Video: The Broken Fate of Gemma Osmolovskaya: What Derailed the Life of a Soviet Film Star in the 1950s
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Her creative path was very short and bright. Gemma Osmolovskaya's star lit up in the late 1950s. and faded away after only 10 years. The audience remembered her for the films "The Tale of First Love" and "The Street is Full of Surprises." Having met her destiny - the star of the film "Soldier Ivan Brovkin" by Leonid Kharitonov - she gave up her film career without hesitation. And then a series of trials and misfortunes awaited her, which as a result led to creative collapse and complete oblivion. When she was gone this summer, this event went unnoticed for many …
Gemma Osmolovskaya was born in 1938 into a family of ordinary workers who had nothing to do with the art world. Since childhood, the girl was very artistic, she appeared on stage in school performances and had no doubt that she would become an actress in the future. After leaving school, Osmolovskaya entered GITIS and made her film debut during her studies. She got to the set quite by accident: once director Evgenia Kemarskaya noticed her in the corridor of the institute and took her to the casting to her colleague Vasily Levin, who was looking for an actress for the lead role in his film "The Tale of First Love."
Gemma did not even hope that she would be approved for this role. She said: "".
At that time, the melodrama "The Tale of First Love" was quite bold and raised such topics that it was not customary to talk about from the screen at that time. According to the plot, after the death of her mother, schoolgirl Olya remains in the care of her aunt and thinks about leaving school and getting a job. Her classmate Mitya dissuades her from this decision and brings her to his home, where his parents accept the girl as their own daughter. But because of the rumors that appeared about the intimate relationship of high school students, Olya had to leave this family. Here they openly spoke not only about the problems of orphanhood, single mothers, about the love of schoolchildren, but also about the teacher's passion for the student (the school teacher showed signs of attention to the heroine). Surprisingly, the censorship missed this film, and the first loud popularity came to Gemma Osmolovskaya.
In the same 1957, Gemma Osmolovskaya starred in the film "The Street is Full of Surprises", where her filming partner was 27-year-old actor Leonid Kharitonov, whose name had thundered all over the country 2 years earlier after the release of the film "Soldier Ivan Brovkin" ". Gemma played his fiancée, and the on-screen romance went off-set. The actor was already married at that time, but this did not stop the lovers. They got married a year later.
Years later, many acquaintances of Gemma Osmolovskaya said that it was this acquaintance that derailed her life. The role in the film "A street full of surprises" brought her success, although the actress herself assessed her very critically: "". After a successful debut, she could focus on her further film career, but then all her thoughts were occupied by Leonid Kharitonov, to whom she was ready to devote her whole life.
The actress said: "".
However, this marriage was not happy. Leonid Kharitonov could not stand the test of fame, became addicted to alcohol and often made drunken scandals in the family. Gemma Osmolovskaya admitted: "". For seven years, the actress tried to fight this, but all her efforts were unsuccessful. Because of this, their marriage broke up.
After the birth of her son, Gemma did not act in films for several years, and when she decided to return, no one was waiting for her. She found herself in a very difficult situation. The actress said: "".
The actress was ready to take on any role, but she got only rare episodes in television plays. Saved only work in the Central Children's Theater (later - the Russian Academic Youth Theater), on the stage of which Osmolovskaya performed for 36 years, although she did not get big roles. There she met a person with whom she tied her future destiny - the actor Pyotr Podyapolsky. In 1975 they got married and did not part until the death of the actress. Gemma said about her second husband: "".
Although the creative fate of Gemma Osmolovskaya was not very successful and her acting potential was not fully realized, in her personal life for some time she found happiness. But it was overshadowed by the fact that the son from his first marriage stopped communicating with his mother. Neither she nor he ever named the reasons for this. Even when Osmolovskaya was in trouble, her son did not come to her aid.
In 2017, Gemma Osmolovskaya was diagnosed with cancer. They fought this misfortune together with her husband - neither their former colleagues in the theater, nor their relatives helped them. The last 2 years of her life were very difficult - the actress could hardly move, weakened and lost weight. In 2018, she turned 80, and a year later, on July 15, 2019, she was gone.
The creative path of Gemma Osmolovskaya's ex-husband also ended sadly: The dramatic fate of Leonid Kharitonov.
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