Leonid Iovich Gaidai (Russian: Леони́д И́ович Гайда́й; 30 January 1923, Svobodny, Amur Oblast – 19 November 1993, Moscow) was one of the most popular Soviet comedy directors, enjoying immense popularity and broad public recognition in the former USSR & modern Russia. His movies broke theatre attendance records and are still some of the top-selling DVDs in Russia.

Early life and first success[link]

Gaidai was born on January 30, 1923 in Svobodny, Amur Oblast, where he is commemorated by a statue. After serving in the Red Army during the Second World War (where he was seriously wounded by a landmine), Leonid Gaidai attended the Moscow Institute of Cinematography. He married the actress, Nina Grebeshkova, who played minor roles in his future films. His first success came 6 years after graduation, with a segment of the short film collection "Sovershenno seryozno" (1961), which instantly became highly popular. In this movie Gaidai first introduces a comic trio of crooks - Yury Nikulin, Georgy Vitsin, and Evgeny Morgunov who later appear in several of his other films. After his characters and directing style won the public's love, his name gained massive selling power in USSR's movie theatres.

Genre brilliance[link]

Between 1961 and 1975, Gaidai directed a number of top-selling movies, each one a huge financial success and becoming wildly popular in the Soviet Union. During these years, he filmed new adventures of the mischievous trio in The Bootleggers (1961), a film adaptation of O. Henry's short story "Makes The Whole World Kin", Business People (1962), Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures (1965), and Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1966). Following his break with Morgunov, Gaidai disbanded the trio, while casting Nikulin in what was to become the most popular Soviet comedy ever made, The Diamond Arm (1968).

In the 1970s, Gaidai worked primarily with the comedians from his own studio group, which included Vitsin, Leonid Kuravlev, Mikhail Pugovkin, Savely Kramarov, Natalya Seleznyova, Natalya Krachkovskaya, and his wife Nina Grebeshkova. All this cast was featured in his film adaptation of Mikhail Zoshchenko's short stories, Impossible! (1975). He also filmed a play by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973), Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs (1971), Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector (1970), and Borrowing Matchsticks (1980), a story by the Finnish author Maiju Lassila.

Business success[link]

Gaidai's top-grossing movie The Diamond Arm sold 76,700,000 tickets in the Soviet Union alone.^{[citation needed]} At $8 per ticket (regular fare in an American movie theatre in 2005), it would have generated revenue comparable to the US box office champion Titanic. At least five of Gaidai's movies had more than 50 million ticket sales.

Due to the state-controlled nature of USSR movie industry, all revenue from movie sales went back into the state coffers. However, Gaidai personally received a small percentage of ticket sales as a government incentive. This didn't last long, though, since it soon became apparent that even with the tiny royalty offered he would quickly become a legal Soviet multimillionaire.

Later years[link]

After 1975, Gaidai went into a period of significant decline; his only other notable work was a joint Soviet-Finnish film Borrowing Matchsticks (Russian: За спичками; Finnish: Tulitikkuja lainaamassa), completed in 1980. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he directed only two more movies, capitalizing on the early Perestroika business activities and starring Dmitry Kharatyan. Gaidai has a cameo in the final one, There's Good Weather in Deribasovskaya, where he plays an old gambler who tries to beat the one-armed bandit. In real life, Gaidai was addicted to gambling. These proved the most popular of his works filmed after 1975 but lacked the success of his earlier work. Gaidai was made a People's Artist of the USSR several months before the Union's demise and died in Moscow on Friday November 19, 1993.

Assessment[link]

Gaidai remains most famous for the outstanding string of comedies he directed between 1961 and 1975, when 9 of the 10 movies he made became Russian classics, selling between 20 and 76 million movie tickets each, and becoming box office champions for several years in a row. Gaidai was a master of fast-paced comedy, his style and rhythm somewhat similar to Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He is virtually unknown outside of the former Soviet Union, due to the specific nature of his comedies, intrinsically tied to Soviet culture and lifestyle - unlike the motives of the characters of Kramer's "Mad World" being easily understood by the Russian public, living in the highly materialistic world of late Soviet Union. Gaidai's only international recognition was a nomination for best short film at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival for "Medor, le chien qui rapporte bien".

Filmography[link]

Director

• A Weary Road (Долгий путь) (1956)
• A Groom from the Right Society (Жених с того света) (1958)
• Thrice Resurrected (Трижды воскресший) (1960)
• Absolutely Seriously (Совершенно серьёзно) (1961), segments:
  • "Dog Barbos and Unusual Cross" (Пёс Барбос и необычный кросс)
  • "Bootleggers"
• Business People (Деловые люди) (1962)
• Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures (1965)
• Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967)
• The Diamond Arm (1968)
• The Twelve Chairs (1971)
• Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973)
• It Can't Be! (Не может быть!) (1975)
• Incognito from St. Petersburg (Инкогнито из Петербурга) (1977)
• Borrowing Matchsticks (За спичками) (1980)
• Sportloto-82 (Спортлото-82) (1982)
• Dangerous for Your Life! (Опасно для жизни!) (1985)
• Private Detective, or Operation Cooperation (Частный детектив, или Операция „Кооперация“) (1990)
• Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach (1992)

External links[link]

• Leonid Gaidai at the Internet Movie Database
• Maestro of Russian Comedy: Leonid Gaidai

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Yuri Vladimirovich Nikulin (Russian: Юрий Владимирович Никулин; 18 December 1921 – 21 August 1997) was a well-known Soviet and Russian actor and clown who starred in many popular films.

