Hostage Znamensky: What Had to Pay for the Success of the Star of the TV Series "Connoisseurs are Investigating"

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

6 years ago, on February 13, 2014, the famous theater and film actor, People's Artist of Russia Georgy Martynyuk passed away. All-Union glory was brought to him by the role of Major Znamensky in the TV series "Connoisseurs lead the investigation." He did not part with this image for 18 years and got used to the fact that behind the scenes he was also called Pal Palych - after the name of his hero. It would seem that this is an absolute success for an actor - to earn popular love and popularity thanks to just one role, but this glory had a downside …

George's parents had nothing to do with the world of art, but his older brother became an actor and performed on the stage of the drama theater in Orenburg (Chkalov), where they then lived. The parents believed that one artist was enough in the family, and they wanted the youngest son to be a doctor. But Georgy became interested in theater as a child - he went to all the performances of the local theater and constantly listened to radio plays (there was no TV in the house). Later Martynyuk recalled: "". He himself enrolled in a children's drama club, which sometimes presented his productions on the professional stage.

After leaving school, Georgy went to Moscow and entered GITIS on the first try. Together with his friends, he often visited Mosfilm in the hope of getting at least a small role, but at first he was invited only to the crowd. But on the theater stage, he enjoyed great success: Pyotr Fomenko's performance "Seeing Off the White Nights" thundered all over Moscow. After that Martynyuk was invited to the troupe of the Orenburg Drama Theater. He was about to return to his hometown, but then he received an even more tempting offer - he was invited to the Moscow Drama Theater, today known as the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya. On its stage, the actor spent more than 50 years of his life.

The creative destiny of Georgy Martynyuk in cinema was determined by Vladimir Basov. After he shot him in the films "Silence" and "Shield and Sword" and entrusted the main role in the film "Blizzard", other directors also drew attention to the young actor. All-Union popularity came to Martynyuk at the age of 31, when he began acting in the series "Connoisseurs lead the investigation." It was conceived as a series of television performances and appeared thanks to the initiative of the Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Shchelokov, who believed that propaganda of the police activity was necessary on television in order to increase trust in it among the population and increase its prestige. However, then no one could have imagined that this project would become one of the most popular Soviet television series and would be released for 18 years.

The spouses Olga and Alexander Lavrov worked on the script for the television series. The latter himself worked as an investigator and had a good command of the material. The main roles were chosen by Georgy Martynyuk, Leonid Kanevsky and Elsa Lezhdey. From the first syllables of the names of their characters - Znamensky, Tomina and Kibrit - the word "experts" was formed, which was included in the title of the series. Getting into the image of each of the actors was so accurate that behind the scenes they soon began to be called only by the names of their on-screen heroes. In addition, all of them underwent serious training in the Ministry of Internal Affairs - they were allowed to be present during interrogations and to go out for searches and investigative experiments so that the immersion in the profession was maximum and the audience did not feel false.

The effect amazed even the actors themselves. Martynyuk talked about one case that happened during such an interrogation: "". The audience infinitely believed the connoisseurs - they were not only charming and intelligent, but also created ideal types of Soviet policemen, in whose existence they really wanted to believe. The actors were sent bags of letters asking them to sort out the complicated cases, in one of them the prisoner wrote: "".

Georgy Martynyuk's popularity grew every year. The actor recalled: "". But, as often happens in such cases, the actor became a hostage to his role - neither the directors nor the audience simply could not imagine Martynyuk in another way.

In addition, for 18 years he himself was very tired of his hero: "". The audience identified the actor with his hero, and he himself said that their main difference is that he is not a boss, a living person not without flaws, but "".

Later, the actor said that he was very grateful to Major Znamensky for his success, but it was because of him that he could not prove himself in the cinema in different roles. It so happened that his most successful role closed his way to big cinema. After that, he was not offered the main roles, and in the 1990s. the actor was completely unemployed. He said that even in theaters then there were sometimes more actors on stage than spectators in the hall. In 2002 Martynyuk again appeared on the screens in the image of Major Znamensky in the sequel to the legendary series “The Investigation is Conducted by Experts. Ten Years Later”, but at that time there were already new heroes of detective films, which were difficult to compete with, and the project was closed.

The last 10 years of his life, Georgy Martynyuk practically did not act in films, but continued to appear on the stage of the theater. He played most of the roles in the productions of his friend, actor and director Lev Durov, who spoke of him with great warmth: "".

In recent years, the actor was seriously ill, he underwent surgery, part of a lung was removed, he lay in hospitals for a long time. Unfortunately, it was not possible to save him. On February 13, 2014 Georgy Martynyuk passed away at the age of 73.

In his personal life, he also had a chance to endure many shocks: Great happiness and bitter loss of investigator Znamensky.