Marina Aklekseyevna Ladynina (Russian: Мари́на Алексе́евна Лады́нина, June 24 [o.s. 11], 1908, Skotinino, Smolensk, Russian Empire - March 10, 2003, Moscow, Russian Federation) was a popular Soviet cinema and theatre actress, best remembered for major roles in films 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 directed by her hasband Ivan Pyryev. One of the best-loved Soviet movie stars of the 1940s, Ladynina has been designated People's Artist of the USSR (1950) and was a five-times Stalin Prize laureate.

Biography

Marina Ladynina was born in the a small village called Skotinino, Smolensk; her father Aleksey Dmitrievich Ladynin (1879-1955) and mother Maria Naumovna (1889-1971) were uneducated peasants. Soone after her daughter's birth the family moved to Nazarovo, nearby Achinsk in Eniseisk governorate, Siberia. Parents with their four children lived in a small wooden izba. From her yearly years Marina got used to hard work in the house. She spent summers as a hired worker at a local farm, having to milk ten cows a morning.

Marina was the eldest of the four children and the first to go to school: she developed a passion for reading, then joined the school theatre, often performing in the local street carnivals. At the school stage her first role was Natasha in Pushkin’s "Rusalka". She played so good that even her mother, a woman who had rather severe attitude towards theatre stage, was impressed. Soon Marina she became a part-time actress of the Achinsk drama theater. There she became friends with actress Baratova (the pair played in the production of Iudushka Golovlyov). It was the latter who convinced the girl it was her duty to try and get quality education. At the age of 16, after the graduation, she started working as a teacher in Nazarovo village, continued to perform in Achinsk and was giving musical concerts there, but now had a serious goal, that of going to Moscow. Her first port of call was Smolensk, her father's homeland. There she happened to meet Sergey Fadeev, the Meyerhold's theatre's actor, who advised the girl to go and take exams at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) and gave her Stanislavsky's book "My Life in Arts" so that she could prepare for the exams better. By happy coincidence the regional komsomol committee delegated Ladynina to Moscow to study social sciences. Instead she went straight for the thatre Academy. Marina was not familiar with examiners (among whom were some well-known specialists: S.Birman, V.Luzhsy, F. Kaverin) and, relaxed, gave them an inspired performance. She was instantly in, with the note: "remarkably gifted" on the register list, making sure she was free from taking any more exams.

In 1929 Ladynina debuted on screen, in a silent move Do Not Enter This Town. In her sophomore year Ladynina joined Moscow Art Theatre as a part-time actress, with a stipend of 75 rubles. There she debuted in the role was a nun Taisia in Egor Bulychov and Others after Maxim Gorky and even received his personal compliments. Then followed "Among the People" (V Lyudyakh), another adaptation of the Gorky's text. In 1933 Ladynina played a blind flower girl in Prosperity, directed by Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky. That year, having graduated from the Academy, she was invited to join the Moscow Art Theatre full-time.

Both of the MAT's directors, the legendary duo of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, noticed her talent and gave her a large role of Tanya in Among the People (after Maxim Gorky). Stanislavsky, writing to his sister, called Ladynina "the future of MAT". Ladynina remembered:

They really loved me in the theatre. Mikhail Yanshin, Ilyia Sudakov, Alexey Gribov, Boris Livanov, Vasily Luzhsky all were frequent guests in our home... Luzhsky said he wanted to cast me in [the Pushkin’s] "The Gypsies". When asked what was so gypsy-like in Ladynina, he answered: In her eyes there's this look of freedom. I became good friends with Vladimir Zeldin, Yuri Olesha and Nikolay Cherkasov, a man with extraordinary kindness. We had very good relations with Mark Bernes and Faina Ranevskaya, who was a neighbour, often had me reading her poetry, which she greatly enjoyed.

In 1934 directors I.Pravova and O.Preobrazhensky invided Ladynina to play the teacher Linka in the film drama Enemy's Paths (Vrazhji tropy). It was there that she met both actor Ivan Lyubeznov, whom she soon married and direcor Ivan Pyryev. Another film she was starring in (and performing strikingly well), The Post at the Devil's Ford (by director Miron Bilinsky, 1936) has been pronounced "ideologically wrong" and shelved.

