Where did the "Elusive Avengers" disappear: how did the fate of the actors of the popular film

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

In the late 1960s. the most popular teenagers in the USSR were the actors who played the main roles in the film "Elusive Avengers" … In the first two months alone, it was watched by 30 million viewers, and the four "avengers" gained all-Union fame. But, oddly enough, such a successful film debut was not the key to a successful film career, and for many of the actors who starred in the film, everything ended on this triumph.

Finding future national favorites turned out to be a rather difficult task for the director E. Keosayan. The film was based on the novel by P. Blyakhin "The Red Devils", but there were three main characters: Danka, his sister and a Chinese. Relations between the USSR and China at that time were tense, so at first they wanted to replace the Chinese with a black, but in the end they decided that it would be a gypsy. And later the fourth avenger appeared - the schoolboy Valerka.

The fastest way to find an actor for the role of Danka was the son of actor Ivan Kosykh, Viktor. He already had experience in filming, and for this role he was ideally suited. His friend Misha Metelkin auditioned for the role of Valerka the schoolboy, but he seemed too small for the director. In order to still get approval for this role, Misha ate a huge amount of carrots with sour cream, and in three months he grew by 7 cm.

Young actors were sought in circus schools and sports schools. For example, Valentina Kurdyukova (Ksanka) was found in the gym of the Wings of the Soviets club - at the age of 14, she was already a candidate for master of sports in artistic gymnastics. Most of the problems arose with the search for an actor for the role of the gypsy Yashka. The director chose from 8 thousand candidates, but he did not like anyone. The Vasiliev brothers from a large gypsy family heard about the tests and found the director themselves. When he saw Vasya, he immediately approved him for the role.

After the premiere of the film, teenagers became incredibly popular - all over the Union, children played "elusive avengers". Viktor Kosykh once received a letter from a girl who wrote that by the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967 she had watched the film exactly 50 times, that is, about 10 times a month. After such success, the director decided to shoot a sequel to the film, and a year later, The New Adventures of the Elusive were released. The third film - "The Crown of the Russian Empire, or Elusive Again" was the last in this trilogy - it was not successful.

Despite the fantastic success in cinema, the fate of young actors had little to do with this field of activity. Mikhail Metelkin graduated from the Faculty of Economics of VGIK and worked on television, as director of documentary films in the main editorial office of the information department of the Novosti Press Agency. In the late 1980s. he shot advertisements, documentaries and taught editing workshops. In the 1990s. went into business not related to the film industry. Vasily Vasiliev, who played Yashka the Gypsy, after filming the film received an invitation to play in the Gypsy theater "Romen", where he graduated from the studio of a dramatic actor and worked for 7 years. In the 1990s. he was in charge of the cultural center in Tver; he never acted in films again. Valentina Kurdyukova (Ksanka Shchus) married a gypsy singer Boris Sandulenko and gave birth to two children. She was no longer invited to the cinema, and she had to quit professional sports. She flatly refused to communicate with journalists and did not like to remember her acting past.

The only actor who linked his further destiny with cinema - Viktor Kosykh (Danka) - also failed to achieve success in the future. Although he played in fifty paintings, the role of Danka remained his main role. He was offered episodic roles, and in the perestroika time he became completely unclaimed, which caused problems with alcohol. In 1997, Viktor Kosykh was brought to trial: his Zhiguli drove into a summer cafe, as a result of which a man died and several others were injured. The actor almost ended up in prison, but he was acquitted: if he had not turned off the highway, pedestrians would have suffered. The court issued a verdict: "I had no technical ability to prevent the collision." In 2011, Viktor Kosykh died of heart failure.

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