The career of Erast Garin (real name Gerasimov) was great at first. Together with his assistant wife Khesya Lokshina, Meyerhold’s student made several excellent films as a director. Including “The Prince and the Pauper”, “The Wedding” and the first film interpretation of “The Ordinary Miracle” by Schwartz. He played the star roles of the king in Cinderella and the archaeologist in Gentlemen of Fortune. But he began to go blind. Since then, I have been content with voicing cartoons. For example, Eeyore from the Winnie the Pooh trilogy speaks in his voice.
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At one time, Garin left his wife for six years for the sake of an affair with a young theater critic Lyubov Rudneva (Feigelman), who, unlike the childless wife, gave birth to the actor’s daughter Olga. On the occasion of his father’s 120th birthday, art critic and author of children’s books Olga Garina spoke about him.
About parents
– Yes, my dad would have turned 120 years old, and I would soon be 85. I think he was happy that my beloved mother Lyuba Rudneva-Feigelman was with him for some time and I was born.
Mom wrote brilliantly. The heroes of her essays, published, including in the West, were Meyerhold and Zinaida Reich. Mom lived to almost 90 years old, but has been gone for 20 years already on this earth. Her father was 12 years older than her. He died 42 years ago – in September 1980.
Once, as a boy, he came from Ryazan, where he served in the theater, to Moscow. Meyerhold, who was looking for gifted people, saw him and invited him to study.
Mom was in her 22nd year when she met my dad in 1935. By that time she had become famous as a reader. Meyerhold heard her at the Polytechnic Museum, where she performed, and invited her to his theater. But my mother refused to become an actress, this is not her path.
She was a principled and sharp person, not always a diplomat. And by the way, she is practically an orphan: my grandmother committed suicide at the age of 44.
Mom came to Meyerhold’s team as an assistant – she prepared texts for productions, and it was there that they met Garin. Their romance began.
On the tragedy of a sister
– Before Erast, my mother met with a very good actor of the Meyerhold Theater Leonid Agranovich (later he became a playwright and wrote scripts for the films “A Man Is Born”, “He Subdues the Sky” and many others. – I. G.). Two years before me, Alena, my older sister, was born to them.
Agranovich adored my mother and their daughter. And then he went to work in the Far East. And Garin appeared in my mother’s life.
And years later, in 1961, a terrible story happened to my beloved and only sister, whom both Lilya Brik and Zinaida Reich adored and deservedly considered a beauty.
Alena worked as a paramedic at the Herzen Cancer Institute. We suspected that the head nurse from her work could be involved in her early death.
Alena had problems with women’s health, she took medicine, and this older sister, who had access, including to poisons, could mix something with her. She hated Alena and was jealous of a married doctor. Although this doctor and Alena were connected only by friendship, and if love began, then on a platonic level.
One day this lady gave my sister a huge dose of some kind of drug. My sister made it home. And there, in front of our mother’s eyes, she became insanely ill. She even fainted from the pain.
It is such a horror to see how a loved one suffers, and at the same time understand that you can’t do anything! Of course, we called an ambulance, but a completely incompetent person arrived. He assured us that it was nothing to worry about, she got poisoned, anything can happen. And Alena did not have enough air. We closed the window, because she became very cold and again an attack of terrible pain began. We had to call an ambulance again, but we were immediately warned that Alena would hardly be taken to the hospital.
She left on takeoff. And the doctor, because of whom everything happened, visited her until the end of her mother’s life, they often argued about the theater.
More than 60 years have passed since then, and I still scroll through this situation. Mom reproached herself for not bringing this story to the end. The killer should have been arrested! But we believed that there is God’s judgment and she got what she deserved.
About my father and his wife
– My dad Erast Garin was tough and closed. He hated familiarity with the audience and when he was recognized. He was warm, tender and vulnerable only during the relationship with my mother.
He fell in love many times in his youth and left his Hesy more than once.
Yes, I was born not in marriage, but from the crazy love of two amazing people. Mom and Garin lived together for six years, then he returned to his wife. But my mother retained piety towards him. When we came to his performances, she did not treat her as a native person, but as an Actor with a capital letter.
Everywhere they write that Garin is almost blind, because he got into some kind of car accident. But it’s not. It all happened in 1966 on the set of Tarelkin’s Death. The actors were playing snowballs and accidentally hit him in the eye. It was removed. And the second – almost did not see.
At the end of his life, his father found himself at his broken trough, next to Khesi. He kept her, and she looked after him. My father was not at all poor – People’s Artist of the USSR, laureate of the Stalin Prize. But the couple had nothing to talk about. Imagine: since 1922, for 58 years, they were together, including at work, with a pause for a relationship with my mother.
Yes, and no director Khesya, as she is presented. Just my dad’s assistant. Nobody took her seriously. Just “bring”, “carry”. No more. Unlike my mother, she was a slightly limited woman. Deciding to dedicate her life to her husband. Luba had huge ambitions. Plus, she was bright and vibrant.
After the return of my father, Khesya forgave him, but then for the rest of her life it was, of course, pain. And for me, she is an evil woman who fiercely hated me and my mother.
Did my dad love me? In my own way, probably. We did not live together, and there was no great intimacy between us. He had a high opinion of himself, he was used to receiving compliments all his life, and when he went blind, everything collapsed.
About Garin’s work
– I would not call my father a brilliant actor. I think that the retinue plays the king. In “Cinderella” he got into the ensemble of the great Merkuriev, Zheymo, Ranevskaya. And so the film came out so beautifully. And as a director, he is also not mine, not at all interesting for me. But I really love his painting “An Ordinary Miracle”.
About mom’s fans
– Instead of the real and insanely beautiful surname Feigelman, in 1949 my mother took the pseudonym Rudneva. There was such a time, they fought with cosmopolitans, and they began to persecute her when she became a prominent critic.
Mom was not only smart, but also a seductive beauty, men fell in love with her.
She performed with the outstanding reader Vladimir Yakhontov many times. And with the poet and historian Shura Nemirovsky, one of the men in love with her mother, she was friends all her life. He is tall, she is tiny. Falling in love with my Lyuba was easy and simple.
Another friend of hers – electrical engineer Gleb Arkhangelsky – died, one might say, because of her mother. They quarreled, he climbed on the footboard of the carriage, thought about something of his own, the train started moving, and half his skull was blown off.
The poet Yaroslav Smelyakov, in love with his mother, wrote poems about her that glorified her – “Lyubka Feigelman”. It ended up being a great song.
My mother’s last husband was 17 years younger than her and only seven years older than me. This is a prose writer, writer and journalist Yuri Polukhin. Mom saved his whole life, he drank a lot. And he didn’t even make it to 50. Died of cancer. Yes, they had a big age difference – then it was considered a rarity.
Mom wrote the book “House on Bryusovskaya”, and I gave her my word that I would publish it. I kept my promise. And I really appreciate this book.
About Paustovsky and about personal
– At a young age, I was madly in love with Konstantin Paustovsky. Such heavenly love as a person. Mom was resting in the House of Creativity, and there I met the writer. He was already an elderly man, almost 50 years older than me. They sat at the same table with him, walked, talked. Paustovsky was a brilliant storyteller. And he treated me so amazingly. He presented his book and signed: “To dear Olya, Olga Erastovna, with a secret and obvious heartfelt inclination.” And I gave him some toys.
I don’t like to talk about my personal life. I have a husband, I’m fine.
Photo source: Archive of the Melikhovo State Museum-Reserve, Legion-Media, Personal archive, Youtube.com, Film stills