Lyudmila Tselikovskaya

Lyudmila Vasilyevna Tselikovskaya (Russian: Людмила Васильевна Целиковская, September 8, 1919, Astrakhan, Soviet Russia, - July 4, 1992, Moscow, Russian Federation) was a Soviet film and theatre actress. Immensely popular in the 1940s due to parts in films like Hearts of the Four (1941-1944), Anton Ivanovich Gets Angry (1941), The Aerial Cabman (1943), Ivan the Terrible (1943), Twins (1945) and The Busy Estate (1946), she had a troubled artistic career and received her People's Artist of the RSFSR title only in 1963. Allegedly disliked personally by Stalin, during the Khrushchev's era Tselikovskaya was shied by directors as a symbol of the Stalinist era's Soviet film. For 15 years Tselikovskaya was a partner of Yuri Lyubimov, which never made her life easier, not in the Vakhtangov Theatre, with an orthodox Communist Mikhail Ulyanov at the helm. Tselikovskaya got little by way of laurels from the Soviet officialdom (and has been notoriously denied the People's Artist of the USSR title, a token of the ideological approval) but was admired by general public as a true legend of the Soviet War time cinema.

Biography

Lyudmila Tselikovskaya was born in a musical family. Her father, a theatre musical producer, later went to conduct the Bolshoy Theatre orchestra. Her mother, and opera singer, also performed in the Bolshoy in the late 1920s. In 1925 the family moved from Astrakhan to Moscow where the girl, who had the perfect pitch, joined the piano class of the prestigious Gnesins Musical school. Despite her parents' resistance, she preferred to embark upon the career of an actress and in 1937 enrolled into the Shchukin Theatre Institute. While still a student, she joined the staff of the Moscow Vakhtangov Theatre, making her debut on stage as Clarice in Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni.

In 1938 Tselikovskaya debuted on the big screen as a Young Pioneer leader Valya in Young Captains. Film director Konstantin Yudin noticed the young actress and invited her to join the cast of his Hearts of the Four comedy, where she played Shura Murashova. As the War broke out, the film had to be shelved. Released in 1945, it had great success, landing at No.5 in that year's Soviet box-office charts. Mass popularity, though, came to her two years earlier, with The Aerial Cabman, the film the script of which Valentin Katayev has written exceptionally for her. While shooting the film, Tselikovskaya fell in love with fellow actor Mikhail Zharov. In 1943, now husband and wife, the pair spent several months at the frontline, performing before Soviet soldiers and officers of the General Gromov's 3rd Air Army to the great delight of the fighters who admired the tandem and the film they starred in.

After the Aerial Cabman’s premiere Tselikovskaya joined the cast of Sergei Eisenstein's historical epic Ivan the Terrible where she played Tsarina Anastasiya, the part initially intended for Galina Ulanova. All the film's leading actors were awarded with the Stalin Prize, with Tselikovskaya as an exception. "The unlikeliest Tsarina", Stalin reportedly pronounced, while crossing her name out. The film brought Tselikovskaya nothing but trouble: she seriously damaged her eyes' crystalline lenses during one session and temporarily lost her job at the Vakhtangov Theatre where they've lost all patience with an ever absent actress. "I have never been supported by the government. Besides, Alexandrov's comedies were getting all the praise, while Konstantin Yudin's films were always criticized - such was the tendency for some reason. I've always felt that for our political leadership I was a second-rate actress. But common people loved me, and that was giving me strength," Tselikovskaya was saying later.

After the War Tselikovskaya appeared in Konstantin Yudin's Twins (1945) and The Busy Estate which Zharov wrote and directed specifically for his wife. The War-time romantic comedy in which Tselikovskaya played corporal Tonya, pestered by suitors, all of them heroic pilots, was a star-studded affair (with Zharov as sergeant major Semibaba and Sergey Filippov a German spy) but received cold shoulder from critics who accused its makers of 'bad taste pandering' and 'the lack of progressive ideas'. Nevertheless it became No.7 most popular film of 1946 in the USSR.

Zinochka, a sister of mercy in Aleksandr Stolper's adaptation of Boris Polevoy's The Tale of a Proper Man (1948), could have marked a turning point in Tselikovskaya's career in film, but her strong dramatic performance wasn't noticed by the Soviet directors. They were willing only to exploit her naive ingénue image, the actress was rejecting one script after another and as a result for 9 years had no roles at all. Her most significant theatre works of this period were Denise de Flavigny (Mam'zelle Nitouche), Tsarina Maria Nagaya (The Great Tsar, Vladimir Solovyov's play) and Geneura (Deep Roots, by James Gow and Arnaud d'Usseau).

