Birthday of Lyudmila Chursina
On July 20, People's Artist of the USSR Lyudmila Alekseevna Chursina celebrates her birthday.
The date of birth of the wonderful Actress in all sources is the same - July 20, 1941. But the place of birth is different. The fact is that Lyudmila Chursina was born in a medical battalion near Velikiye Luki. But due to the fact that the Germans were about to descend on that area, there was no time to issue a birth certificate. Her mother had to evacuate quickly. The birth document was already issued at the place of evacuation - in Stalinabad, as the capital of Tajikistan Dushanbe was called at that time. This city is often called the birthplace of the future Actress, for example, on the Kinopoisk website.
During the evacuation, Lyusya almost died. The aces of the Luftwaffe bombed the column of refugees, and miraculously after that, the mother was able to find and dig her baby out of the ground. Until 1946, Lyusya and her mother lived in Stalinabad. And then, when the family was reunited, wanderings began throughout the Soviet Union. Lyudmila's dad - Alexei Fedorovich - was a military man, so the family had to travel all over the country, from Georgia to Chukotka. But by the end of Lyusya high school (with a gold medal), the Chursin family settled in Velikiye Luki.
According to Lyudmila Chursina, as a child, it never occurred to her to become an actress. She was more attracted to purely male professions, such as the captain of a sea-liner or aircraft, or, at worst, an engineer. Therefore, she was going to enter the Moscow Aviation Institute. But her girlfriend, who dreamed of the stage, was going to apply to three theater universities at once and persuaded Lyudmila to give her moral support. Which Lyusya did. And she entered three institutes at once. To be honest, I treat such stories with a certain skepticism. But the fact remains that in 1959 Lyudmila Chursina entered Shchukinka (Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute). In 1963 she graduated from the Theater Institute with a red diploma.
While still a student of "Schukinka" Lyudmila Chursina played her first, completely episodic, film role. It was the role of Zoya, the rival of the main character in Lev Kulidzhanov's film "When the Trees Were Tall" (1961). Then there were a few more also episodic roles. But all these roles, despite their insignificance, played an important role in the fate of Lyudmila Chursina herself: thanks to filming, she was able to meet director Vladimir Fetin (real name Fetting), who shortly before became famous for the film "Striped Trip". In 1964, Fetin offered Chursina the main role in his film based on the works of the Nobel laureate in literature M.A. Sholokhov "The Don Story".
The role of the Cossack Daria, in my opinion, became the pinnacle of Chursina's work. She made Lyudmila Chursina a real star of Soviet cinema, perhaps the most sought-after actress in the Soviet Union. But besides this, this role marked the beginning of a marriage alliance between Chursina and Fetin. After "The Don Story", Chursina starred in three more films by this director, who, unfortunately, died very early, at only 55 years old. It happened in 1981.
In 1968, Lyudmila Chursina played one of her most famous roles - Marfa Lunina in the melodrama "A Little Crane" by Nikolai Moskalenko. This role brought Chursina a prize as the Best Actress at the International Film Festival in San Sebastian, Spain. Together with Lyudmila Chursina, the same prize was awarded to Stefania Sandrelli (film "L'amante di Gramigna (The Bandit)"). And the great Audrey Hepburn presented the Chursina prize. Wow company, right?! The award of the international film festival meant international recognition, and soon Lyudmila Chursina received a three-year contract offer from one of the leading Hollywood film companies. But! The then head of the Goskino, Philip Yermash, quickly cut off the young actress's dreams of a Hollywood career, saying that in American films she would have to undress, and this did not suit a party member. Lyudmila then thought to herself: "It was not shameful for a party member to undress in the "Ugryum-River." She thought. But she didn't say anything. And the affair with Hollywood did not take place.
Ermash did not accidentally suggest that Chursina would have to do a lot of bed scenes in Hollywood: sexuality literally showed through in her entire appearance. This feature of Chursina's appearance was also used by Vladimir Basov, who offered Chursina a role in the film "Shield and Sword". The role of the Fraulein-corporal, who tried to seduce the hero of Stanislav Lyubshin.
I also remembered this sexuality when I first saw Lyudmila Chursina in the 1966 film "Two Tickets for a Daytime Picture Show" by Herbert Rappaport. In this film, Chursina played an Estonian Inka, and her phrase "And in general - I'm Marilyn Monroe. I have the same bra number" made a great impression on us, the boys of that time, who were not even 10 years old yet. Just a few months before this film, we, Soviet moviegoers, were lucky enough to watch the legendary film "Some Like It Hot", and we understood that the Estonian Inka was right about something. I think that Chursina played an Estonian woman in Herbert Rappaport's film for a reason. Her blood is dominated by the blood of Baltic ancestors. According to Lyudmila Chursina, her father was Lithuanian, and his real surname was Chursinias. And the Actress's mother, Genovefa Ivanovna, was half Latvian, a quarter Polish.
To date, the filmography of the Actress has 47 full-length feature films, not counting a large number of roles in TV movies and TV series. 3 films out of these 47 were included in the Golden Thousand. Thanks to this indicator and her beauty, Lyudmila Chursina is included in the list of the 100 most beautiful and sexy Actresses of world cinema. In honor of the birthday of a wonderful Actress, I want to remind fans of her work of shots from the best films with her participation.
