1 August 1923 year
A newscaster and TV presenter was born in Petrograd Valentina Leontieva"Aunt Valya" from "Good Night, Little Ones."
My only love is television
During the Siege of Leningrad, she served as a first aid worker and helped the wounded. After her father's death, she evacuated to the Ulyanovsk region with her mother and sister.
In 1944, she entered the Chemistry Institute in Moscow, but she didn't study there; she worked in a clinic instead. After the war, she graduated from the Stanislavsky Studio and performed at the Tambov Drama Theater.
At 31, she came to television: at the time, there were 800 applicants for each spot at Shabolovka. She first worked as an assistant director, then as an announcer.
She hosted the TV programs "Blue Light," "Visiting a Fairy Tale," and "Good Night, Little Ones!" Every evening, children from all over the Soviet Union would gather in front of the screens to see "Aunt Valya." They wrote her letters, asking her not to go on vacation. The envelopes read: "On TV. For Aunt Valya."
With the program “Ot svoe dushu” (the prototype of “Wait for Me”) she toured 54 cities of the Soviet Union.
I came into contact with such a wide range of human characters that I was simply stunned.
She commented on the rally on Red Square held in honor of Gagarin's flight into space, as well as the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Moscow.
She flatly refused to host the Vremya program - she didn’t want to “read from a piece of paper.”
The only female announcer to become a People's Artist of the USSR: she voices the Kid's mother in the cartoon about Carlson.
In the 90s I was left without work.
All my shows were cancelled. Letters from viewers from all over the country were pouring in, asking, "Where's Leontyeva?" And I was sitting on the couch at home and crying.
I wrote to Yeltsin, but I still couldn’t get the “Ot svoe dushte” program back.
She lived in poverty and illness. Three years before her death, she broke her hip and moved in with her sister in the Ulyanovsk region. She died in 2007 of pneumonia. She was 83.
It's better to leave a year early than a day late. It's better to be missed than regretted.
