The artist lived with his wife Natalia for almost 70 years.
Photo: Sergey SHAKHIJANYAN
This year the Sátira Theater celebrates the centenary of its foundation. And in July his company was going to celebrate the 90th birthday of the theater’s president, Alexander Shirvindt. The teacher had grandiose plans. He said that he wanted to live to be 117 years old and that on April 3 he would appear again on the stage of the play “Where are we?” It didn’t work… Alexander Anatolyevich died on March 15. He died in the hospital, a few months before his birthday. Long-standing heart problems took their toll.
I fell in love… with a cow
Shura Shirvindt was born into a creative family. Her Mama Raisa Samoilovna in her youth was an actress at the Moscow Art Theater, then editor-in-chief of the concert department of the Moscow Philharmonic and “brought to light” many artists. Her father Anatoly Gustavovich played the violin at the Bolshoi Theater. Already at the age of 10, the boy entertained guests and parents by showing miniatures.
In the summer of 1951, in a resort town, 17-year-old Alexander saw a beautiful girl Natasha. With characteristic irony, Shirvindt described this encounter as follows:
“The first time I fell in love was not with a girl, but with a cow.” My future wife had a cow at her country house. And I still love milk. And I got married because they gave me this milk. I fell in love with a cow and, at the same time, with my future wife. As soon as I got married, they took my cow away. Soviet authority. And so I was left with my wife, but without a cow.
Natalya Belousova (by the way, granddaughter of the former chief architect of Moscow Vladimir Semenov and an architect by profession) had been eyeing her future husband for six years. The decisive event was the nice gesture of her boyfriend: she brought him a bouquet of lilacs. December! This would be surprising even now, but then it was almost a miracle. It turned out that Alexander bought the bouquet for a lot of money from the employees of the Botanical Garden. Natalia melted. I grabbed a towel and a nightgown and headed to my husband’s communal apartment. She boasted to her neighbors, showing a towel: “He took his wife with a dowry!”
Natalya Belousova had been eyeing her future husband for six years. The decisive event was the nice gesture of her boyfriend: she brought him a bouquet of lilacs. December! Photo: Shirvindt family personal archive.
The charming Shirvindt earned the reputation of a womanizer. The women next to him were delighted. Few friends believed that the alliance with Natalya would last long. And Alexander Anatolyevich lived with her in perfect harmony for almost 70 years!
Women were always crazy about Shirvindt, for his charisma and his manners. One day his granddaughter, who was five years old at the time, came to see him. She approached him, looked at him attentively and said: “Shura, why are you so ugly! But I love you like that.”
“This was the first woman who said I was a freak!” – Shirvindt admired.
Alexander Anatolyevich is survived by his son, the famous television presenter Mikhail Shirvindt, three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. His wife Natalya Nikolaevna is 89 years old.
Mask and Drusik
The friendship between Andrei Mironov and Shirvindt began when neither of them was considered a great person. Mironov – Drusik, Shirvindt – Mask, these were their nicknames. Sasha and Andrey knew each other since childhood, their parents were friends. For a long time, Mironov was for Shirvindt “an insignificant, a scoundrel.”
– When I, who was already drinking, graduated from school, he was in fourth grade. When I was a fourth-year student and performed in a show at the Variety Theater, Andryushin’s parents, Alexander Semenovich Menaker and Maria Vladimirovna Mironova, sitting in the auditorium, said to their eighth-grade son: “You see, Shura is already is working as an artist.” And when Andrei entered our Shchukin Theater School at the Vakhtangov Theater, I already began to teach there and, as a teacher, did his vaudeville diploma “A Match Between Two Fires”.
In the film “Three in a Boat, Not Counting the Dog”, Shirvindt’s partners on the set were Andrei Mironov (left) and Mikhail Derzhavin (center). Photo: Frame from the film.
These two had an amazing party. They always had fun together. They broke into someone’s house in the middle of the crowd in the middle of the night and dispersed in the morning.