In the late 1940s Tselikovskaya found herself in deep personal trouble. Her fourth husband, a successful Soviet architect Karo Alabyan (whom she married in 1948, after divorcing Zharov), suddenly fell out of favour with Lavrenty Beria and lost his job and his home too, so until 1953 the couple had to live at their friends and relatives'. Tselikovskaya best-known film of the 1950s was Samson Samsonov's The Cricket (after Anton Chekhov's short story "Poprygunya") in which she was cast as Olga, Dymov's wife. In 1955 at the Venice Film Festival it was voted the Best Foreign Film and received the Silver Lion award. Alabyan's death in 1959 marked the beginning of another lean period for Tselikovskaya, which, despite her getting the People's Artist of the RSFSR title in 1963, ended only with her death.[2]

In the early 1960s she became the partner of theatre director Yuri Lyubimov. "I know for sure that it was due to this liaison that she's been denied the People's Artist of the USSR title. The Theatre several times came out with the suggestion, but in the higher spheres the fact that she was Lyubimov's civil wife was enough to warrant a rejection," Tselikovskaya's son Alexander Alabyan said later. After Mikhail Ulyanov became the Vakhtangov Theatre's director, the actress stopped getting roles at all, for the very same reason of being a semi-wife of a semi-dissident. One of her last film roles was that of Raisa Gurmyzhskaya in the adaptation of Alexander Ostrovsky's The Forest. On July 6, 1992, Lyudmila Tselikovskaya died of cancer. She was buried at the Novodevichye Cemetery, next to Karo Alabyan's grave.

Private life

Lyudmila Tselikovskaya first married while a second year theatre college student; her spouse was the fellow student Yuri Alexev-Meskhiev. Her second husband was writer Boris Voytekhov. In Alma-Ata, while shooting The Aerial Cabman, Tselikovskaya fell in love with actor Mikhail Zharov, then a married man. Later Tselikovskaya referred to her first two marriages as 'fallacies of youth', while speaking of Zharov with great warmth. "He loved me stronger than everybody, while I loved Alabyan more of them all," she later confessed.

Tselikovskaya's third marriage lasted five years. After the divorce, she married architect Karo Alabyan in 1948 and a year later gave birth to Alexander, her only child. The following several years were harsh for the family after Alabyan, having fallen out of favour with Beria, has lost both his job and his Moscow flat. In 1959 Tselikovskaya's forth husband died of cancer.

Lyudmila Tselikovskaya and Yuri Lyubimov's relationship started in the early 1960s and lasted for 15 years. According to Alexander Alabyan, Lyubimov, "the utter egotist, abandoned his wife who’s given him best years of her life". Other sources have it that it was Tselikovskaya who’s given him the marching orders. Not long before her death the actress told her son: "To live next to a genius one has to be dushechka, while I'm the opposite - always having to have my own way. Soon we started to irritate one another... Apparently I was expected to sing paens to Yuri Petrovich, which was not in my line at all. Once he told me: "When we part there'll be a celebration in your home." And he proved to be right. This celebration continues. Still, I’d say, we’ve had our good times and we parted well." Still, there's been much made of the fact that when Tselikovskaya died, Lyubimov failed to either appear at the funeral, or send a note of condolence.

Filmography

• Young Captains (Molodye kapitany, 1939, Valya, the Pioneer leader)
• Hearts of the Four (Serdtsa tchetyryokh, 1941, Shura Murashova)
• Anton Ivanovich Gets Angry (Anton Ivanovich serditsya, 1941, Sima Voronova)
• The Aerial Cabman (Vozdushny izvozchik, 1943, Natasha Kulikova)
• Ivan The Terrible (Ivan Grozny, 1943, Tsarina Anastasiya Romanovna)
• Twins (Bliznetsy, 1945, Lyuba Karasyova)
• The Busy Estate (Bespokoynoye khozyaistvo, 1946, corporal Tonya Lalmykova)
• The Tale of a Real Man (Povest o nastoyashchem tcheloveke, 1948, Zinochka)
• Karandash on Ice (Karandash na ldu, 1948)
• We’ve Met Somewhere (My s vami kogda-to vstrechalys, 1954, Larisa Levkoyeva)
• The Cricket (Poprygunja, 1955, Olga Dymova)
• Much Ado About Nothing (Mnogo shuma iz nichevo, 1956, Beatrice)
• Family as Usual (Semya kak semya, 1970, Korobova)
• Dames and Hussars (Damy i gusary, 1976, Anelya)
• Classmates (Odnokashniki, 1978, Popovskaya)
• The Forest (Les, 1980, Raisa Gurmyzhskaya)
• The Fantastic Bet (Neveroyatnoye pari, 1984, Madam Brykovich)
• The Portrait (Portret, 1987, a stout dame)
• Repetitor (1987, Ksenya Zamyatina)