Valentina Serova

December 23, 1917 (according to other sources, February 10, 1919), Valentina Serova, a star of Soviet cinema was born.

Personal business

Valentina Vasilievna Serova (nee Polukova, 1917/1919 - 1975) was born in Kharkov, according to her daughter - February 10, 1919. Mother Serova is the theater actress Claudia Polukova, father is Vasily Polukov (Polosh), a hydrologist. The couple divorced when Valentina was about three years old, later the father of the actress of the repressed to school, she was brought up by his parents on the Vakinka farm (now it is part of the city of Valki of the Kharkov region). When the girl was six years old, her mother took her to Moscow, where at that time she played in the studio of the Maly Theater.

At the age of about 10 years, Serova began to participate in the studio's performances - her debut was the role of the son of the main character in the production of “The time” based on the play by Romain Rollan.

“Valya wanted to become an artist so much that at the age of fourteen [1933] she decided to go to study at a theater technical school. But they took there only from sixteen! Then she cleaned the metric, fixing her year of birth at the 1917th, ”said Maria Simonova, daughter of Serova.

Thus, on December 23, 1917, you can consider the birthday of Serova as an actress.

In 1933-1934, Valentina studied at the Central College of Theater Arts, where her mother taught.

In 1934 she made her debut in the cinema, starring in a small role in the film "Nightingale-Solovushka"; The episode with Serova did not enter the film.

After graduating from the technical school, she entered the Central Theater of Working Youth (now Lenkom), where she worked from 1933 to 1950 and in 1959-1964.

The first (civilian) husband Serova was the actor of her theater, Valentin Polyakov, soon they parted.

On May 3, 1938, Valentina Polukova met with the pilot, the hero of the Civil War in Spain Anatoly Serov. On May 11, they got married. Exactly a year later, on May 11, 1939, during a training flight, Anatoly Serov crashed along with the famous pilot Polina Osipenko . In September of the same year, Serova was born a son, who was named Anatoly in honor of the deceased father.

In 1939, the film “Girl with Character” with Serova in the title role was released on the screens. The actress instantly became one of the most popular in the country.

The classic of Soviet cinema also became the following role of Serova - she played paired with Lyudmila Tselikovskaya in the 1940 picture of the “heart of four” (the film was released in 1945).

During the war, Serova played one of the main roles in the film “Wait for Me” based on the play by Konstantin Simonov. In addition, in the 1930s-1940s, she was the leading actress of the Lenkom, where she played in the performances “Zykov”, “How Steel”, “Man from our City”, “Sirano de Bergerak” and many others.

Back in 1940, Serova began to meet with a young poet and playwright Konstantin Simonov. For the first time, he saw the actress in the play “Zykovs” according to Gorky, she played in the stop based on his play “The Story of One Love”. For the sake of actress, Simonov left his wife and little son, although Serova herself at first did not feel such strong feelings for him.

You told me "I love"

But this is at night, through the teeth.

And in the morning the bitter "I endure"

Barely held their lips.

... I knew you, you did not lie,

You wanted to love me

You could lie at night only at night

When the body rules the soul , ”wrote about actress Simonov.

Serova married him in the summer of 1943. After the war, the playwright became the editor -in -chief of the New World magazine, the secretary of the board of the Writers Union and the deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

In 1950, the couple had a daughter Maria, in 1957 the couple broke up.

Back in the late 1940s, Serova was addicted to alcohol, this destroyed her relationship with her relatives and an acting career.

After the birth of her daughter, she did not return to Lenkom, settling at Simonov’s patronage to the Maly Theater. There, the recent movie star received only one role - the actress Nina Korinkina in the play "Without guilt is guilty." Colleagues reacted wary of gray. And when once she did not appear at the performance, abusing alcohol, a scandal erupted. The theater had to leave.

Serova went to the Mossovet Theater, where she played from 1951 to 1956. Together with Serova, actresses as Vera Maretskaya, Lyubov Orlova, Faina Ranevskaya served in this theater.

After the next ruin that happened on tour in Leningrad, the actress was offered to quit; After some time, she returned to Lenkom.

The last place of her work was the theater studio of the film actor, where Serova for nine years played one small role in the production of Russian People based on the play by Simonov.