– One evening, Andryusha had a new proposal: to take our large group to Sheremetyevo and have a picnic there. They pulled. They even took my little son, Mishka, to help light the fire. A party was organized practically on the track. When the planes passed overhead, Mark Zakharov, a constant participant in all our undertakings, would jump out and scare them away by shouting: “Get out of here!” And Mironov ran across the field and made signs with his hands, inviting us to land near our bonfires. Our wives hated us for all these antics…
Take the winter
On another occasion, a cheerful company (Mark Zakharov and his wife Nina, Tatyana Peltser, Shirvindt and his wife Natasha) decided to “scare” Drusik in Leningrad, where he was filming at that time. Upon reaching their destination, the delegation went to the hotel where Mironov lived. But during the flight, his mother, Maria Vladimirovna, called him and warned him: “Wait!” When the friends arrived at the Astoria, they were greeted at the entrance by an elegant Andrei, dressed in red livery and with a napkin in his bent arm. In all seriousness, he said dispassionately, “Your table is number two.” Then came dinner and then a night walk through Leningrad with dancing and a choral performance of his “hymn” (music by Nino Rota from Fellini’s film “8 1/2”). Then, at Mark Zakharov’s suggestion, there was an attempt to take the Winter Palace, which the gang headed to on the back of a mail delivery truck. Why the Winter Palace was never taken is beyond the memory of the participants. In the morning, the company drank coffee at the Moscow station, in a huge tank with taps and a chained cup. Mironov saw off his friends, and a passing man sang: “Everything overgrown, absolutely everything…” The revelers looked pitiful…
“Station for two.” Shirvindt has a small but surprising role as restaurant pianist Shurik. Photo: Frame from the film.
“There is something unmanly about acting”
First of all, Shirvindt considered himself a theater actor. On stage he managed to play a large number of roles. Despite this, he was sure that acting was not a completely masculine profession.
– A man must dig, plow, cut, gather and, in extreme cases, drive and not powder his face. Of course, I’m exaggerating, but there’s something unmanly about acting. I try to consider myself a teacher, professor and a bit of a director. At my age it is not good to be considered an actor in its purest form. It is necessary to have some kind of real profession, acting is not enough for a man. Nero was a good actor. But at the same time he was still Nero, he said.
Shirvindt’s first film work was the role of a pop singer in the film “She Loves You.” There, Alexander Anatolyevich showed good skills in ballroom dancing. In total, her filmography includes more than one hundred (!) Films. But somehow it turned out that there were very few main roles. The actor himself joked: “In Soviet times he was not prepared to be a positive hero.” But each of his supporting roles became a masterpiece. He made scoundrels, womanizers, and scoundrels look awfully charming. He could deliver his line in such a way that he immediately reached people. Remember his one-eyed chess player in The Twelve Chairs? “Excuse me, I have all the moves written down!”
Another film that became famous, “Three in a Boat, Not Counting the Dog,” brought together his two main friends on the set: Andrei Mironov and Mikhail Derzhavin. We work with great pleasure, with jokes and practical jokes. By the way, it was in this comedy that Shirvindt had to sing several songs: “Harris’s Dream” and “Love Itself Led Us.”
In the film “The Most Charming and Attractive” the artist played the role of an unfaithful husband. Photo: Frame from the film.
In principle, Alexander Anatolyevich was satisfied with his fate as an actor. The only thing he regrets is not having played Bender in the movies and Krechinsky in the theater.
– Gaidai tried me on his “Twelve Chairs” for Bender. But then he tried it in half the country,” the artist recalled. -In his office, the entire wall was covered with photographs of possible Benders. Then one day we were on the Red Arrow and he sighed into a glass of cognac and said, “Hey, I should have filmed you!”
PS: According to the artist’s will, his body was cremated. The urn with Alexander Shirvindt’s ashes was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.