"Sure, you must get filmed, one has to do such things - for money and all that. Just don’t forget that you belong to us, and never leave theatre for good," Nemirovich-Danchenko was telling her. In retrospect, she failed to heed this advice and later had all the reasons to regret this. There were objective reasons for this, though. In the mid-1930s the infamous 'purges' began, many theatres got closed, hordes of unemployed actors rushed to MAT where Stanislavsky has lost his influence and Ladynina was feeling less and less comfortable.

In the 1936 Ladynina signed a contract with the director Yuri Zavadsky who gathered his own troupe which was supposed to be based in Rostov-on-Don. Marina has already packed her things but suddenly was summoned to the NKVD office to testify, as a ‘witness’, against some of her former colleagues. None of her answers was found 'useful', the officer told her to forget about theatre and watch out for a case to be opened against her soon . As both Zavadsky and Lyubeznov departed to Rostov, Ladynina was left unemployed and penniless. For several months she was working as a cleaner and a housemaid to make her ends meet. Then her whole life changed in a day as she met film director Ivan Ivan Pyryev again, now in their friends' house. He proposed, she agreed and in In 1936 they married.

This marriage, rather stormy on the personal level but fruitful otherwise. Pyryev made Ladynina leave the theatre and took her to the Ukraine to shoot The Rich Bride. "Forget about Stanislavsky and your ex-husband: from now on, only the cinema matters. We’ll work without any breaks," he was saying. The Rich Bride (1937), shot in Kiev, caused controversy. The bosses of the Ukrainfilm labeled the film 'nationalistic' and accused 'moskalis' in conspiring to make fun of the Ukrainian language. The Ukrainian film industry boss Boris Shumyatsky declared the film 'vreditelsky'  and shelved it. Desperate Pyryev rushed to Moscow, but the Union of Cinematography's leaders disliked the film too. Several months later Shumyatsky was arrested and executed as 'vreditel' himself. His follower Dukelsky, an NKVD man, sent it to Moscow. The new head of the Soviet Cinema State committee, to avoid any personal risk, has given the fim to Stalin to watch. The latter liked it immensely and the happy future of the of Pyeryev-Ladynina duet was sealed. In 1939 both the director and his leading actress received their Orders of Lenin for the film. Everybody seemed happy except for Nemirovich-Danchenko who, after seeing The Rich Bride, accused Pyriev of "corrupting a fine actress".

Ladynina in Kremlin For the first time I was invited to Kremlin in 1939, after the release of Tractor Drivers. Somebody approached me. 'It’s your first time here with us!' the man said, we clicked glasses and he passed by, accompanied by two men with trays. Some people were around me and I asked, too loudly perhaps: 'Who was it?' - 'Hush, hush! Are you mad? This is Molotov!'" …"As for Stalin, I have never been introduced to him personally. I've read that he liked me. The feeling wasn’t reciprocated. I hated him. Marina Ladynina has never been the member of the Communist Party and kept her medals in a drawer, avoiding wearing them in public.

To cast his wife in Tractor Drivers (1939) Pyryev had to overcome the resistance of the chairman of the Soviet Cinema committee Dukelsky who was categorically against seeing Ladynina as a brigadier of the women’s tractor brigade Maryana Bazhan. Pyryev won out. "Marina had to speed across the steppe on a motorcycle, ride a tractor... She was doing all this so professionally, as if that was what she used to do her whole life - driving tractors and competing in motor rallies," the director later marveled. The film (which also launched the career of actor Boris Andreev) made Ladynina and Pyryev superstars in the USSR. After it the official press labeled Ivan Pyriev "a father of the kolkhoz-based musical comedy", and Ladynina by default became the first superstar of this peculiar Soviet genre.

Pyryev, who on the day of his proposal promised his beloved one to never give her a day of rest, fulfilled his promise. Yet, when right after the Tractor Drivers she directly asked him: "Am I supposed to play kolkhoz women for the rest of my life?", he promised to think about it and soon gave her the script of Sweetheart, after Pavel Nilin novelet. Ladynina was happy - both with the change of direction, but also for having made her husband listen to her. This melodrama with Ladynina starring as Varya Lugina, a Moscow industrial worker who leaves a jealous husband, was received coolly and Pyryev returned to what he knew how to do well.

In February 1941 Pyriev started to film The Swine Girl and the Shepherd, the work was interrupted in June as the War broke out. Most of the actors volunteered to be sent to the frontline, Pyryev himself made several requests of the kind, but the Kremlin bosses ordered the film to be finished. Shot in the now empty Mosfilm studios, it out in November 1941. Critics were later dismissing it as a "the country lubok" but the audiences loved the "inter-ethnic" love story, featuring a Russian country girl from Vologda (Ladynina) and Musaib, a shepherd from the Caucasus played by Vladimir Zeldin. This paen to the friendship of Soviet nations became highly relevant and extremely popular at the frontlines where people of different ethnic grous fought against the Nazis side by side.

