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- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Vyatka region, Russia. He was the second of six children (five brothers and one sister). His father, named Ilya Chaikovsky, was a mining business executive in Votkinsk. His father's ancestors were from Ukraine and Poland. His mother, named Aleksandra Assier, was of Russian and French ancestry.
Tchaikovsky played piano since the age of 5, he also enjoyed his mother's playing and singing. He was a sensitive and emotional child, and became deeply traumatized by the death of his mother of cholera, in 1854. At that time he was sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the St. Petersburg School of Law in 1859, then worked for 3 years at the Justice Department of Russian Empire. In 1862-1865 he studied music under Anton Rubinstein at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1866-1878 he was a professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. At that time he met Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz, who visited Russia with concert tours. During that period Tchaikovsky wrote his first ballet 'The Swan Lake', opera 'Eugene Onegin', four Symphonies, and the brilliant Piano Concerto No1.
As a young man Tchaikovsky suffered traumatic personal experiences. He was sincerely attached to a beautiful soprano, named Desiree Artot, but their engagement was destroyed by her mother and she married another man. His homosexuality was causing him a painful guilt feeling. In 1876 he wrote to his brother, Modest, about his decision to "marry whoever will have me." One of his admirers, a Moscow Conservatory student Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova, was persistently writing him love letters. She threatened to take her life if Tchaikovsky didn't marry her. Their brief marriage in the summer of 1877 lasted only a few weeks and caused him a nervous breakdown. He even made a suicide attempt by throwing himself into a river. In September of 1877 Tchaikovsky separated from Milyukova. She eventually ended up in an insane asylum, where she spent over 20 years and died. They never saw each other again. Although their marriage was terminated legally, Tchaikovsky generously supported her financially until his death.
Tchaikovsky was ordered by the doctors to leave Russia until his emotional health was restored. He went to live in Europe for a few years. Tchaikovsky settled together with his brother, Modest, in a quiet village of Clarens on Lake Geneva in Switzerland and lived there in 1877-1878. There he wrote his very popular Violin Concerto in D. He also completed his Symphony No.4, which was inspired by Russian folk songs, and dedicated it to Nadezhda von Meck. From 1877 to 1890 Tchaikovsky was financially supported by a wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, who also supported Claude Debussy. She loved Tchaikovsky's music and became his devoted pen-friend. They exchanged over a thousand letters in 14 years; but they never met, at her insistence. In 1890 she abruptly terminated all communication and support, claiming bankruptcy.
Tchaikovsky played an important role in the artistic development of Sergei Rachmaninoff. They met in 1886, when Rachmaninov was only 13 years old, and studied the music of Tchaikovsky under the tutelage of their mutual friend, composer Aleksandr Zverev. Tchaikovsky was the member of the Moscow conservatory graduation board. He joined many other musicians in recommendation that Rachmaninov was to be awarded the Gold Medal in 1892. Later Tchaikovsky was involved in popularization of Rachmaninov's graduation work, opera 'Aleko'. Upon Tchaikovsky's promotion Rachmaninov's opera "Aleko" was included in the repertory and performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
In 1883-1893 Tchaikovsky wrote his best Symphonies No.5 and No.6, ballets 'The Sleeping Beauty' and 'The Nutcracker', operas 'The Queen of Spades' and 'Iolanta'. In 1888-1889, he made a successful conducting tour of Europe, appearing in Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, Paris, and London. In 1891, he went on a two month tour of America, where he gave concerts in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In May of 1891 Tchaikovsky was the conductor on the official opening night of Carnegie Hall in New York. He was a friend of Edvard Grieg and Antonín Dvorák. In 1892 he heard Gustav Mahler conducting his opera 'Eugene Onegin' in Hamburg. Tchaikovsky himself conducted the premiere of his Symphony No.6 in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the 16th of October, 1893. A week later he died of cholera after having a glass of tap water. He was laid to rest in the Necropolis of Artists at St. Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg, Russia.- Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov (1890 - 8 November 1986) was a Russian politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik, and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s onward. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars from 1930 to 1941 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956.
- Lola Brah was born on 7 July 1920 in Vyatka, RSFSR [now Kirov, Russia]. She was an actress, known for Pensionato das Vigaristas (1977), Grande Teatro Tupi (1951) and A Noite das Fêmeas (1976). She died on 14 July 1981 in São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
- Alexander Grin was born on 23 August 1880 in Slobodskoy, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Poslednyaya stavka mistera Ennioka (1923), Morgiana (1972) and Begushchaya po volnam (1967). He died on 8 July 1932 in Staryj Krym, Crimean ASSR, RSFSR, USSR.
- Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova (nee Knipper) was born on September 9, 1868, in Glasov, Russian Empire, into the family of a German origin. She received an excellent private education and was bilingual, being fluent in Russian and German.
She was one of the original 39 founding members of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. She also was the favorite actress of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, the founders of the Moscow Art Theatre. There her stage partner was Vsevolod Meyerhold, Vasili Kachalov, Boris Dobronravov, and many other leading Russian actors. She was a student and the mistress of Nemirovich-Danchenko before she met writer Anton Chekhov.
