Olga Chekhova

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Template:Short description Script error: No such module "For". Template:Use dmy dates Template:Family name hatnote Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Template:Main otherScript error: No such module "Check for clobbered parameters".Template:Wikidata image Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (Template:Nee; Template:Langx; 14 April 1897 – 9 March 1980), known in Germany as Olga Tschechowa, was a Russian-German actress. Her film roles include the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock's Mary (1931).

Biography

Template:Section refimprove Olga Konstantinovna Knipper was born on 14 April 1897, the daughter of Konstantin Knipper[1] (1868–1929), a railway engineer, and Yelena Luise "Lulu" Knipper (née Ried, 1874–1940), both Lutherans of ethnic German ancestry.[2] Olga was the niece and namesake of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife). She went to school in Tsarskoye Selo but, after watching Eleonora Duse, joined the Moscow Art Theatre's studio. There she met the Russian-Jewish actor Mikhail Chekhov (Anton's nephew) in 1914 and married him the same year, taking his surname as her own. Their daughter, also named Olga, was born in 1916.Template:Sfn She became an actress under the name of Ada Tschechowa.

During the year of the 1917 October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. In the first year of the revolution, she joined a cabaret-theatre group called Sorokonozhka (The Little Centipede), as the troupe consisted of twenty members and forty feet. Chekhova also was given a part in a silent movie, Anya Kraeva, in 1917. In 1918, she was given roles in Cagliostro and in The Last Adventure of Arsène Lupin.Template:Sfn Although part of the social circle around the Moscow Art Theatre, she never played a role there, despite her later claims to having her first theatre role in The Cherry Orchard.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

She managed to get a travel passport from the Soviet government, possibly in exchange for her cooperation, which led to permission to leave Russia. She was accompanied by a Soviet agent on a train to Vienna, then she moved to Berlin in 1920. That same year, she married Frederick Yaroshi, though they divorced in 1921.[3] Her first cinema role in Germany was in F. W. Murnau silent movie Schloß Vogelöd (1921).Template:Sfn She played in Max Reinhardt's productions at UFA. She made the successful transition from silent film to talkies. In the 1930s, she rose to become one of the brightest stars of the Third Reich and was admired by Adolf Hitler. She appeared in such films as The Hymn of Leuthen although she preferred comedies.Template:Sfn In 1936 she married for the third time, to Marcel Robbins, which ended in divorce in 1938.[4]

File:Bundesarchiv B 145 Bild-F001053-0006, Göttingen, Dreharbeaiten im Filmstudio.jpg
Chekhova at the Göttinger film festival in October 1953, sitting with Walter Janssen.

Joseph Goebbels

A published photograph of her sitting beside Hitler at a reception gave the leaders of the Soviet intelligence service the impression that she had close contacts with Hitler. She had more contact with the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who referred to her in his diaries as "eine charmante Frau" ("a charming lady").Template:Sfn

She is also rumored to have been a communist spy in a Soviet conspiracy. According to the book Killing Hitler (2006) by the British author Roger Moorhouse,[5] she was pressured by Stalin and Beria to flirt with Adolf Hitler in order to gain and transfer information so that Hitler could be killed by secret Soviet agents.

Later years

Olga achieved great success in the motion picture industry. Her filmography includes 138 credits as an actor, director, and producer[6] between 1917 and 1974. After the war she lived in the Soviet sector of Berlin, but eventually she managed to escape from her Soviet contacts. In 1949, she moved to Munich, Bavaria, and launched a cosmetics company, Olga Tschechowa Kosmetik.Template:Sfn

At the same time she continued acting, and played supporting roles and cameos in more than 20 films. She largely retired from acting in the 70s, after publishing a book of memoirs. Her correspondence with Russian actresses Olga Knipper and Alla Tarasova was published posthumously.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".

Her niece Marina Ried and granddaughter Vera Tschechowa also became actresses.

Selected filmography

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References

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Further reading

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External links

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  7. ↑ Filmed in German by a Swiss production firm, (The Eternal Mask) adapted by Leo Lapaire from his own novel. Mathias Weimann plays an idealistic doctor who believes he has discovered a cure for meningitis. Ordered not to experiment with this serum, Weimann does so anyway, utilizing the supposed wonder drug on a terminal patient. When the man dies, Weimann is reprimanded by his superiors, and wanders out of the hospital, believing himself a failure. His depression deepens into delirium, and soon the doctor is wandering through a Caligariesque world of distorted shapes and distended shadows, where he finds it impossible to separate illusion from reality. Meanwhile, Weimann's superiors determine that the meningitis serum is indeed effective; now they must snap the doctor out of his nightmare in order for him to reveal the formula. One of the very few successful attempts to convey madness on screen.
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