Gottlieb Roninson's 75 Years of Solitude: The Tragic Fate of a Comedian

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

He was called the king of the episode - in films he appeared briefly, in supporting roles, but even one phrase uttered by this actor immediately became winged. "Don't be familiar!" - says his hero to Zhenya Lukashin in the film "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" - and it becomes an aphorism. In the cinema, he got comedic roles, and in life he had few reasons for laughter and joy. Perhaps that's why Gottlieb Roninson was called a comedian with sad eyes.

Gottlieb Roninson was born in 1916 to a Jewish family. He did not remember his father, his mother raised her son alone. Her all-consuming love and care played a cruel joke on him - he was so attached to his mother that he lived alone with her all his life in a small one-room apartment, never daring to marry any of the applicants rejected by his mother.

Professionally, not everything went well either. From the age of 15, not yet graduating from school, Gottlieb was forced to work to help his mother. For some time he attended the children's choir of the Bolshoi Theater - according to the teachers, after breaking his voice, a wonderful tenor should have formed, but he did not come out as an opera singer. I also had to leave the group of mimic ensemble of the theater.

Since childhood, Gottlieb suffered from epilepsy, because of this ailment he was not taken into the army. He spent the war years in evacuation in Omsk and Verkhneuralsk, where he worked as a teacher in an orphanage and organized concerts. After the war, Roninson graduated from the Shchukin School and was accepted into the troupe of the Taganka Theater, to which he devoted 45 years of his life. He was such a versatile actor that comic, tragic, male and female roles were entrusted to him. However, in the comic role, he was the most organic. One of his appearance on the stage caused laughter, as he had an amazing command of facial expressions, Roninson was called the master of the grotesque and "the knight of ridiculous images."

Filmmakers saw him exclusively in comedic images. The actor's full-fledged film debut took place only at the age of 50, when Gottlieb Roninson played the role of Detochkin's boss in Eldar Ryazanov's film Beware of the Car. Then the director invited him to play the role of jealous husband in the film "Zigzag of Fortune". After that, thousands of viewers began to recognize him, and other comedy directors also drew attention to his potential and began to invite him to their films. For Gaidai he played Kislyarsky in "12 Chairs" and Ivan Izrailevich in "It Can't Be!"

The actor in life seemed to many to be ridiculous and eccentric, capricious and touchy, which is why no one in the theater wanted to share the dressing room with him, although they often asked for help. It was said that Roninson could relieve headaches or toothaches by moving his arms over his head. For this ability he was dubbed "the Minister of Health of Taganka". Vladimir Vysotsky, with whom they performed together on the stage of the theater, even wrote humorous lines about this: If you are mentally ill, Or physically ill, You are ill for an epoch-making period, Or periodically, Do not go to private traders, Do not pay them pennies, Go to Gosha, unfortunate one, Goshenka will cure you.

All his life, the actor remained lonely, this loneliness became especially painful after the death of his mother. Roninson was very fond of children and quickly found a common language with them, although he did not have his own. The neighbors saw him walking alone in the streets and feeding the pigeons. As soon as he left the house, birds immediately flocked to him from all over the area.

In the 1980s. the actor felt his loneliness more and more acutely - almost no roles were offered in the cinema, in the theater he was also involved in only a few performances. In his declining years, he was sick a lot and even ordered a tombstone for himself - he was afraid that there would be no one else to do it. Throughout his life, he accumulated significant savings on savings books and bequeathed them to an orphanage. However, in the early 1990s. they depreciated, moreover, the Union collapsed, which was a great shock for the actor.

On December 25, 1991, he did not come to his play "The Master and Margarita". Colleagues immediately became worried - Roninson was never late and did not miss his performances. At home, he was found lifeless on the floor - the actor died of a heart attack. He left at the age of 75, never playing the big dramatic roles in the cinema, which he always dreamed of, and never waiting for personal happiness.

The fate of another hero of Gaidai's films was also difficult: Life drama of the beloved Soviet comedian Alexei Smirnov.