“7D” found in the archives of the legendary actor’s letters to his wife, filled with love and tenderness.

1985

Photo: RIA NOVOSTI

Innokenty Smoktunovsky lived a difficult life: he fought, and received two medals “For courage”, was captured by the Nazis, and fled. For fear that he will remember the prisoner, went into voluntary exile — to work in the Norilsk polar drama theatre. There his colleague and friend was George Zhzhenov. In Norilsk, at the request of the Director of the theatre, the Cinema had to change the name (his real name — Smoktunovich, the family of the artist — natives of Belarus). Then there was the theatres Makhachkala, Stalingrad. In Moscow, where the actor dropped everything and went to 1955, the year he, at first, was not. But it is here that he meets his future wife — costume designer Shulamith Kushnir. And the role that forever changed the fate of the Smoktunovsky, happened two years later. The defense played Prince Myshkin in the play “the Idiot” by Dostoevsky’s novel the Bolshoi drama theatre in Leningrad, and its not like any acting talent wowed the audience.

All these years, he wrote his wife letters, filled with love and tenderness. Here is one of them:

“My darling! The best thing about your letters is where you write what will soon become a mother, and I, somehow, dad. You know, I think all the time about it here, and when I read the very first feeling (don’t get me wrong) fear. Yes! Read second time — was something else. Here, on the spot, read the third time, and you know, I liked it. I caught myself smiling. And in the evening, after the show, slipped thought: “So, Straws believe in me, in me, in our future, if with such ease and peace writes to me about it”… next day got to talking with our concertmasters, she asked if I have children. To which I replied: “Will”. She smiled and replied: “And you who want, a boy or a girl?” For some reason I blurted out: “the Girl.” So now you know what are the ways of development need to come to mankind.”

All the material on unpublished letters to his wife here, read here>>