Translated material
Georgy Zhzhenov died
Fortunately, Zhzhenov lived a long life - he himself said that he lived for himself and his two brothers who died early. Everyone knows that he served 14 years of his 90 on ridiculous charges (from 1938 to 1945 and from 1949 to 1954). He spent two years in St. Petersburg “Kresty” and panned for gold in Kolyma. Life was divided into three parts. The first is an eccentric comedy at a circus school, filming in crowd scenes, an episode in the famous “Chapaev”, a successful start to a career. So much so that he did not believe in the danger, and when his family was deported to Kazakhstan, he refused to go into exile - apparently, he considered that the new roles were too important to just give up everything like that. However, the exile did not save brother Boris. But fate saved Zhzhenov, he passed all the tests and returned to his profession at the age of forty as a man, behind whose back was such a steep route that the frivolous theater people bowed in respect. However, Zhzhenov was also of a cool disposition. I didn’t like the role in the play “Silence” - he refused to play it, and this displeased the chief director of the Lensovet Theater and quit. He went to Moscow, to the Mossovet Theater, to play Leo Tolstoy - but he didn’t have to, Furtseva banned the play. I acted in films partly out of grief - the roles in the theater were not the ones I dreamed of - I wanted to play Protasov, even if it was in line, but they didn’t let me. Although there is probably no actor in the world who would believe that he succeeded in everything and was appreciated fairly. At the end of his life, Zhzhenov even allowed himself to complain: “I only played what Oleg Efremov, Mikhail Ulyanov and also Evgeny Matveev could not digest.” He lamented that “Three Poplars on Plyushchikha”, “The Last Inch”, “White Bim” were filmed without him...
However, what was possible was enough. The public fell in love with Zhzhenov after “Beware of the Car,” where at the age of 49 he played the small role of a noble traffic inspector. After her, a flurry of offers rained down on Zhzhenov, and he played, sometimes eight roles a year. His heroes always had the stamp of authenticity and significance, which was mercilessly exploited by the directors of many mediocre films. And Zhzhenov was not a social hero, as many thought, but a romantic one. In Veniamin Dorman’s films “The Resident’s Mistake” and “The Resident’s Fate,” he played a man with a difficult fate, Zarokov-Tulev. Then, in 1971, there was Willie Stark in the TV movie All the King's Men. And in 1980, “The Crew” by Alexander Mitta was released, where Zhzhenov played the noble pilot Timchenko. The actor was 65 at the time.
But no matter what Georgy Zhzhenov played, his role was always smaller than himself; by old age, he already existed completely separately from the roles - an ideal hero for the award “For Honor and Dignity.” When perestroika began, I began to write autobiographical prose and again regretted “that writing was not the most important place in my life...”. He was friends with Viktor Astafiev and appreciated his attitude towards himself as a writer: “We both knew the wrong side of life well: I from the camp, he from the war.” The Vagrius publishing house published a book of his memoirs, “Walking on the Beech Trees.”
There have been many awards in Zhzhenov’s life lately; in 2000, they even erected a two-meter monument to him in Chelyabinsk. He came and thanked me, but was dissatisfied: “This is such an anecdotal thing. The mayor there, apparently, was pursuing some interests of his own; he was running at the time, and so he decided to please. For me, the story was amazing. And unpleasant." And he himself said that later the nose of the monument was knocked off... In general, he knew both the price of fame and the place of real values.
And at the end of his life he became a film hero - the six-part television film “Georgy Zhzhenov. Russian Cross” was filmed by documentarian Sergei Miroshnichenko. Probably now it will be shown on TV again.