Marina Ladynina facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Marina Ladynina
Born	Marina Alekseyevna Ladynina (1908-06-24)June 24, 1908 Skotinino, Smolensk, Russian Empire
Died	March 10, 2003(2003-03-10) (aged 94) Moscow, Russian Federation
Resting place	Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow
Occupation	actress
Years active	1929 - 1950s
Spouse(s)	Ivan Pyryev
Awards	Stalin Prize (1941, 1942, 1926, 1948, 1951) People's Artist of the USSR (1950)

Marina Alekseyevna Ladynina (Russian: Мари́на Алексе́евна Лады́нина; born June 24, 1908, in Skotinino, Smolensk, Russian Empire – died March 10, 2003, in Moscow, Russian Federation) was a very popular Soviet film and theatre actress. She is best known for her main roles in movies like Tractor Drivers (1939), The Swine Girl and the Shepherd (1941), Six O'Clock after the War is Over (1944), Ballad of Siberia (1947), and Cossacks of the Kuban (1949). All these films were directed by her husband, Ivan Pyryev. In 1950, Ladynina received the important title of People's Artist of the USSR. She also won the Stalin State Prize five times.

Biography

Growing Up

Marina Ladynina was born in a village called Skotinino, near Smolensk. She was the oldest of four children. She spent her early years in Nazarovo, a place near Achinsk in Siberia. Her parents, Aleksey Dmitriyevich Ladynin and Maria Naumovna, were farmers. The family lived in a small wooden house, and young Marina had to do a lot of hard work around the home. In the summers, she worked on a local farm, milking cows.

As a schoolgirl, Marina loved to read. She joined her school's theater group, where her first role was Natasha in Pushkin’s play "Rusalka." She also performed regularly at local street parties. When she was a teenager, Marina became a part-time actress at the Achinsk Drama Theater. After finishing school at age sixteen, Ladynina worked as a teacher in Nazarovo. She kept acting and giving musical performances in Achinsk, but she really wanted to go to Moscow to study acting.

First, she went to Smolensk, where she met Sergey Fadeyev, an actor from the Meyerhold Theatre. He told her to try out for the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts. Luckily, her local youth committee (komsomol) sent her to Moscow to study social sciences. But instead, she went straight to the Academy. She gave a wonderful performance for the judges, who included famous people like Serafima Birman. She was accepted right away and was called "remarkably gifted," meaning she didn't have to take any more exams.

Starting Her Acting Career

In 1929, Marina Ladynina appeared in her first movie, a silent film called Do Not Enter This Town. In her second year of studies, she started working part-time at the Moscow Art Theatre. Her first role there was a nun named Taisia in a play based on Maxim Gorky's story "Egor Bulychov and Others." Gorky himself was very happy with her performance. After that, she acted in another play based on Gorky's work, called "In the World."

In 1933, Ladynina played a blind flower girl in the movie Prosperity. That same year, she graduated from the Academy and started working full-time at the Moscow Art Theatre. Both directors of the theater, Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, saw her talent. They gave her the role of Tanya in Maxim Gorky's "In the World." Stanislavsky even wrote to his sister, calling Ladynina "the future of MAT."

In 1934, directors Ivan Pravov and Olga Preobrazhenskaya cast Ladynina as a teacher named Linka in their film Enemy's Paths. This is where she met actor Ivan Lyubeznov, whom she soon married. She also met director Ivan Pyryev there. Another film she starred in, The Post at the Devil's Ford (1936), was not released because it was considered "ideologically wrong."

Her theater director, Nemirovich-Danchenko, told her, "Of course, you should make movies for money. Just don't forget that you belong to us, and never leave the theater for good." Looking back, she didn't follow this advice and later wished she had. However, there were reasons for this. During a difficult time in the Soviet Union, many theaters closed. Actors rushed to the Moscow Art Theatre, where Stanislavski was losing his influence, and Ladynina felt less and less comfortable there.

Becoming a Film Star

In 1936, Marina Ladynina was called to a government office (NKVD) to answer questions about some of her former colleagues. Since her answers weren't "useful," the officer told her to forget about theater and warned her that she might get into trouble herself. Her theater group moved to Rostov-on-Don, leaving Ladynina without a job or money. For several months, she worked as a cleaner to earn a living. Then, she met film director Ivan Pyryev again at a friend's house. He proposed, and they got married in 1936.

