda of thieves' jargon and take it into service. But the film was shown to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs N. Shchelokov on the eve of Police Day, and he not only approved the plot, but also laughed so hard that he drowned out the characters' remarks. The comedy was also approved by the Secretary General L. Brezhnev, according to legend, he said that every street boy knows such words.
Danelia and Tokareva wrote the script, and the film was directed by Alexander Sery. It was he who suggested the expressions from the thieves' jargon, because these words were familiar to him firsthand. G. Danelia said: “With Shurik, we took a directing course, but he didn’t get enough of it - instead of his thesis, he received a term. He was jealous of his fiancée Marina for one man, beat him, and he ended up in the hospital with serious injuries. Shurik was sentenced to six years for causing grievous bodily harm. He was released ahead of schedule, four years later. I suggested to him: I write the script and become the artistic director of the picture, and he removes. On that and decided. " A. Sery also suggested slogans for the posters hanging in the prison cell: "To freedom - with a clear conscience", "Remember yourself, tell another that honest work is the road to home." True, all the swear words had to be replaced with harmless "fake" swear words like "radish", "sausage", "sausage", "Hamburg rooster", etc.
A funny story happened during the filming of an episode in a car with cement. R. Muratov said: “The day came when they began to lower us there. A tank of ordinary bread leaven, tinted with green onion essence, rolled up. The composition was so tart, sticky … After filming, we got out of this solution and wash faster, somehow we scraped it off ourselves. We look, but Vitsin is not. It turned out that he continues to sit in the cistern, because he learned that this composition is based on 23 medicinal herbs and prolongs youth by 15 years."
When they were going to shoot the gymnastics scene in the snow in a 17-degree frost, Leonov, Vitsin and Kramarov agreed that, against the director's wishes, they would come out in sweatshirts. Muratov was late for the shooting and did not know about the agreement. He ran out in swimming trunks first, and after him everyone else also had to undress. By the way, the scene in which the heroes rub each other with snow and yell is an acting impromptu: Kramarov decided to take revenge on Muratov and began to rub him with snow.
And the performer of one of the main roles Savely Kramarov, in pursuit of happiness, lost his viewer and the love of a woman, whom he could not forget until the end of his days
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