Paula Raxa's Two Lives: Why the Star of Four Tankers and a Dog Left the Cinema

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

She became one of the first foreign women to conquer Soviet audiences. In the 1960s. the name of the Polish actress Paula Raksa was known to everyone - she became famous thanks to her roles in the films Four Tankmen and a Dog and Zosia. On the set in the USSR, Paula met a man with whom she almost tied her fate, but then she did not dare to make a fateful choice. And after 20 years, the actress completely disappeared from the screens, deciding to radically change the field of activity …

Her full name is Apolonia Raxa. She could never appear on the screens, because she did not even dream of an acting future. After school, Paula entered the Faculty of Philology at the University of Wroclaw. There she more than once participated in student performances, but this is where her romance with the theater would have ended, if not for a lucky break. Paula was a striking beauty and always attracted the looks of men. Later she recalled: "".

Thanks to the fact that her photo got on the cover of the magazine, Maria Kanevska, director and professor of the Lodz School of Theater and Cinematography, drew attention to her, who was just looking for an actress for her new film. So at the age of 19, being a non-professional actress, Paula got her first leading role.

After Paula first found herself on the set, she no longer doubted what she wanted to do in the future. After 4 years, the girl graduated from the Higher School of Theater and Cinema in Lodz, in parallel with her studies, continuing to act in films. Polish directors often trusted her with the main roles, but wide popularity in Poland and abroad came to her at the age of 25, when Paula Raksa played the main role in the Soviet film Zosia and began acting in the television series Four Tankmen and a Dog, where she performed the role of the heroine, nicknamed Marusya Ogonyok. After that, even on the streets, they began to call her Marusya.

In the center of the plot of the film "Zosia", which was watched by about 23 million Soviet viewers in the year of its release, was the love story of a Soviet officer and a Polish girl during the war years. Paula Raksa's partner on the set was a young Soviet actor Yuri Kamorny. Their on-screen romance continued offscreen. During the filming of one of the scenes, due to a mistake by the pyrotechnists, a land mine exploded. Kamorny suffered the most from this incident. The director was about to pause filming so that the actor could fully restore his health, but then Yuri protested. He was so in love with his partner that he rushed back to the set, despite the advice of doctors to take a break from work.

Years later, the actress called this novel one of her most vivid memories. But then she was afraid to connect her life with Kamorny, later explaining it this way: "". Time has shown that her intuition did not fail her. After "Zosia" incredible popularity came to the actor, he was besieged by crowds of fans, he broke more than one heart. But with none of his chosen ones, he never managed to build a long-term relationship. And at the age of 37, Yuri Kamorny passed away under mysterious circumstances.

Paula Raksa returned to Poland after filming the film "Zosia" and continued to act in films and perform on the stage of the Warsaw Theater "Vspulchesny". In the second half of the 1960s. she won the Silver Mask award three times as Poland's most popular actress, in 1979. Pola Raksa was recognized as an honored cultural worker of Poland. However, none of her subsequent works were able to repeat the success of "Zosia" and "Four Tankmen and a Dog". In the 1970s-1980s. the actress starred less and less, and in the early 1990s. decided to leave the cinema forever.

At first, she hosted television programs and performed on the theater stage, and then left the acting profession altogether. After the end of her film career, Paul Rax took up clothing design. She released several collections for children and a line of evening dresses, created costumes for performances, led a fashion column in one of the popular magazines. On television, the star of the 1960s. since then she did not appear and led a reclusive lifestyle, far from the hustle and bustle of the big city. Paula Rax hasn't been interviewed for years.

The beautiful actress was officially married only once, and this relationship was short-lived. Married to the director and cameraman Andrzej Kostenko, she gave birth to a son, Martin, but this did not save them from parting after 6 years. After her divorce from her husband, Paul Rax, she raised her son on her own and never married again. True, she never had a lack of male attention, but she did not manage to build a serious and long-term relationship with any of the men. When Martin grew up, he admitted that as a child he was jealous of his mother both for her work and for numerous admirers, and suffered from her lack of attention. Later, Paula said that she was very sorry that she could not establish a close relationship with her son. He was never able to forgive his mother for his childhood grievances and subsequently limited himself to communicating with her to rare meetings and telephone conversations.

Today, 78-year-old Paula Raxa fondly recalls her acting past, but she does not regret that she devoted the second half of her life to design - after all, in this she was able to successfully realize herself in her country. And the fans are still wondering about what made the actress radically change her field of activity. Many are sure that she simply did not want to grow old in front of the audience and decided to remain in their memory breathtakingly beautiful and young - as in those films that made her a star.

However, there is another version. Paula Raxa once confessed: "I regret that I played so much when my life experience was small." The directors offered her the same type of roles, and she felt like a hostage to the role of a beautiful blonde. Unfortunately, she never managed to fully realize her creative potential in the theater and in the cinema - but in design, the scope for creativity was much wider. Be that as it may, I would like to thank Paula Raksa once again for her roles in those films that have long become classics of Polish and Soviet cinema!

She always remembered her Soviet partner in filming Paul Rax with special warmth: Crazy star of Yuri Kamorny.