Vera Vasilievna Cholodnaya
Vera Vasilyevna Cholodnaja , born as Vera Levtschenko , (born August 5, 1893 in Poltava , Russian Empire ; † February 16, 1919 in Odessa , Ukrainian People's Republic ) was a Ukrainian actress, one of the leading stars of cinema in the Russian Empire.
Life
The early years
Born Vera Levchenko, she came to Moscow at the age of two, where she received ballet training at the Bolshoi Theater a few years later . Only 17 years old, Levchenko married the sports journalist and law student Vladimir Cholodnij, who at that time had also made a name for himself as one of the first Russian racing drivers. Their daughter Evgenija was born in 1912, and the couple adopted another child the following year.
In theater and film
In 1908, after going to the theater, the 15-year-old decided to become an actress. Vera Cholodnaja, as she called herself from then on, got her first film role in 1914 through the well-known director Vladimir Gardin . When the director Yevgeny Bauer was looking for the leading actress for his film "Pesn Torzestvujushchey Lyubwi" the following year, he met Vera Cholodnaya and was enthusiastic about her from the start. She quickly turned film on film, mostly dramas and melodramas, in which she initially imitated the acting style of Asta Nielsen . During those difficult years, when the Russian population suffered greatly from the hardships inflicted by the First World War , Vera Kholodnaya became one of the most popular and respected film stars of her time.
Her collaboration with Bauer's colleague Pyotr Tschardynin , with whom she and others, brought her particular success . a. shot the films “ Miraschi ” (1916), “ U kimani ” (1917) and “ Moltschi, grust, moltschi ” (1918), all of which were crowd- pleasers and box-office fillers . She has also appeared in front of the camera several times for film adaptations of works by important Russian writers, including “ The Living Corpse ” (Schiwoi trup) by Lev Tolstoy . When she saw the important theater maker Konstantin Stanislavski in this film , he invited Cholodnaya to come to the Moscow Art Theater , which he directed .
The end
At that time, in the winter of 1918/19, Vera Cholodnaya, who had decided to leave Moscow with its Bolshevik cultural bureaucrats and move to Odessa, fell seriously ill. A little later, the brunette artist died in February 1919 of the consequences of the Spanish flu , which, which broke out in 1918, had also spread to Russia, which had been shaken by the turmoil of civil war . She was only 25 years old. Emerging rumors that the French ambassador in Soviet Russia they poisoned allegedly because he assumed that his mistress Vera Kholodnaya him on behalf of the Bolsheviks spying , can not be verified by evidence,.
Cholodnaja's funeral in 1919 was a major event that was attended by the public with great sympathy and that her last artistic companion, Pyotr Tschardynin, had captured on celluloid.
A large part of Vera Cholodnaja's films - she shot over 40 productions in just four years - is considered lost.
Filmography (small selection)
- 1914: Anna Karenina
- 1915: Pesn torschestwujuschtschei ljubvi
- 1915: Deti weka
- 1916: Miraschi
- 1916: Schisn sa schisn
- 1917: U kamina
- 1917: Istersannije duschu
- 1917: Tschelowek zwer
- 1918: Moltschi, grust, Moltschi
- 1918: The living corpse (Schiwoj trup)
- 1918: Posledneje tango
- 1919: Asra
- 1919: Kira Subowa
Web links
- Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Vera Cholodnaja on Russia Beyond the Headlines
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry on Vera Cholodnaja in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ; accessed on July 23, 2018 (Ukrainian)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cholodnaja, Vera Vasilievna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Levchenko, Wera (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian cinema actress |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 5, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Poltava , Russian Empire |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 16, 1919 |
| Place of death | Odessa , Ukrainian People's Republic |