BY THE WAY
Killer Popularity
Shirvindt admitted that he had several symptoms. For example, when cars had four-digit numbers, she “guessed” using them. In my head I instantly added the first two numbers and the last two, to be lucky it was necessary for the total to be 100. Then the numbers became boring, they became three digits and adding them stopped being interesting.
Another sign of good luck was getting from the eighth floor to the first floor holding your breath. It was only possible to exhale when the elevator opened its doors. It is difficult to do this in elevators without speed, but it is possible. But when the neighbors moved to other floors, the task became impossible.
Sometimes these encounters turned into a comical staging. Alexander Anatolyevich recalled: once he entered the elevator and a huge guy jumped out after him. And he says, “Can I travel with you? You know, my grandmother was your fan, even though she died eight years ago. And my mother-in-law loves you, but she is now in intensive care.”
LITERAL
The kisses with Gurchenko smelled of garlic
“I became a pioneer thanks to my parents “putting” me there. I was never again a member of any party and was a conditional member of the Komsomol. I studied very poorly… After school I received a very normal education. Then I spent my whole life educating myself.”
* * *
“I am an absolute shit eater. The only thing I can’t eat is garlic. (Hatred towards him appeared in the city of Cherdyn, where Shirvindt was evacuated during the war; the main “delicacy” there was thin black bread, spread with lard and covered with cloves of garlic. – Author). I still can’t stand jellied meat, gelatin, and anything jiggly. If it smells like garlic anywhere, I start to choke. My colleagues were wonderful: Lyudmila Gurchenko, Olga Yakovleva. They always treated them with garlic. Knowing that he couldn’t stand the smell of it, they sprinkled something on top of it. It was even scarier when you kissed them.”
* * *
“I am a heavy drinker and actively swear. I swear professionally and charmingly. I drink with professional and ethnic precision.”
* * *
“Artists are 95% emotions, the rest is brain and knowledge.”
* * *
“Cowardice is the sister of panic. I do not fear of death. I fear for my loved ones. I’m afraid that my friends will have accidents. I’m afraid of looking old. I am afraid of dying little by little, when I will have to hold on to something and someone… “Our Everything” wrote very accurately: “My uncle had the most honest rules when he became seriously ill…” When I was young, I believed that this It is a preamble and nothing more. “Now I understand that this is the most important thing in the novel.”
In “The Irony of Fate…” the actor played Pavlik, instead of whom Zhenya Lukashin flew to Leningrad. Photo: Frame from the film.
FROM THE KP FILE
“I will build a mansion on an asteroid”
Alexander Shirvindt was born in Moscow in 1934. Parents tried to protect their son from the acting path. For his sake, after the tenth grade, he applied to the Law Faculty of Moscow State University. But, indirectly, he entered the B. Shchukin Theater Institute, where he graduated with honors in 1956.
From 1956 to 1968 he worked at Lenkom, from 1968 to 1970 at the Malaya Bronnaya Theater and from 1970 at the Satire Theater. Since December 2000 – artistic director of the Teatro Sátira, since October 2021 he became its president.
Shirvindt was an ardent supporter of the Torpedo football club. Footballer Vladimir Ponomarev lived in a communal apartment with his family, hence the love. In addition, Alexander Anatolyevich loved biathlon, basketball and billiards (a kind of billiards).
The actor’s faithful companion was a pipe. His first pipe was given to him by his friend Viktor Sukhodrev, a famous diplomat and translator of Khrushchev and Brezhnev. In Yalta they even erected a monument to Shirvindt’s pipe.
There is a small planet called Shirvindt. This 9 km diameter asteroid was discovered in 1983 by Soviet astronomer from the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory Lyudmila Karachkina. In 1996, a celestial body was named after the actor. Alexander Anatolyevich joked: if something happens, you can build yourself a mansion there…
5 BEST FILMS
“Come Tomorrow” (1962)
“Irony of fate or enjoy the bath!” (1975)
“Three in a boat, not counting the dog” (1979)
“Station for Two” (1982)
“The most charming and attractive” (1985)