Valentina Serova died on the night of December 12, 1975. Death came from acute heart failure. Her daughter Maria said: “She died alone, in an empty apartment, who was supported by the rods, from which everything that was carried out manually was carried out.”

Simonov sent 58 roses to the coffin-she should have turned so much in a few days (if we consider her birth year since 1917).

What is famous

In the film "Girl with Character." 1939

One of the most memorable Soviet film actresses of the 1930s-1940s. The main paintings with her participation were “Girl with character” (1939), “Hearts of four” (1941), “Spring Stream” (1941) and “Wait for me” (1943).

Also, Serova shone for many years in Lenkom and the Mossovet Theater, having played dozens of diverse roles there, including in the plays of her husband Konstantin Simonov.

It was her who dedicated the lines:

Wait for me and I will return.

Just wait,

Wait for the sadness

Yellow rains

Wait for when they throw snow

Wait for the heat

Wait when they are not waiting for others,

Furious yesterday.

Wait when from distant places

Will not come letters

Wait when you get tired

Everyone who is waiting for ...

What you need to know about

The son of Serova Anatoly as a teenager got into a correctional colony in Nizhny Tagil, he drank and died at 35 (1974), six months earlier than his mother. Serova did not come to his funeral. Actress Rimma Markova recalled : “Tolya, her son, became a bandit, burned the cottage. Once Valentina Vasilievna called me: "Rimma, come, save me." It turned out that Tolya raged, the doors in the apartment began to chop. It became terrible for me, I thought: well, how he and me will sit down with an ax. And when they put it to Tolya, some boy began to live with Serova. I remember, a drunk Valya opens the door to me and says: "Meet, Rimma, this is Susya. My last love."

A gray attitude was also not easy with the daughter of a gray attitude. The mother of actress Claudia Polukov through a court tried to deprive her of parental rights due to drunkenness. Maria lived with her grandmother for a long time.

In 1961, the father of actress Vasily Polukov was found. According to the memoirs of the actress’s daughter, he helped Serova in the treatment of alcoholism, and also convinced Simonov to allow her to see her. In 1966 he was gone.

Direct speech:

The composer Nikita The Theologian about the fake wedding of the actress with Anatoly Serov: “Our creative group (the film“ Fighters ”), who came to Leningrad for the premiere of the film, united with the Gray -Miner couple (they spent a honeymoon there), had fun at the open area of ​​the Roof Restaurant in the“ European ”hotel, where we all lived then. And then Valya Polukova (sorry, then Serova) complained that the beautiful and solemn ritual of church marriage went far into the past, and the boring and formal office registration at the registry office enters only despondency and will not remain in memory as an event in family life.

... And then I offered the newlyweds a "imitation" of church marriage - a theatrical version of the rite. The whole company went down to my room, sent a maid for flowers, ordered champagne in a restaurant. The bride changed into a white, alas, not a wedding, dress, the groom put on a paradise colonel (then not a general) uniform, a veil was built from the hotel first -aid kit, the rings were wound from gold paper and chocolate wrappers. ... And the writer Boris Laskin, who held a large portrait of Nikolai Kryuchkov instead of the icon, was appointed to the role of a boy (without taking into account his very high stature).

I, taking on the functions of the priest, put on a white bed bedspread, and attached a pillow that imitates a cloud on my head. No, it was not blasphemy. We sincerely wanted to congratulate friends, in our own way to recreate what was actually unreal for us.

During the ritual, the newlyweds knelt down, and I let them kiss the hotel key to the room ... After the exchange of "rings" I uttered a short and touching parting words with the wishes of family happiness until the end of days (happiness, alas, did not last long - Tolya died tragically). "

