How Erast Garin Became King in the Film "Cinderella" and Conquered the USSR
Born in Ryazan Erast Garin. Actor. Star of the Meyerhold Theatre. The inimitable king from "Cinderella":
Connections are connections, but in the end, you also need to have a conscience!
Real surname - Gerasimov. His father was a forester, and his mother (née Garina) was a housewife. He attended high school without any particular academic achievements.
He started doing very well in school. His only failing grades were in algebra, French, German, Latin, and history (from a letter to his sister).
In 1917 he got a job as an extra in Ryazan City Theatre. In 1919, he volunteered for the Red Army. He was retained in Ryazan to serve, performing in the garrison theater. He was sent to Moscow with the theater.
I noticed at one of the performances Meyerhold, He said, "You need to study, young man." And Erast, who took his mother's surname as a pseudonym, went to Meyerhold at the State Higher Directing Workshops (GVYRM).
They studied speech technique—voice production, singing—and "understood the meaning of caesura and pause." They also studied physical training: gymnastics, boxing, fencing, and biomechanics.
We studied the laws of body balance. The reflection of any movement in all parts of the body. The master did not recommend training in tights. A light suit was better. Then the student learns to feel the lines and folds of clothing. <> It was important to remember that every gesture is organically preceded by a "sign of refusal" - a "foregesture." Thus, when preparing to draw an arrow from behind his back, the student makes a "swing" (a foregesture, a sign of refusal), figuratively speaking, like an involuntary sigh before the intended movement.
Soon he began performing in plays at the Meyerhold Actor's Theatre, sometimes in multiple roles. For example, in "Give Us Europe!" he played ten roles at once, including the role of a corpse—he was thin and light, easy to carry around the stage.
In 1924, he brilliantly played the leading role of NEPman Gulyachkin in Erdman’s play “The Mandate”: one of the critics counted more than 300 bursts of laughter in the audience after the hero’s lines ("I'm a party man... I'll arrest all of Russia with this piece of paper."In 1926, his performance of Khlestakov drew full houses. After Chatsky, in 1928, Garin became the leading actor at the Meyerhold Theatre.
Despite leaving the theater and then returning, he was always grateful to his teacher. Meyerhold spent his last evening before his arrest with Garin and his wife, discussing the couple's directorial debut, "Marriage" (it was withdrawn from theaters and destroyed almost immediately as part of the fight against "Meyerholdism").
All-Union film fame came in 1947, after his role as the king in Cinderella Kosheverova:
No connections will help make a foot small, a soul big, a heart fair
In total, he played roles in more than 40 films. As a film director, he made eight, including the first film adaptation of "An Ordinary Miracle." Schwartz.
In 1966, during the filming of "Merry Rasplyuev Days," he was hit in the face with an icy snowball—one eye had to be removed, and the other almost lost sight.
He voiced cartoons. On radio, he pioneered the genre of monodramatic sound performances.
Passed away in 1980.