Olga Leonardovna met the playwright Anton Chekhov in 1898, when she was given the leading role in his play 'Chaika' (The Seagull). She brilliantly played the role on the opening of the first season at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898. She also starred as 'Masha' in 'Tri sestry' (The Three Sisters). Olga Leonardovna married Anton Chekhov in 1901. At that time he was already suffering from tuberculosis. In January, 1904, she starred as 'Ranevskaya' in the premiere of 'Vishnevy sad' (The Cherry Orchard) at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1904, with singer 'Feodor Chaliapine Sr.', writer Maxim Gorky, and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff in attendance.
Six months later, after a tremendous effort to save his life in a German hospital, her famous husband, writer Anton Chekhov died of a lung haemorrhage. Olga Leonardovna never managed to have a child with her husband Anton Chekhov. She hosted and educated her niece, also named Olga Knipper, who will later become the famous film-star Olga Tschechowa in the Nazi Germany after her brief marriage to actor Michael Chekhov, who was the nephew of Anton Chekhov.
Under the name of Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, she continued successful work on stage with the Moscow Art Theatre Company for the rest of her life. She did not play many film roles, mostly due to the influence of her teachers, Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. They strongly believed that live stage acting was a superior form of art. For that reason both Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko discouraged their stage actors of the Moscow Art Theatre from working in motion pictures.
While on a tour in Kharkov, Ukraine, Olga Leonardovna was arrested on stage in 1917, during her performance of 'The Cherry Orchard'. She suffered from all kinds of violence during the Russian Revolution of 1917. She was under suspicion, because her brother Konstantin Knipper was the ranking officer to Aleksandr Kolchak in the Russian White Army. Her nephew Lev Knipper was also an officer with the Russian White Army fighting against the Bolshevik communists. Olga Leonardovna survived through the terrible years of spy-mania in the Soviet Union under he dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. At that time her film-star niece Olga Tschechowa was playing dangerous games as a personal friend of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels in the Nazi Germany.
She was greeted by her famous niece Olga Tschechowa, who was secretly flown to Moscow from Germany and discreetly attended the performance of 'The Cherry Orchard' at the Moscow Art Theatre, in May of 1945. They were neither allowed to talk, nor even to approach each other. At the end of the play Olga Tschechowa was immediately walked out of the Moscow Art Theatre. Aunt Olga Leonardovna was stunned by the surprise appearance of her film-star niece and collapsed in the backstage. Later fearful aunt Olga Leonardovna destroyed all the Chekhov family photographs in the fire. She worked at the Moscow Art Theatre through her entire acting career, mostly under the directorship of her teacher and lover Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova was honored with the title of the People's Artist of the Russian Federation. She survived three Russian Revolutions and two World Wars. She outlived her contemporaries, who were fighting against each other, but were admirers of her acting talent, such as the last Russian Emperor Tsar Nicholas II, the first Communist leader Vladimir Lenin, and the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Olga Leonardovna died on March 22, 1959, in Moscow, Russia. - Lyudmila Glazova was born on 29 August 1907 in Izhevsk, Sarapul uyezd, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Udmurtia, Russia]. She was an actress, known for Vratar (1936), Wait for Me (1943) and Nastenka Ustinova (1934). She died on 16 May 1981 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].
- Oleg Zhakov was born on 1 April 1905 in Sarapul, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Udmurtia, Russia]. He was an actor, known for Nashestvie (1945), Concentration Camp (1938) and The White Fang (1946). He died on 4 May 1988 in Pyatigorsk, Stavropol Krai, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].
- Sergey Kirov was born on 27 March 1886 in Urzhum, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov Oblast, Russia]. He died on 1 December 1934 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].
- Petr Vishnyakov was born on January 16, 1911. In 1932 he graduated from GITIS. From 1935 to 1956 he was an actor at the Voronezh Drama Theater. In 1956 he joined the troupe of the Central Theater of the Soviet Army. He taught at the Voronezh Theatrical School. He was also known as a reciter. He died on July 14, 1988. He was buried in the 64th section of the Dolgoprudny (Central) cemetery in Moscow.
- Actor
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
David Gutman was born in 1884 in Vyatka, Russian Empire [now Kirov, Russia]. He was an actor and director, known for Capt. Grant's Family (1936), The New Babylon (1929) and The Return of Nathan Becker (1932). He died on 12 February 1946 in Moscow, RSFSR, USSR [now Russia].- Milton Michael Raison was a prolific screenwriter, author and poet who emigrated to the U.S. at age three with his parents Lazarus ("Louis") and Rachel Kagan in 1906. The last name changed at some point to Raisen, then Raison when they settled in New York City. His sister Beatrice (Borkum) was born in 1909.
He graduated with some honors from public school, but in his second year at Stuyvesant High School he was rebellious and was eventually expelled. His early love of Jack London, Joseph Conrad and William McFee shaped his desire to write and to go to sea, and he signed on for several years after stretching his age to find a job as a mess boy and to follow his dream to sail. At the voyages' conclusion he arrived in New York and accepted a position as a press agent for chorus girls.