Konstantin Yudin's comedy Antosha Rybkin and Pyryev's heroic drama The Raikom Secretary (both 1942) went ulmost unnoticed, but lyrical melodrama Six O'Clock after the War is Over (1944) with Ladynina as Varya Pankova, the Moscow kindergarten teacher, proved immensely popular. Another hit, Ballad of Siberia (1947) eneded up 3rd in the 1948 box-office raiting. This musical comedy with Ladynina cast as a singer Natasha Malinina pretended to raise serious ethical and moral questions but some critics and colleagues's remarks were far from complimentary: Sergey Eisenstein, for one, dismissed is as a "Russian lubok imported from Czechoslovakia" (thatt was where the film had been mostly shot).

In Cossacks of the Kuban (1949) Ladynina for the first time had to play not a starry-eyed, open-hearted ingenue, but a mature woman. The role of chairman Galina Peresvetova, a woman of strong character and soft, tender heart, proved to be so difficult to handle that the actress for a time being was on the verge of quitting. Somehow she persevered and came out with a strong, memorable character, although when it came to verve and charms, young Klara Luchko stole the show. In was after this film that Ladynina was awarded with People's Artist of the USSR title.

Ladynina, well aware that Pyryev films, although dubbed "masterpieces of Socialist realism" had nothing to do with the Soviet reality, was unrepentant. In one of her last interviews she said: "Up to this very day I continue to receive letters where people thank us: they are still under the spell of those comedy luboks Pyryev was such a genius of and which, I am convinced, had every right to deviate as far from the cruel reality towards fairytale as one would wish them to. We really believed that we 'were born to turn a fairytale into the real thing' and we tried our best."

Enjoying both mass popularity and her own work in Pyryev's films, she's got extremely tired from being turned into a screen stereotype of a happy, strong and resolute Soviet country girl (in Cossaks - a mature woman, the kolkhoz director). Not a single director even thought of inviting her to play anything different: she was "a Pyriev’s actress". The one exception was Igor Savchenko who invited Ladynina to play a countess in Taras Shevtchenko (1951). She eagerly grabbed the opportunity, but as the film was released with all of her episodes cut out by censors who disagreed, apparently, with the fact the countess rather sympathized with Taras whom she was supposed to "hate, being a class enemy".

In 1954 the official directive came out which forbade film directors to cast their own wives. Pyryev, who was working upon The Proof of Loyalty (1954), has made a scandal and managed to put it to the party bosses that no one will be able to play Olga Kalmuykova character as well as Ladynina will. This role happen to be her last. She divorced 58-year old Pyriev (who fell in love with young actress Lyudmila Marchenko) and found herself in total isolation: some directors have been promptly ordered by mighty Pyryev not to cast her, for others she was too much of a symbol of the feared and hated Stalin’s era. Not a single theatre wanted to have a superstar in their troupe. She ghas found herself a spot in the Cinema Actor's theatre but later was asked to leave so as to give way to 'active' actresses. Ladynina tried to launch a new career of a singer and took lessons from well known teacher Dora Belyavskaya, but failed to make it. In 1965 Nikita Mikhalkov invited her to play a role in a Lermontov movie which never came.

She spent the rest of her life in oblivion, despite participation in occasional concerts and receiving state awards and medals. She rarely gave interviews and refused to discuss the life of Ivan Pyriev, her ex-husband whom she was still having great respect for. In the year of her 90th birthday she received Nika Award ("For Honesty and Dignity", 1998) and was greeted with standing ovation, but that was all. Ladynina's only large televised interview came not long before her 95th birthday. Marina Ladynina died of heart attack, on March 10, 2003.

Private live

Maria Ladynina’s first husband was actor Ivan Lyubeznov whom she married in 1835. Their union was short lived: the same year while shooting The Enemy’s Path, she met 33-year old Ivan Pyryev, a film director, known for his volatile character and wild shenanigans. The legend has it, he proposed to her after just two hours of talk, and she agreed without thinking, totally carried away by his charisma. In 1936 they married. There were rumors that Pyryev, having "stolen" Marina from Lyubeznov, offered him some sort of consolation deal. This has never been proven as a fact, but the latted has had roles in The Rich Bride and Six O’Clock After the War, and was awarded for the latter.