Their marriage was very successful for their careers. In 1937, Pyryev convinced Ladynina to leave the theater and took her to Kiev to film Rich Bride. He told her, "From now on, only cinema matters. We'll work without any breaks." Rich Bride caused some problems at first. The film bosses in Ukraine called it "nationalistic" and said the filmmakers were making fun of the Ukrainian language. The head of the Ukrainian film industry even stopped the film from being released. However, he was later arrested. A new official sent the film to Moscow for approval. Stalin liked it a lot, and this secured the future success of Pyryev and Ladynina as a team. In 1939, both the director and his leading actress received the Order of Lenin for the film. Everyone seemed happy, except for Nemirovich-Danchenko, who, after seeing The Rich Bride, said Pyryev was "ruining a good actress."

Reaching Stardom

To cast his wife in Tractor Drivers (1939), Pyryev had to convince the head of the Soviet Cinema committee, who didn't want Ladynina to play the tractor brigadier Maryana Bazhan. Pyryev won. The director later said, "Marina had to speed across the steppe on a motorcycle, ride a tractor... She did all this so professionally, as if she had been driving tractors her whole life." This film, which also helped actor Boris Andreev become famous, made both husband and wife very well-known. The Soviet newspapers praised Pyryev as "a father of the kolkhoz-based musical comedy," and Ladynina became the first big star of this unique Soviet movie style.

Pyryev had promised his wife he would never give her a day of rest, and he kept that promise. After Tractor Drivers, she asked him directly, "Am I supposed to play farm women for the rest of my life?" He said he would think about it and soon gave her the script for Sweetheart. This movie, where Ladynina played Varya Lugina, a factory worker in Moscow who leaves her jealous husband, was not very popular. So, Pyryev went back to making the kind of films he was good at.

In February 1941, Pyryev started filming The Swine Girl and the Shepherd. But work had to stop in June when World War II began, and most of the actors joined the Red Army. The movie was filmed in the empty Mosfilm studios and came out in November 1941. Later, some critics called it a simple "country story," but audiences loved the romantic tale of a Russian country girl from Vologda (played by Ladynina) and Musaib, a shepherd from the Caucasus (played by Vladimir Zeldin). This movie, which celebrated the friendship between different Soviet peoples, became very important and popular among soldiers fighting against the Nazis.

Two other films, Konstantin Yudin's comedy Antosha Rybkin and Pyryev's drama The Raikom Secretary (both from 1942), were not very popular. But the sweet movie Six O'Clock after the War is Over (1944), with Ladynina as Varya Pankova, a kindergarten teacher in Moscow, was a huge hit. Another successful film, Ballad of Siberia (1947), was the third most popular movie at the box office in 1948. This musical comedy, with Ladynina as singer Natasha Malinina, seemed to ask serious questions. However, Sergey Eisenstein, a famous director, called it "Russian folk art imported from Czechoslovakia" (because the film was shot there).

In Cossacks of the Kuban (1949), Ladynina played a mature woman for the first time, not a naive young girl. The role of Galina Peresvetova, the strong but kind leader of a collective farm, was so challenging that the actress almost quit. Some people thought that the younger actress Klara Luchko was more charming in the film. However, it was this hit movie that earned Ladynina the important title of People's Artist of the USSR. Ladynina knew that this "masterpiece of Socialist realism" didn't show the real Soviet life, but she still loved it. In one of her last interviews, she said, "Even today I get letters from people thanking me. They are still enchanted by those comedy films... which, I believe, had every right to be as far from harsh reality as a fairytale. We truly believed we 'were born to make fairytales real,' and we tried our best."

Now very famous, Ladynina started to get tired of always playing the same type of happy and determined Soviet country girl. No other director thought of asking her to play anything different; she was seen as "a Pyryev actress." The only exception was Igor Savchenko, who invited Ladynina to play a countess in his film Taras Shevtchenko (1951). She took the chance, but all her scenes were cut by the censors. They apparently didn't like how her character sympathized with Taras instead of "hating him, as a class enemy."

Later Years and Passing

In 1954, a new rule came out that said Soviet film directors could not cast their own wives in movies. The role of Olga Kalmykova in Pyryev's Proof of Loyalty (1954) was Ladynina's last film. She divorced Pyryev, who was 58 and had fallen in love with a young actress named Lyudmila Marchenko. Marina found herself alone. Some directors were told by her ex-husband to ignore her, and for others, she was too much a symbol of the Stalin era. No theater wanted to hire a former superstar. She joined the Cinema Actors Theatre but was later asked to leave to make room for more "active" actresses. Ladynina tried to become a singer, taking lessons from a famous teacher, but it didn't work out. In 1965, Nikita Mikhalkov invited her to act in his movie project about Lermontov, but the film was never made.

