The magic bird Phoenix: why Lydia Vertinskaya played only 5 film roles and disappeared from the screens

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

April 14 marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of the actress, artist, wife of the singer Alexander Vertinsky, one of the most beautiful women in Soviet cinema Lydia Vertinskaya … She played in only five films, but these roles brought her fame and audience love. Most memorable are her Phoenix bird from Sadko and Anidag from The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. Her beauty and fabulous images created real magic on the screen. However, despite the success, the actress left the cinema and stopped appearing in public, and never regretted it.

Lydia Vladimirovna was born in 1923 in Harbin (China), where her father, a descendant of the ancient Georgian princely family of Tsirgvava, served in the administration of the Chinese Eastern Railway, and her mother was a housewife. At that time, hundreds of emigrants lived in Harbin, Russian schools were opened, newspapers were published, restaurants in which Russian artists performed.

After the death of her father, the family moved from Harbin to Shanghai, where Lydia worked as a secretary for a shipping company. Her mother dreamed that she would marry one of the English captains who courted Lydia. But one day the girl got to a concert by Vertinsky, and this meeting changed her whole life. She later recalled: “His performance made a huge impression on me. His thin, amazing and expressively plastic hands, his manner of bowing - always a little casually, a little down. The words of his songs, where every word and phrase he uttered sounded so beautiful and sophisticated. I have never heard the Russian speech sound so beautifully, the words amazed with their rich intonation. I was fascinated and captured in sweet captivity."

Vertinsky also liked Lydia at first sight, and he began to look after her. However, at that time she was only 17, and he was already 51, and the girl's mother was categorically against this relationship. Vertinsky went on tour and sent tender letters to his chosen one: “I adore you, my little Georgian!”, “I adore, despite the prohibitions of Georgian society and your relatives!”. And in 1942 they got married.

In 1943, after an appeal to Molotov, Alexander Vertinsky managed to obtain permission to return to the USSR. He continued to perform and tour, and Lydia was engaged in raising two daughters. In addition, she attended painting lessons, and in 1955 graduated from the painting faculty of the Moscow State Academic Art Institute.

She got into the cinema quite by accident - once the director Alexander Ptushko, who was then working on the fairy tale "Sadko", drew attention to the non-standard beauty of Lydia Vertinskaya. The role of the magic bird Phoenix became her debut, after which she was invited by directors to play the roles of characters endowed with magical powers. In total, in the 1950s-1960s. she played in 5 films. Despite the fact that her film career was very short-lived, all these films became classics of Soviet cinema.

In 1956, Vertinsky wrote to his wife: “Dear Lilichka, and Pekulya, and Munichka, and Sweetheart! And "Bird Phoenix", and … finally, "Duchess"! The lack of affectionate words in our relationship is also the result of our gray dog's life, where love and tenderness are not in favor, where human tender, deep feelings are something alien, "fossil", which one gets to know only from books, and only for that, so as not to seem like the ultimate fools and ignoramuses. And we are already used to being shy. Sometimes I really want to write to you all that affectionate and tender that I have in my soul for you, my first and true love, the mother of my wonderful children … But can you write this? " And the next year he passed away. Lydia Vladimirovna became a widow at 34 and never married again, devoting herself to children.

She earned money by selling her paintings and decided not to return to the cinema - she always considered her mother's most important role. The actress led a secluded life and did not give interviews, recently in the press they rarely recalled her.

She lived a long life and died at the age of 90. She died on December 31, 2013. They say that the last thing she heard was Vertinsky's song "Your fingers smell of incense."

Their daughter Anastasia Vertinskaya also stopped acting after a resounding success.