Video: "Woman of the Millennium": how the Soviet actress Klara Luchko managed to achieve international recognition
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
12 years ago, on March 26, 2005, a magnificent actress, People's Artist of the USSR passed away Clara Luchko … In the Soviet Union, everyone knew this name thanks to the films "Kuban Cossacks", "Gypsy" and "Return of Budulai". In the mid-1990s. she stopped acting in films, and at home they began to forget about her. But abroad her services to the cinema were appreciated: in 1996 in the USA she earned the title of "Women of the World", and in 2000 in Great Britain she was awarded the title of "Women of the Millennium".
An artist of world renown was born in a Ukrainian village near Poltava. She was named after the revolutionary Clara Zetkin. The actress later recalled her childhood: “In principle, no one raised me. Because my mother worked as the chairman of a collective farm in one village, and my father was the director of a state farm, but in another. I lived with my grandmother. It was my mother’s own sister, but we called her grandmother. I have lived with her almost all my life. I was an introverted girl. I read a lot, pondered, thought, kept a diary. She loved cinema very much and dreamed of a stage career since childhood."
At school, Klara Luchko studied in a theater group, although her parents did not support her hobbies. When the war broke out in 1941, the Luchko family went to evacuate to Kazakhstan, where Klara finished school. There she entered VGIK. And after the war, when the institute returned to the capital, Luchko continued her studies there on the course of Gerasimov and Makarova.
Although at the institute, Clara Luchko's abilities were not considered outstanding by any of the teachers, she successfully completed her studies and received a diploma with a recommendation: "Luchko is a Turgenev heroine, lyrical classical roles are suitable for her." However, her film career did not begin with the Turgenev young ladies. In 1948, Sergei Gerasimov invited her to play the role of Aunt Marina in his film "Young Guard", although she dreamed of the role of Ulyana Gromova. Then she starred in several more films, but the work was unsuccessful, and Clara began to doubt the correct choice of her profession.
Once the director Ivan Pyryev drew attention to the young actress and invited her to audition for the role of the young collective farmer Dasha Shelest in his film "Merry Fair". She was approved, and she went along with other actors to the shooting at the state farm "Kuban", where they all had to work on an equal basis with real collective farmers - Pyriev believed that this would help them get used to the role. Stalin liked the film, only he advised to change the name - so the whole country saw the "Kuban Cossacks".
This role brought Clara Luchko all-Union popularity. The young actress became a laureate of the State Prize, in the Kuban she was awarded the title of an honorary Cossack woman, and in the city of Kurganinsk in 2005, a monument was erected to her. She confessed: “Thousands of viewers wrote to me, they watched the film many times and knew all the songs by heart. A flurry of letters from suitors fell upon me. They wrote from all over the country, offered a hand and a heart. " However, her chosen one was the actor Sergei Lukyanov, who played the main role in the "Kuban Cossacks". A year after filming, they got married and lived together for 15 years.
In 1955, Jan Fried invited Luchko to his film "Twelfth Night" based on Shakespeare's comedy of the same name, where she was to play 3 roles at once. Many doubted that the actress would cope with this task, but the result exceeded all expectations. The picture was sent to Edinburgh for the Shakespeare Festival, and it received brilliant reviews from Shakespeare scholars. And when 45 years later, the best actresses in history were determined in Cambridge, Clara Luchko was awarded the title of "Woman of the Millennium in the Field of Cinematography."
At the age of 54, Clara Luchko's husband died of a heart attack, which was a great shock for her. In addition, proposals for filming began to arrive less and less. The role of Claudia in "The Gypsy" and "The Return of Budulai" returned her to her former popularity. And 8 years after the death of her husband, the actress remarried - for journalist Dmitry Mamleev. She said about this marriage: “You know, the main thing is to understand each other. I often leave for filming, on an expedition. He never reproaches me that something is wrong at home, that I do not have time for something. He understands what work is, and I understand him. This is probably why we live so well."
Klara Luchko continued to act in films until the mid-1990s, and then left the cinema, although she could continue to act - and at the age of 75, the actress looked great. On March 26, 2005 she was gone. The cause of death was a detached blood clot.
The actress said: “Throughout my life, many good and bad things have happened, but I have developed one rule that I strictly follow: never show that you are bad. If my heart is disgusting and I feel that I can’t say “I’m fine” in public, then I just don’t leave the house”.
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