Actress Rimma Markov about the relationship of Serova with Konstantin Simonov: “Serova and I sat and were friendly in the same dressing room. What a woman it was! Imagine: post -war Moscow, summer, the heat is terrible. From the theater in a chic lilac dress, Valya with a bouquet of flowers rushes out and gets into an open car. And how good she was, all the time to someone knocked out an apartment, then a hospital, then a pension. Konstantin Simonov, who was then her husband, wrote the play "Good Name". I played in this performance. After the premiere, Simonov arranged a banquet in Metropol. And then we arrived in the apartment of Simonov and Serova on Gorky Street. Everyone did not fit in the elevator, and Simonov went on foot. On each staircase, he approached the elevator, opened the door, stopped, and Simonov said: "Valya, say you love me." Serova answered: "Ne-Kog-yes!" The elevator drove another floor, Simonov again approached the door: "Well, tell me you love." And Valentina Vasilievna stood on her own: "For nothing!" They entered their huge apartment, and half-story. Valya spectacularly so dropped shoes and fell on the sofa. When she drank, her ears became scarlet. And so the beauty is sitting, the ears are scarlet, her eyes burn. And Simonov moistened the napkin with cold water, gently put on her face. And he began to read poetry. "

Rimma Markov about Serova’s alcoholism : “After parting with Simonov, Valya began to drink more and more seriously. We had such a performance - "Anfisa". I somehow enter the make-up artist and feel the smell of alcohol. Together with Zina, a classmate Serova, while Valya was on stage, we begin to check her things. So it is-in a fur coat from a monkey that Vale brought from abroad Simonov found a secret pocket, and in it a half-empty bottle of cognac. Only Zina took the bottle, comes in Serova. I ran out of the dressing room, and she calls me in a minute: “Rimma! Give me a bottle!” Female alcoholism is incurable. Yes, no one wanted to help her. How many times I went to Mosfilm, to the theater of the film actor. A man dies, said, save. But where there ... Serova herself understood that this was the end. But she did not care. It has changed a lot, one skin and bones remained. When she lived in the arms of the arms, I often helped her go home. She introduced a drunken, in different boots, into the apartment. "

The daughter of actress Maria Simonova about the quirks of fate : “On May 11, 1938, they [Valentina Polukova and Anatoly Serov] signed and lived lightly and happily exactly a year - on May 11, 1939, Serov, experiencing a plane, died. ... I was born 11 years later, on May 11, 1950. And every birthday, as I remember myself, began with the fact that my mother and I went to Red Square at nine o’clock in the morning, to the Kremlin wall. Anatoly Konstantinovich was buried there. We went to the Kremlin wall first of all, despite the fact that it was a birthday for me, and for him it was a day of death ... Despite the fact that Serov was not my father, but my older brother Toli. And I know for sure that in this desire of my mother, there was no educational mistake to bring me to the grave of her first husband. She seemed to pull the ends of the bizarre curve, which was written out by her fate, to the point of this day. "

7 facts about Valentina Serova

• For two and disobedience, the mother put Serov in a corner on peas. “Claudia Mikhailovna scattered peas in the corner and put Valentina on her knees until she apologizes. And she did not ask. From pain and resentment did not cry, but only spat in this corner, ”recalled the daughter of Serova Maria Simonova.

• The actress did not receive a good education. She did not graduate from school, entering the theater technical school at the age of 14. Until the end of her life, Serova wrote with errors, but was very curious.

• As the daughter of the actress said, the pilot Anatoly Serov called his wife Laparuzka, said that her eyes remind him of the water of the Laperuse Strait. Sometimes the nickname turned into a paw of my blunder or just a paw. The words “I love”, “Valya”, “paw” he drew with his plane specifically for gray.

• The actress was attributed to novels with famous people, including Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky. According to her daughter, Serova herself told her about a short novel with Rokossovsky.

• In 1946, Simonov went to Paris to persuade the Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin to return to his homeland. Serov, whom he took with him on a trip, according to rumors, dissuaded Bunin to return to the USSR.

• The first dismissal of Serova was initiated in 1948 by her former civil husband, actor Lenkom Valentin Polyakov, who had by then became the secretary of the party student.

• The actress starred in only 11 films, but performed dozens of roles in the theater. On May 12, 1939, the day after her husband’s death, she played at the premiere of the Galina comedy. Spectators did not yet know about the tragedy. Serova was in the fifth month of pregnancy.

Materials about Valentine Serova:

Article about Valentina Serova on Wikipedia

Biography on the portal Peoples.ru

Site Help "To be remembered"

Biography on the site kinoistoria.ru

Elena Prokofieva, Tatyana Umnova "Love and madness of generation of the 30s"