The pair was said to never have had any rows, but the marriage was far from cloudless. For Pyryev's ex-wife Ada Voytsik (she played in his film The Party Card) the divorce was a heavy blow, she submerged into a state of depression and was on the verge of suicide - Pyryev often felt oblidged to visit her and stay with her for a while. "He’ll leave you as he did leave me," Ada once told Ladynina over the telephone. When Marina gave birth to her son Andrey, for some reason she insisted on him having her second name. Andrey Ladynin (1938-2011) became a film director.

Pyryev apparently respected his wife's opinions. In the early 1950s, at the Party conference which was taking place during the infamous anti-cosmopolites campaign Pyryev, being a Chairman of the Union of Cinematography was expected to pronounce his own denouncing word from a high tribune. He rose to speak - but only to declare that he wouldn't want anything to do with the matter because among the accused were his personal friends. The reason behind it, as later transpired, was that Ladynina was present in the audience. "She is the aristocrat of the spirit and I am afraid to lose her respect," he was reportedly saying. Yet Ada's prohecy proved right. 58-year old Pyryev fell in love with the 19-year old actress Lyudmila Marchenko and started dating her in the Moscow hotel. Ladynina asked for the explanation, he’s opted for a break and divorced, saying after that her career was as good as finished. Pyryev has had an enormous power as an official and with it all the means for making sure his promise would be fulfilled. After the divorce Ladynina, often approached by journalists, refused to give interviews. Despite the scandal which accompanied the divorce she remained loyal and respectful till the end.

Legacy

Maria Ladynina's film (let alone theatre) career was short and her artistic credo limited. Still, she became one of the two superstar actresses of the Soviet cinema, along with Lyubov Orlova, according to film critic Valery Kichin. Surely, five State Prizes for five of her best known films (a feat unsurpassed in the Soviet cinema community) reflected to some extent the ideological value of her work and the appreciation by the authorities, but still she was dearly loved by the people, in the Soviet countryside especially. So immense was Ladynina's popularity and so high was her status that for a while at the outset of the Moscow's Gorky street two huge portraits occupied the wall of a house - those of Ladynina and Stalin.

Unlike Lyubov Orlova (who "even as a postwoman has been carrying a Marion Dixon's diadema"), Marina Ladynina was a folklore actress. "It was impossible to imaging Orlova in a crowd, while Ladynina in any crowd could be passed by and never recognized," Kichin opined. Both were stars of the musical comedy, both patronised by their husbands/film directors. But while Alexandrov was in a way aiming at creating the alternative Hollywood on the Soviet soil, Pyryev discovered a new genre of the countryside musical comedy, showing "friendship of peoples", kolkhozniks' enthusiasm and a Soviet country girl's strength, charm and the ideologically approval drive of a social winner. "She symbolized happiness itself but nobody knew what kind of person she was in reality, in fact, nobody’s ever wanted to know her, for in her last years she was tragically lonesome," according to Kichin.

The people's legend Marina Ladynina who loved stage, spent the last half a century of her life out of it. Waiting for this magic telephone call which never came, she was growing older and older. All of a sudden, at 90, she received Nika Award ("For Honour and Dignity") and the audience in the Cinema House greeted her with standing ovation. This was her last triumph after which there was silence again. "At the age of 95 Marina Ladynina died a 'rich bride' of the Soviet cinema: neither we nor she herself have had a chance to discover the true extent of her gift," Kichin concluded.

Awards

• 1938 - Order of Lenin for The Rich Bride (1937)
• 1941 - Stalin's Prize (1st degree) - for the Maryana Bezhan role in Tractor Drivers (1939)
• 1942 - Stalin’s Prize (2nd degree) - for the role of Glasha Novikova in The Swine Girl and the Shepherd (1941)
• 1946 - Stalin's Prize (2nd degree) - for the role of Varya Pankova in Six O’Clock in the Evening After the War Ended (1944)
• 1948 - Stalin’z Prise (1st degree) - for the role of Natasha Malinina in Ballad of Siberia (1947)
• 1950 - People's Artist of the USSR award
• 1951 - Stalin's Prize (2nd degree) - for the role of 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 (Constelation) award. For lifetime achievements.
• 1997 – Nika Award, For Honour and Dignity
• 1998 - Order of Honour. Lifetime achievents.
• 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 - 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