Cheburashka - 50: Harmful ex, "cheburakhnutaya" girl and others involved in the birth of cartoon heroes

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

On December 22, the famous writer and screenwriter, author of children's books Eduard Uspensky would have turned 82, but last year he passed away. It was thanks to him that the most beloved cartoon heroes of our childhood appeared: Uncle Fedor, the cat Matroskin, the postman Pechkin, the crocodile Gena and Cheburashka. The latter have an anniversary this year, 50 years ago the first cartoon from the series about the adventures of Cheburashka was released. Who inspired the author to create such an unusual character, from whom the old woman Shapoklyak was written off, and how useful it is sometimes to "cheburakhat" - further in the review.

In fact, Cheburashka was "born" back in 1966, in the book by Eduard Uspensky "Crocodile Gena and His Friends", but usually the year of his birth is called 1969 - after all, it was after the release of the first cartoon that this character acquired the well-known appearance … It was not described in detail in the book, and it was rather difficult to imagine it: "". There was little attractive in such an unknown creature, and Cheburashka became a charming animal thanks to the imagination of artists who came up with the appearance of a character with big ears and big eyes.

In the preface to his book, the author wrote that a defective children's toy became the prototype of his hero. However, later in an interview, the writer admitted that there he simply described the favorite toy of his childhood, and Cheburashka appeared much later. In fact, he once watched his little niece while visiting a friend. Later, Ouspensky recalled: "".

This word engraved in the memory of the writer, and later he learned that in the dictionary of V. Dal there are the words "cheburakhat", "cheburahnut" - that is, "throw, throw, overturn with a crash." The word "cheburashka" - "" was also mentioned there. And later the birth of the cartoon hero was preceded by another episode: "".

And so the idea was born about an unknown animal from the tropical jungle, which once fell asleep in a box with oranges and so ended up in a grocery store in a big city. The Cheburashka turned out to be quite awkward - having gorged on oranges, he now and then strove to fall to one side - "cheburashka". He could not sit still and constantly fell - that's why he got such a nickname.

Several artists applied for authorship of the external appearance of Cheburashka. The first puppet image of the hero appeared in the Leningrad Puppet Theater in 1968 - it was created by the puppet artist Skripova-Yasinskaya. The author of the first drawn image of Cheburashka was Boris Stepantsev, an artist of the Filmstrip studio. His character had the same large, round ears and large eyes as his predecessor. Well, the cartoon character, which the whole country fell in love with, was created by the artist Leonid Shvartsman.

About the creation of the appearance of the cartoon hero Schwartzman told: "".

Over the years, the cartoon hero has become a real national treasure - after all, he was one of the few authentic characters of Soviet culture. In other countries, there were no similar images. Cheburashka even became the official mascot of the Russian Olympic team several times. Cheburashka was also appreciated abroad. He had the largest number of fans in Japan, where he even released the anime series "Cheburashka - who is this?" and a full-length puppet film "Cheburashka". In 2003, the Japanese acquired the rights to distribute this image from Soyuzmultfilm for 20 years. Cheburashka was also very popular in Sweden - there he was christened "Drutten" - from the Swedish word for "stumble, fall".

According to the writer, the prototype of his other character - Gena the crocodile - to some extent became the composer Jan Frenkel, who gave the hero his character and style. About how the appearance of the crocodile Gena was born, the artist Leonid Shvartsman told: "".

Eduard Uspensky said that his ex-wife became the prototype of the old woman Shapoklyak: "".

In creating her appearance, Shvartsman proceeded from the name itself: "Gibus" is the name of a 19th century headdress, a folding cylinder. Hence the strict black dress with a year skirt, reticule, frill and white cuffs. And the artist "borrowed" the hairstyle for the heroine from his mother-in-law. "", - said Shvartsman.

Even books for children in those days were often heavily censored: How Soviet officials found sedition in stories about Cheburashka and crocodile Gena.