Lyubov Petrovna Orlova ( ; – 26 January 1975) was a Soviet and Russian actress, singer, dancer, and People's Artist of the USSR (1950).
Life and career
Lyubov Orlova was born to a family of Russian hereditary nobles on her maternal side and gentry on her paternal side in Zvenigorod, 60 km from Moscow, then lived with her parents and older sister in Yaroslavl. Her acting and singing talents were evident very early on, but her noble parents considered acting a disgraceful career and directed her towards classical music. There she began to study music. In 1914, after her father left for the front, her mother Evgenia Nikolaevna and her daughters settled in Moscow, where the sisters entered the gymnasium. The Orlovs spent the difficult years of the Civil War in Voskresensk because their mother's sister lived here. The family subsisted on funds from the sale of milk which was given by the aunt's cow. Lyuba and Nonna drove nearly a hundred kilometers to Moscow, and then went home, with heavy cans. Hence comes the legend of the ugly hands which Orlova was so shy about. Her first and last names are meaningful words in Russian: любовь means "love", and Орлова is the feminine form of орлов "eagle's".
When she was seven, Fyodor Shalyapin predicted her future as a famous actress. In 1919–1922, she studied as a piano student at the Moscow Conservatory under Karl Kipp but did not graduate because she had to work as a music teacher and a pianist-illustrator of silent films in movie theaters () to support her parents. In 1925, she has graduated from the Moscow Theatre College, choreography department. Her first husband, a Soviet economist, Andrei Berzin, was arrested in 1930. However, this did not affect her career. Dmitri Shcheglov, a biography author, wrote in Love and Mask ('Lyubov i maska', 1997): "As an eternal irony and foresight of fate, the best performer of the roles of house servants and enthusiasts of Communist labor was a descendant of ten Russian Orthodox saints. Two of them, Olga, the Grand Princess of Kiev, and Vladimir, the Grand Prince of Kiev, are among the Equal-to-apostles... Red Eagle in an azure-golden field, the House of Orlov's coat of arms, is also present on the Bezhetsk clan branch the actress belonged to..." The Orlov family was partly saved from the worst form of repression, camps or deportation, and the Bolshevik "redistribution of property" only because even before the Revolution, her father Peter had lost all three of his estates at cards, and therefore there was practically nothing to take away. However, Orlova's father, an engineer and class enemy, was officially banned as an employee.
In September 1926, she was hired as a choir singer by the Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre Music Studio finally deciding to become an actress, not a pianist. She received her first solo role in November, the same year. Her quick promotion was fueled by Olga Baclanova's sudden departure from Russia and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko's eye for this type of female beauty. In 1932, she received her first leading roles in La Périchole and Les cloches de Corneville. Despite her success with the public, vocal and acting training in a theatre with , Orlova wasn't noticed by the press and was criticized by her colleagues for not having a real singing voice (Faina Ranevskaya, her close friend, used to say "Orlova is a gorgeous actress for sure. But her voice! When she sings it sounds like somebody is urinating in an empty bucket."Her Soviet Shiningness (in Russian) Kommersant Dengi, January 24, 2005, no. 3, page 63.) However, Orlova had her "trick". Remembering her student years (and she studied at the choreography department of the Moscow Theater College named after A.V. Lunacharsky, now - GITIS), she decided to bring herself back to her previous form and perform Serpoletta's entrance aria on pointe. Alexander Hort, writer, wrote: "The audience was smitten: while dancing, Serpoletta stood up on pointe shoes, so graceful, airy, romantic! And Orlova made a tactically verified move, she took the bull by the horns: the very first vocal number, Serpoletta's verses 'What a pity that an unsettling case pushed me to a different path!' she performed, dancing on her fingers." In the future, no one was able to repeat this trick, it has stayed as a semi-legendary fact of history.
In 1933, she met the then-unknown director Grigory Alexandrov, who was looking for actors for his film Jolly Fellows (1934). The two began a relationship and later married. Orlova's performance in this comedy, very popular in the USSR, earned the young star the sympathy of Stalin and the title "Honorable actor of the RSFSR". It had caused the first wave of the so-called "Orlova syndrome", a Soviet psychiatric term describing women who wanted to be like Orlova. They diligently lightened their hair and self-styled themselves as relatives to the idol. According to her relatives, Orlova secretly loathed Joseph Stalin, reacting to the war-winning dictator's death with the words: "Finally, this scum is dead". Her critics, including Sergei Eisenstein, had blamed the musician-turned-actress for ruining the serious career of Alexandrov. Despite her efforts, Orlova didn't have a reputation of a serious drama actress, moreover, she was intentionally overplaying her film roles and didn't stop her constant touring as a singer. Her haters credited her success to the marriage of convenience and Stalin protection.
