Video: Oleg and Marianna Strizhenovs in and behind the scenes: How "Gadfly" changed the fate of the actors
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Ethel Lilian Voynich's novel The Gadfly enjoyed incredible popularity in the USSR and was reprinted several times. Therefore, it is not surprising that its first film adaptation in 1955 became a real cinema event and attracted more than 39 million viewers in cinemas. Admiring the beautiful couple of the main characters - Arthur and Gemma - they did not suspect that the shooting became fateful for them, and that their romantic relationship was connected not only on the set. True, this beautiful story had a very sad ending …
When director Alexander Fayntsimmer started looking for an actor for the lead role in his film, he did not know what kind of problem it would turn out to be. None of the applicants looked convincing enough in the auditions. The main character was searched for in all theatrical universities, and the blue-eyed student of the Shchukin school, Oleg Strizhenov, seemed to the director's assistants an ideal candidate. They showed his photographs to Fienzimmer, but they made no impression on him, and the search continued. Only after a while, when the former student managed to become a rising star of the Russian Drama Theater in Tallinn, the second director of the film again proposed to consider Strizhenov's candidacy. And this time the director was convinced!
Oleg Strizhenov's partner on the set was Marianna Gryzunova-Bebutova. In the frame, they were to play a couple in love, and it was not difficult - during the filming of the film, they really began an affair. It developed so rapidly that shortly after filming ended, the actors got married, and in 1957 their daughter Natalya was born. "Gadfly" became fateful for them not only because they met each other, but also because it turned them into screen stars. For both actors, these roles did not become their film debuts, but it was they that brought them all-Union fame, becoming the start of a successful film career. It was under the surname Strizhenova that Marianna became a famous actress.
After this role, Strizhenov was assigned the role of a romantic hero. The actor admitted: "". Then Strizhenov thought that fate presented him with everything one could dream of - both a successful acting career and a happy personal life.
However, their family happiness was short-lived: after 10 years, the marriage broke up, although this could have happened much earlier. Oleg Strizhenov, who was called the Soviet Alain Delon, has always enjoyed great success with women, and sometimes he could not resist temptations. On the set of the next film after "The Gadfly" - "Mexican" - there was a meeting that became significant. One day he walked up to a crowd of girls gathered around the filming location and spoke to one of them. It was Lionella Skirda. At that time, both did not suspect that this was not their last meeting.
The next time they saw each other after 7 years. This time, Lionella Skirda was on the set, and Strizhenov came to see the young actress. Later he admitted that he immediately recognized in her the girl who did not take her eyes off him during the filming of "Mexican". The actor asked his colleagues to introduce him to Lionella, and soon they had a bright romance. It was short-lived - Strizhenov was married and did not want to leave the family, primarily because of his daughter. But he did not manage to save the marriage.
Marianne had suspected for a long time that her husband had cooled down to her, and guessed about his love affairs. But one day she learned that Strizhenov had an affair with 18-year-old actress Lyudmila Marchenko, and then her patience came to an end. The couple decided to divorce. Natalia was very upset by the divorce of her parents. Holding a grudge against her father, she avoided meeting with him. She also tried to act in films, but her acting career did not work out, and her fate was tragic. Natalia began to abuse alcohol and once took a pill with alcohol, which led to cardiac arrest. At that time, she was only 45 years old, and her daughter Sasha was 16.
After a divorce from Marianne, Oleg Strizhenov married actress Lyubov Zemlyanikina, who bore him a son, Alexander, who continued the creative dynasty. And Lionella Skirda married the famous director Ivan Pyriev. With Strizhenov, they met again after 13 years on the set of the film "The Last Victim", when the actress was widowed, and the actor divorced again. And since then they have never parted. Later Strizhenov admitted that all his life he loved only one woman - Lionella, and that he found happiness only in marriage with her.
But the fate of Marianna Strizhenova was dramatic. After 1988, she stopped acting in films. The money was sorely lacking, in the House of Cinema she was paid a pension of 1000 rubles. The death of her daughter finally broke her. Not having lived a year after Natalia's death, Marianna Strizhenova died.
The book of the Irish writer has never been popular in the West, but we have sold more than 5 million copies of it, and this is not surprising: How the Russian revolutionary writer inspired Ethel Lilian Voynich to create The Gadfly.
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