At the unprecedented age of 40, Via Artmane was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
Who would have thought that she embodied femininity and aristocracy, otherwise it cannot be said about Julia Lambert played by Via Artmane in the film adaptation of the novel The Theater by Somerset Maugham, she was born into a very poor peasant family on a farm in Latvia. The family, by the way, was German-Polish. She never saw her father, the Baltic German Fritsis Artmanis. She absurdly died at the age of 19 before the birth of her daughter. At the same time, by pure chance, his pregnant wife, Anna Zaborskaya, almost died. She had just taken her water at the well, when a canopy collapsed over the fountain. The young husband tried to put up this canopy by himself, tried too hard, and died a few days later. And 4 months later, on August 21, 1929, her daughter Viya was born.
In early childhood, he wandered with his mother into strange corners. Her mother worked as a laborer for rich peasants. The future movie star, and on the stage: Juliet, Ophelia, Queen of England Elizabeth and Catherine II worked as shepherdesses from the age of 10. Moving from one place to another, they finally reached the capital. In Riga, my mother got a job as a cleaner. And Viya entered the studio of the Art Theater. Rainis, where she taught Stanislavsky’s student, Eduard Smilgis. This was after the war. It cannot be said that her teachers immediately saw great talent in her. Quite the contrary: she was almost fired due to her incompetence. But still, she somehow managed to graduate from the university and enter the troupe of the Art Theater. rainis.
He made his film debut in 1956 in After the Storm. They began to talk about her as an interesting young actress after the release of Mikhail Ershov’s melodrama Native Blood, where she starred with Evgeny Matveev. Based on the results of the rental, the readers of the Soviet Screen magazine named Viya Artmane the best actress of the year. There were rumors that the love between Artmane and Matveev broke out not only in the cinema, but also in life. Although they both had families. At the age of 24, Via ella married the Latvian artist Artur Dimitres. They had a son, Casper. And after the filming of the film “Native Blood” – daughter Christina (there were rumors that it was a child of Matveev).
Shot from the film “Arrows of Robin Hood”
Another of his notable film works was the military drama directed by Vytautas Zhalakyavichyus “Nobody wanted to die.” The actress arrived at the shooting with a two-month-old girl in her arms. Despite the everyday difficulties associated with this, she was on the rise and played the main female role in the film, which today is rightly called a cult. However, the audience most remembered and loved Julia Lambert, the embodiment of femininity and acting nature, in the television version of Maugham’s novel The Theater.
At the unprecedented age of 40, Via Artmane was awarded the title of People’s Artist of the USSR. At the same time, he joined the CPSU. Films with his participation received awards at the Moscow International Film Festival. He embodied the so-called national cinema. The brilliant and effective representative of him. She was a delegate to five party congresses, headed the Latvian Union of Theater Workers, was a member of the Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace … As the film critic Vyacheslav Shmyrov writes: this mission – to sit on honorary presidiums – it was also the duty of the national queens. After the collapse of the USSR, when new national ideals were asserted in independent Latvia, all these prisons were diverted. In the 1990s, after the restitution law was passed, her apartment in the center of Riga was taken away from her. Her apartment passed to the previous owner along with her entire house.
Still from the film “Native Blood”
“A real Latvian woman, who, moreover, turned out to be half Polish and half German, was completely unnecessary for independent Latvia,” Vyacheslav Shmyrov believes. – Perhaps that is why in these years Viya Fritsevna converted to Orthodoxy and humbly reacted to the fact that she was evicted from her apartment in Riga in a general way, without any compensation, since the process of returning property to the former owners who lost it after 1940 was then in full swing in the country. However, the noise broke out – in Russia. And prone to spectacular gestures, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov immediately gave the movie star an apartment. Artmane did not refuse the gift, but he did not move to Moscow either. After some hesitation, he admitted that he sold the apartment and with the proceeds bought a house in Riga for her daughter. She herself stayed where she settled after her forced eviction: in a resort town 40 kilometers from Riga (her earthly days also ended there).
August 21 – the birthday of the People’s Artist of the USSR
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
A resort village 40 kilometers from Riga is by no means an eco-village for millionaires, in which the Russian celebrity, actress Chulpan Khamatova, settled. People’s Artist of the USSR Via Artmane had a modest summer house without heating. Each time, faced with the puzzled questions of the journalists: how does she survive in these conditions, she answered: “Don’t forget that until I was 14 years old I was a shepherd on the farm.” Later, however, she moved with her granddaughter to a modest apartment in the center of Riga. At the end of her life, the city authorities provided her with an apartment. But she needed renewal. There was no money, there was no energy. After three strokes and a heart attack, she Via Artmane left the Art Theater. Rainis, where she worked for nearly half a century.
“The immense fame and flight were suddenly followed by a crash landing. The new regime turned to her … the other way around, – the son of Viya Artmane Kaspar Dimiters told KP. -First they kicked her out of her apartment. After the refund, the former owner appeared. Mom went to the authorities, but to no avail. Then there was a stroke, followed by a couple more. I tried to defend. She wrote an article in the newspaper: “How much is Viya Artmane?” They immediately called me a beggar. But they gave me an apartment. Burnt after a fire. We take a loan for repairs. But my mother’s meager artist fees weren’t enough for a $450 pension. The apartment had to be sold to pay debts. She didn’t have any diamonds. I changed my old clothes. And all my life I washed it with my hands…”