He published an anthology of four poems titled "Sea Moods and Sea Men" at nineteen. In-between sailing he would look for newspaper work and write book reviews and seagoing articles. His poetry was published in the New York Herald Tribune, New York Evening Post, Vanity Fair, Scribner's, Harpers, Bookman, and in The Saturday Review of Literature. His Century Magazine poems co-featured etched illustrations by John Sloan.
At the American Merchant Marine Library Association he placed books aboard ships for the crews.
With John Farrar's encouragement, he worked on his sea diary "Spindrift", published in 1922 with illustrations by John Sloan. By the late 1920s he became publicity writer/agent for a number of Broadway producers and their shows, and co-produced "Shoot The Works" with Heywood Broun in 1931. Those were very lean years for authors, and he was one of a number of writers to be invited by Metro Goldwyn Mayer to develop screenplays.
He served in the US Marine Corps between 1942 and 1944, became a staff sergeant and wrote fifteen-minute radio and film scripts to boost morale.
His radio and film scripts included themes of mystery, action, drama, romance, Westerns and thrillers, and for television he became a staff writer and story consultant on multiple series.
He briefly was married to Ruth W. in 1922, but she charged her nineteen-year-old poet husband of indiscretion at the Hotel Claridge. He married Dorothy Krampff in 1943, possibly while on military leave, and they divorced in 1949. In the early 1940s he may have fathered two daughters, one with Dorothy and one the year before with a secretary.
His successful novels in the Tony Woolrich series included "Nobody Loves a Dead Man" (1945) which received good reviews in the US and in the UK. Others included "No Weeds for The Widow" (1946), "Murder In a Lighter Vein" (1947) (also published in Italy) and "The Gay Mortician". "Phantom of 42nd Street" was co-authored with Jack Harvey and became a film. "Tunnel 13" (1948) was one of his last novels.
In 1950, he married Geraldine Audinet and had a son, Jonathan (1950-1993) and stepson, Patrick (b. 1942). This was a productive era for Mike Raison's television series scripts with the successful "The Millionaire", "Stories of the Century", "The Roy Rogers Show" and "The Adventures of Kit Carson", plus numerous episodes in other series.
He lived in the San Fernando Valley until the pressures of his life lead to health problems and alcohol use, and was divorced in 1955. During this period he won an Emmy for an episode in "Stories of the Century." He was with the Reece Halsey Agency for many years and remained good friends with Dorris after Reece's death. Both men donated their volumes of work to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Mike Raison continued writing television scripts through the 1960s but also developed movie concepts, including one in 1956 with Luigi Barzini titled "The Forgotten Front", but it was not optioned by MGM.
He moved to North Hollywood, married Johanna Rabus in 1956, and lived there until his death.
Mike Raison is remembered for his prolific television scripts and his love of a good story. He was a man with a poet's soul and an artist's ear, and he was a good cook and a soft-spoken storyteller. - Nikolai Znamenskiy was born in November 1884 in Vyatka, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov, Kirov Oblast, Russia]. He was an actor, known for Polikushka (1922), Gerasim i Mumu (1919) and Tri portreta (1919). He died on 23 November 1921 in Moscow, RSFSR.
- Aleksandr Yankevskiy was born in 1902 in Yaransk, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire. He was an actor, known for Zhivyot na svete zhenshchina (1959) and Zhizn Galileya (1965). He died in 1978 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR.
- Cinematographer
Alexander Dalmatov was born on 19 November 1873 in Vyatka, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov, Kirov Oblast, Russia]. Alexander was a cinematographer, known for Devyatoe yanvarya (1925). Alexander died on 6 September 1938 in Leningrad, USSR [now Saint Petersburg, Russia].- Yvan Kyrlya was born on 17 March 1909 in Kupsola, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Mari El, Russia]. He was an actor, known for Road to Life (1931). He died in 1943.
- Leonid Rakhmanov was born on 28 February 1908 in Kotelnich, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire [now Kirov Oblast, Russia]. He was a writer, known for Baltic Deputy (1937), Mikhaylo Lomonosov (1955) and Television Theater (1953). He died on 24 April 1988 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR [now St. Petersburg, Russia].
- Actor
- Writer
Yuri Laptev was born on 25 October 1903 in Vyatka, Russian Empire [now Kirov, Russia]. He was an actor and writer, known for Zelenyj shum (1928), Razgrom (1931) and Plenniki morya (1929). He died in 1984.- Pyotr Lebedenko was born on 20 March 1916 in Sarapul, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire. Pyotr was a writer, known for Ldy ukhodyat v okean (1972). Pyotr died on 11 February 2003.
- Anatoli Abramov was born on 4 December 1915 in Nizevoye, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire. He was an actor, known for Vesna v Moskve (1953), Erti nakhvit shekvareba (1975) and Honeymoon (1956). He died on 10 July 1983 in Leningrad, RSFSR, USSR.
- Ivan Shishkin was born on 25 January 1832 in Yelabuga, Vyatka Governorate, Russian Empire. Ivan died on 20 March 1898 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire.