| Russian History Encyclopedia: Lyubov Petrovna Orlova |
(1902 - 1975), film actress.
The most beloved movie actress of the 1930s, Lyubov Petrovna Orlova trained as a singer and dancer in Moscow. She began her career in musical theater in 1926 and made her film debut in 1934. Although she worked with other Soviet directors, Orlova's personal and professional partnership with Grigory Alexandrov led to her greatest successes on screen. As the star of Alexandrov's four wildly successful musical comedies - The Jolly Fellows (1934), The Circus (1936), Volga-Volga (1938), and The Shining Path (1940) - Orlova became a household name in the USSR.
Although in her early thirties when she began her movie career, Orlova nonetheless specialized in ingenue parts. She was the role model for a generation of Soviet women. They admired her wholesome good looks, her energy, her cheeriness, her zest for life, and her spunkiness in the face of adversity. She was also said to be Stalin's favorite actress, not surprising given his love for movie musicals. Interestingly, given Orlova's importance as the cinematic exemplar of Soviet womanhood, she also played Americans several times in her career. The most famous example was her portrayal in The Circus of Marion Dixon, the entertainer who fled the United States with her mixed-race child, but also worth noting is her role as "Janet Sherwood" in Alexandrov's Meeting on the Elba (1949).
In 1950 Orlova was honored as a People's Artist of the USSR, her nation's top prize for artistic achievement, but she acted in only a few pictures after that, and died in 1975. In 1983 Orlova's husband, Grigory Alexandrov, produced a documentary about her life entitled Liubov Orlova.
Bibliography
Kenez, Peter. (2001). Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris.
—DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD
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