Maria Ouspenskaya

Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya (Russian: Мария Алексеевна Успенская; July 29, 1876 – December 3, 1949) was a Russian actress and acting teacher.[1][2] She achieved success as a stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an elderly woman in Hollywood films.[3]

Maria Ouspenskaya
Ouspenskaya (left) and Greta Garbo in Conquest (1937)
Born
Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya

(1876-07-29)July 29, 1876
Tula, Russian Empire
DiedDecember 3, 1949(1949-12-03) (aged 73)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationActress
Acting teacher
Years active1915–1949

Life and career

Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Russian Empire, and studied singing in Warsaw, Poland, and acting in Moscow. She was a founding member of the First Studio, a theatre studio of the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre. There she was trained by Konstantin Stanislavsky and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky.[4]

The Moscow Art Theatre traveled widely throughout Europe, and when it arrived in New York City in 1922, Ouspenskaya decided to stay there. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade. She taught acting at the American Laboratory Theatre[5] and in 1929, together with Richard Boleslawski, her colleague from the Moscow Art Theatre, she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York City.[5] One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was Anne Baxter, then an unknown teenager.[6]

Although she had appeared in a few Russian silent films many years earlier, Ouspenskaya stayed away from Hollywood until her school's financial problems forced her to look for ways to repair her finances. According to ads from Popular Song magazine in the 1930s, around this time Ouspenskaya also opened the Maria Ouspenskaya School of Dance on Vine Street in Los Angeles. Her pupils included Marge Champion, the model for Disney's Snow White.[7]

In spite of her marked Russian accent, she did find work in Hollywood, playing European characters of various national origins. Her first Hollywood role was in Dodsworth (1936), which brought her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.[1] (Her onscreen appearance in that film was one of the briefest ever to garner a nomination.) She received a second Oscar nomination for her role in Love Affair (1939).[8]

She portrayed Maleva, an old Gypsy fortuneteller in the horror films The Wolf Man (1941) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Other films in which she appeared were: The Rains Came (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Beyond Tomorrow (1940), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), and Kings Row (1942).[9]

Death

Ouspenskaya died several days after suffering a stroke and receiving severe burns in a house fire, which was reportedly caused when she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette.[5] She was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.[10]

Famous quotes

In the film The Wolf Man, Maleva, The Gypsy Woman (played by Maria Ouspenskaya) utters her iconic quote as the Wolf Man is dying:

The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Now you will have peace for eternity.

In the Truman Capote novella Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly Golightly opines diamonds "only look right on the really old girls" and mentions Maria Ouspenskaya.

In the episode titled "What's in a Middle Name?" of The Dick Van Dyke Show, characters Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell have an animated discussion of baby names as follows:

  • Buddy: "I got it! I got it!"
  • Sally: "What is it?"
  • Buddy: "Humphrey!"
  • Sally: "Get rid of it!"
  • Buddy: "What's the matter with Humphrey? Bogart didn't do bad with it."
  • Sally: "Well, Maria Ouspenskaya didn't do bad either, but would you name YOUR kid Maria Ouspenskaya?!"
  • Buddy: "No, and for only one reason."
  • Sally: "Why?"
  • Buddy: "Because my brother named HIS kid that!"

In Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, Part II: Perestroika Prior Walter quips with Hannah Pitt.

  • Hannah: You had a vision.
  • Prior: A vision. Thank you, Maria Ouspenskaya. I'm not so far gone that I can be assuaged by pity and lies.

Bosley Crowther, criticizing the 1963 film Kings of the Sun for The New York Times, says about Richard Basehart's performance: "As the high priest of the Mayans, swathed in dirty dresses and adorned with a mountainous gray wig, he looks exactly like the late Maria Ouspenskaya."[11]

In The Sandlot, a brief clip of Maria Ouspenskaya in The Wolf Man is playing when the dog (The Beast) rips through the screen while chasing Benny through the theater.

Filmography
YearTitleRole
1936DodsworthBaroness Von Obersdorf
1937ConquestCountess Pelagia Walewska
1939Love AffairGrandmother
1939The Rains CameMaharani
1939Judge Hardy and SonMrs. Judith Volduzzi
1940Dr. Ehrlich's Magic BulletFranziska Speyer
1940Beyond TomorrowMadam Tanya
1940Waterloo BridgeMadame Olga Kirowa
1940The Mortal StormMrs. Breitner
1940The Man I MarriedFrau Gerhardt
1940Dance, Girl, DanceMadame Lydia Basilova
1941The Wolf ManMaleva
1941The Shanghai GestureThe Amah
1942Kings RowMadame von Eln
1942The Mystery of Marie RogetMme. Cecile Roget
1943Frankenstein Meets the Wolf ManMaleva
1945Tarzan and the AmazonsAmazon Queen
1946I've Always Loved YouMadame Goronoff
1947WyomingMaria
1949A Kiss in the DarkMme. Karina

See also

References
  1. Robinson, Harlow. 2007. Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image. Boston: Northeastern UP; ISBN 978-1-55553-686-2, page 81
  2. Nissen, Axel. 2006. Actresses of a Certain Character: Forty Familiar Hollywood Faces from the Thirties to the Fifties. Illustrated ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.; ISBN 978-0-7864-2746-8, p. 141.
  3. Obituary for Maria Ouspenskaya, Variety, December 7, 1949; page 63.
  4. Benedetti, Jean. Stanislavski: His Life and Art (revised edition, 1999; original edition published in 1988). London: Methuen; ISBN 0-413-52520-1, pp. 209-211
  5. Smith, Ronald L. (2010). Horror Stars on Radio: The Broadcast Histories of 29 Chilling Hollywood Voices. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-4525-7.
  6. Seiler, Michael (December 13, 1985). "Anne Baxter Dies at 62 --50 Years of It as Star in Films, Stage and TV". The Los Angeles Times.
  7. King, Susan (September 30, 2009). "Marge Champion still has the dance moves". The Los Angeles Times.
  8. "The 12th Academy Awards 1940". Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  9. Maria Ouspenskaya at IMDb
  10. Mank, Gregory W. Women in Horror Films, 1940s. 1999. p. 95.
  11. Crowther, Bosley (26 December 1963). "Screen: Eight New Movies Arrive for the Holidays". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
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