In the next few years she starred in four popular movies which also became instant Soviet classics: Circus (1936), Volga-Volga (1938), Tanya (1940), and Springtime (1947). She was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941. In 1950, she became the first woman to receive the title of the People's Artist of the USSR exclusively for her cinematic works. After that, she switched to playing in theatre productions of Yuri Zavadsky's company. Her most famous roles included Nora - Nora, Dear Liar - Patrick Campbell, Strange Mrs. Savage - Mrs. Ethel Savage. But her most acclaimed performance was a title role in Lizzie MacKay (Russian title for The Respectful Prostitute). Jean-Paul Sartre was present on a jubilee 400th show in 1962, saying: "I was especially impressed by Lyubov Orlova's talented performance. After the show, I told her I've been delighted by her performance. It was not an empty compliment. Lyubov Orlova is really the best of all LizzieMacKay performers I know."
From 1928 until her death she was constantly touring as a singer with her pianist Leo Mironov (). Her early repertoire included classical songs by Glinka, Mussorgsky, Dargomyzhsky and Tchaikovsky. During the Great Patriotic War, she toured more than 50,000 kilometers along the front line, with her concerts based on Isaak Dunayevsky songs from her movies. For all of her career, she was banned from making the records of her songs and performing on television, supposedly because of her "backstage war" with Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Leonid Utesov's choice of interest for Jolly Fellows. Ivan Kozlovsky especially regretted the absence of recordings of his own duets with Orlova.
Awards and honours Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1935) People's Artist of the RSFSR (5.11.1947) People's Artist of the USSR (6.03.1950) Stalin Prize, first class 1941 — for the role 'Marion Dixon' in the film Circus (1936) and the role 'Arrow' in the film Volga-Volga (1938) 1950 — for the role 'an American journalist Jeannette Sherwood' in the film Encounter at the Elbe (1949) Order of Lenin (1.02.1939) Orders of the Red Banner of Labour (1.04.1938, 4.11.1967) Medal "For the Defence of the Caucasus" (1944) Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945) Medal "In Commemoration of the 800th Anniversary of Moscow" (1947) Medal "For the Development of Virgin Lands" For Valiant Labour – Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1970) Anniversary badge "XX Years of Soviet Cinematography" (1940) VIII Venice Film Festival (1947, Special Prize for the best female role in Springtime (shared with Ingrid Bergman). IV International Film Festival in Mariánské Lázně (1949, Peace Prize for the film Encounter at the Elbe) Certificate of honor from the Soviet Peace Committee (1960)
Personal relationships
In 1926 or, according to her grandniece Nonna Golikova, in 1921, Lyubov Orlova married a Soviet economist Andrei Berzin (1893-1951), the deputy head of the administrative and financial department for the People's Commissariat of Agriculture. Berzin supported not only Orlova, but her parents, and older sister, all of them also moved to his place. Orlova had married to save her relatives from death but she absolutely didn't love her husband and had an abortion or a miscarriage that, highly likely, had left her barren for the rest of her life. Berzin has understood and accepted that asking her to file for divorce and save herself from the inevitable labor camps or deportation, as both the wife of enemy of the people and the daughter of class enemy, just before his next arrest by NKVD. She had agreed. After that, Lyubov and all of her relatives had to move from Berzin's gorgeous apartment in the center of Moscow.
In 1931, Orlova became a partner of a 'German specialist', engineer or businessman, named Franz. Nothing more is known about him. Their romance developed for about a year. After her performances, a foreign admirer picked the actress in a black Mercedes. Franz bought Orlova expensive foreign outfits that arouse the envy of all women, especially in a theatre. Orlova moved to her beloved in the Metropol hotel, where he lived in a luxurious room. When Lyubov Orlova was invited to shoot Jolly Fellows, which took place in Gagra, Franz went with her. At that time, Lyuba was already familiar with Grigory Alexandrov, then separated for many years from his wife, actress Olga Ivanova. Olga and Grigory had a son named Douglas (1925-1978) but at that time she was in relationships with the famous actor Boris Tiomkin. In Gagra, Orlova's affection for Aleksandrov became obvious. She had explained the situation to Franz and he left, first for Moscow and then for his homeland. Faina Ranevskaya remembered in 1982: "Don't you know how handsome Aleksandrov, Lyubochka's director, friend, husband, used to be? He was handsome like Antinous even though I've never seen Antinous personally. Like Philemon and Baucis, they loved each other.".
In January 1934, or, according to a different archive source, in 1937, Orlova married Aleksandrov. However, because of the couple's suspicious lack of children and Aleksandrov's unclear relationships and painful breakup with Sergei Eisenstein, for the many decades, a lot of researchers have perceived Orlova as "a beard" to conceal Aleksandrov's bisexuality in exchange for the richer career opportunities. Later in life, Aleksandrov had answered about his wife's lack of children, according to his relative, the following: "In the beginning, she didn't want, and later she couldn't".