He was awarded the title of People's Artist of the USSR in 1973 and Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990. He also received a number of state awards, including the prestigious Order of Lenin, which he received twice in his lifetime.^[1]

Early life and battle[link]

Nikulin was born just after the end of the Russian civil war, in Smolensk in Western Russia. His mother was a garage supervisor and his father a writer of satirical plays – "a profession which may have influenced [Nikulin's] future career"."^[1] Nikulin fought in the Red Army in the Winter War with Finland and the World War II with Germany. He reportedly had a comparably "long period of military service, from 1939 to 1946, preparing to be demobilised just when the German invasion of the Soviet Union began in 1941."^[1]

Biography[link]

Nikulin's effortless style and precise delivery, as well as his mastery of timing and his hilarious masks made him an outstanding comedian, arguably the best Russian comedian ever. Nikulin showed his range in a variety of genres from slapstick comedy to romance and war drama. His most popular film partners were Georgiy Vitsin, Yevgeni Morgunov, Natalya Varley, Rolan Bykov, Anatoli Papanov, Sergei Filippov, Mikhail Pugovkin, Aleksandr Demyanenko, Leonid Kuravlyov, Andrey Mironov Evgeni Evstigneev, Vasili Shukshin, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, Sergei Bondarchuk, Nikolay Burlyaev, Viktor Pavlov, Boris Novikov Vladimir Etush, Saveli Kramarov, Nikolai Grinko, and many other notable Russian actors

In the ring, Nikulin presented a phlegmatic temperament, slow and unsmiling, and to many in the West his personality was reminiscent of the great silent film comedian Buster Keaton. Rich in mimicry, doleful of expression, Nikulin was hailed as “a brainy clown” outside Russia. Simple in style and gentle with children, his only vestiges of make-up were a reddened nose and black lines around his eyes, much different from the grotesquely painted faces of Western clowns. Nikulin, affectionately called Uncle Yury by Russian children, relied mainly upon his wits to earn his place in history as one of the best clowns of the 20th century.

Career[link]

Nikulin first took up clowning in 1944 when a political officer in his battalion, impressed by his repertoire of jokes, ordered him to organize entertainment for the division, which he did with resounding success.^[1] Encouraged, once the war ended, Nikulin reportedly "tried unsuccessfully to enter drama college before answering a newspaper advertisement recruiting trainees for the Clown Studio at Moscow's Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus."^[1] The several acting schools and theatres rejected Nikulin allegedly due to "lacking artistic talent". However, he did find initial success at the Circus and qualified as a fully trained clown in 1950, and never abandoned his links with the circus. He met his wife, Tatyana, there, and in 1982 became the director of the Moscow Circus, a post he held until his death. His son, Maxim, is now a circus administrator.^[1]

His screen debut came in 1958 with the film The Girl with the Guitar. He appeared in almost a dozen major features, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, "but his ascent to star status was assured by a handful of short films directed by Leonid Gaidai."^[1] The first two of these, Dog Barbos and Unusual Cross and later Bootleggers (Russian: Samogonchiki or The Moonshine Makers, 1961) were also where Nikulin was featured as a character named Fool in The Three Stooges-like trio, along with Georgy Vitsyn as Coward and Yevgeny Morgunov as Experienced. In former Soviet republics he is particularly well known for his role in popular film series about the criminal trio. The series included such films as Operation Y and Other Shurik's Adventures and Kidnapping Caucassian Style.

His most popular films include comedies Brilliantovaia Ruka (Diamond Arm), 12 Stulyev (12 Chairs), Stariki-Razboiniki (Old Hooligans). He was also acclaimed for his roles in Andrey Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev and several films on the World War II themes (Sergei Bondarchuk's They Fought for Their Country, Aleksei German’s Twenty Days Without War).

All his life Yuri Nikulin was fond of funny stories, which he started collecting while serving the army; the hobby later resulted in the TV show The White Parrot Club ("where celebrities would sit around a table telling jokes"^[1]) and jest-books From Nikulin.

Reportedly, Nikulin's "comic timing never faltered" even in old age and "he had no enemies and mixed with politicians from both the Soviet and post -Soviet eras."^[1] He also reportedly was close to Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and supported Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign."^[1]

Reportedly, Nikulin was one of the "best-loved men in Russia" and his death was mourned "not just by Russians but by tens of millions in the wider Russian-speaking world from Ukraine to Kazakhstan as the actor and comic who more than any other expressed the daily woes and laughter of the Soviet Everyman."^[1]

As mentioned, Nikulin was succeeded in his office at the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard by his son. There is a bronze monument to him in front of the circus, which now bears his name. He is buried in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow near former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.^[2]

Honours and awards[link]

This article incorporates information from the equivalent article on the Russian Wikipedia.

• Hero of Socialist Labour - 1990
• Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class
• Two Orders of Lenin (1980 and 1990)
• Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour
• Order of the Badge of Honour
• Medal For Courage
• Medal "For Labour Valour"
• Medal "For the Defence of Leningrad"
• Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945"
• People's Artist of USSR (1973)
• State Prize of the RSFSR Vasiliev brothers (1970)

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k} OBITUARY: YURI NIKULIN: HOW TO GRIN AND BEAR IT. James Meek. The Guardian (London). THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 16. August 22, 1997.
2. ^ Yeltsin's Last Meeting with the People – Kommersant Moscow

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Yuri Nikulin

• Great Russian Clown Yuri Nikulin
• Yuri Nikulin at the Internet Movie Database

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