In her later years, Ladynina rarely gave interviews and refused to talk about her life with Ivan Pyryev. In 1998, she received the Nika Award ("For Honesty and Dignity") and got a standing ovation from the audience. Ladynina's only televised interview came out not long before her 95th birthday.

Marina Ladynina died from a heart attack on March 10, 2003. She is buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Personal Life

Marina Ladynina married her first husband, actor Ivan Lyubeznov, in 1935. Their marriage was short. In the same year, while filming The Enemy’s Path, she met the 33-year-old film director Ivan Pyryev. She married him in 1936. Their only son, Andrey Ladynin (1938-2011), later became a film director. The couple divorced after it became known that 58-year-old Pyryev was dating 19-year-old actress Lyudmila Marchenko.

Legacy

Marina Ladynina's career was not very long, and she mostly played similar roles. Still, she became one of the two biggest female movie stars in the Soviet Union, along with Lyubov Orlova, according to film critic Valery Kichin. She won five State Prizes for five of her most famous films. This was a record in Soviet cinema and showed how much the authorities valued her work. But she was also deeply loved by ordinary people, especially in the countryside. Marina Ladynina was so popular that for a while, at the beginning of Moscow's Gorky Street, two huge portraits hung on a building: one of Ladynina and one of Stalin.

Unlike Lyubov Orlova, Marina Ladynina was an actress who fit perfectly into the folk-style musical comedies that Pyryev created. "She represented happiness itself, but nobody knew what kind of person she was in real life. In fact, nobody ever wanted to know her, because in her last years she was tragically lonely," said Kichin.

Marina Ladynina, who loved the stage, spent the last fifty years of her life away from it, waiting for a phone call that never came. Unexpectedly, at age 90, she received the Nika Award ("For Honour and Dignity"), and the audience in the Cinema House gave her a standing ovation. This was her last big moment, after which there was silence again. Kichin concluded, "At the age of 95, Marina Ladynina died as a 'rich bride' of Soviet cinema: neither we nor she herself had a chance to discover the true extent of her talent."

Awards

• 1938 - Order of Lenin for The Rich Bride (1937)
• 1941 - Stalin's Prize (1st degree) - for her role as Maryana Bezhan in Tractor Drivers (1939)
• 1942 - Stalin Prize (2nd degree) - for her role as Glasha Novikova in The Swine Girl and the Shepherd (1941)
• 1946 - Stalin's Prize (2nd degree) - for her role as Varya Pankova in Six O’Clock in the Evening After the War (1944)
• 1948 - Stalin's Prize (1st degree) - for her role as Natasha Malinina in Ballad of Siberia (1947)
• 1950 - People's Artist of the USSR award
• 1951 - Stalin Prize (2nd degree) - for her role as Galina Ermolayevna Peresvetova in Cossacks of the Kuban (1949)
• 1983 - Order of Friendship of Peoples
• 1992 - Special prize "For the Outstanding Input into the Slavic Cinema" at the First Moscow festival The Golden Knight (Zolotoy vityaz).
• Sozvesdye (Constellation) award. For lifetime achievements.
• 1997 – Nika Award, For Honour and Dignity
• 1998 - Order of Honour. Lifetime achievements.
• 2002 - The special President's Award. Lifetime achievements.

Selected Filmography

• 1934 - Enemy's Paths (Vrazhji tropy). Linka, the school teacher
• 1936 - The Rich Bride (Bogataya nevesta). Marinka, Naum's granddaughter
• 1939 - Tractor Drivers (Traktoristy). Brigadier Maryana Bazhan
• 1940 - Sweetheart (Lyubimaya devushka). Varya Lugina, a Moscow industrial worker
• 1941 - They Met in Moscow
• 1941 - The Swine Girl and the Shepherd (Svinarka y pastukh). Glasha Novikova
• 1942 - The Raikom Secretary (Sekretar raikoma). Natasha
• 1942 - Antosha Rybkin. Actress Larisa Semyonovna
• 1944 - Six O'Clock after the War is Over (V shest chasov vetchera posle voiny). Varya Pankova, the kindergarten teacher
• 1947 - Ballad of Siberia (Skazaniye o zemle Sibirskoy). The singer Natasha Malinina
• 1949 - Cossacks of the Kuban (Kubanskiye kazaki). Galina Peresvetova, the kolkhoz director
• 1954 - The Proof of Loyalty (Ispytaniue vernosti). Olga Kalmykova
• 1954 - Devotion

See also

In Spanish: Marina Ladínina para niños