18 Dec 1921
Born in the Smolensk region Yuri Nikulin — clown, actor, circus director.
Comedy is a serious matter!
My parents were actors. My father organized a traveling theater of revolutionary humor in Smolensk, where he staged plays and performed.
The family moved to Moscow when their son was four.
At 18, he joined the army: there he learned to laugh at himself, as “soldier’s science” required.
If people around you realize that when they joke about you, you get offended and angry, they will laugh at you completely.
He fought in the Finnish War and throughout the Great Patriotic War. He defended Leningrad, survived the siege, and was shell-shocked.
War is the greatest abomination ever invented by the human race. In war, we receive a reward for killing, not punishment.
There was no cry on the front line: “For Stalin!” The commissars tried to hammer this into our heads, but there were no commissars in the attacks.
They fought stupidly, wastefully, ineptly, and unprofessionally. They allowed the Germans to kill and kill them endlessly.
And we, guys, will have our victories. The main thing is that they won't be with weapons in hand.
Upon returning to Moscow, he failed to enroll at either VGIK or GITIS: they didn't find him capable of acting. At home, he spent a long time examining himself in the mirror and agreed with the committee members that he wasn't cut out for film.
In 1948, he graduated from the School of Conversation Genres at the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. He began performing in the arena and toured with a clown. With a pencil.
I gradually fell in love with the circus. What I fell in love with most about the circus were the people. Only people obsessed with it could spend their entire lives moving from city to city, living in overcrowded hotels or other people's apartments, rehearsing for hours every day, all for the sake of astonishing and surprising the audience.
When a commission from the Ministry of Culture came to the circus, Nikulin was asked what place he occupied in the Soviet circus.
— I am the second clown in the Union. - And who is first? — And there are a ton of the first ones.
At 36, he made his film debut, playing a pyrotechnician in Girl with a Guitar (1958).
A circus clown on stage is like a mermaid pulled out of the water onto the shore.
He brought role-masks from the arena to the screen. He used circus eccentricity and texture.
His character Balbes, whom he played in several films at once (The Dog Barbos and the Unusual Cross, Moonshiners, Operation Y, and Kidnapping, Caucasian Style), ensured his nationwide love.
I didn't consider Balbes a negative character, I loved him: strange, cheerful, good-natured
At 46, he played Semyon Semyonich in "The Diamond Arm." At 49, he played the janitor Tikhon in "The Twelve Chairs" and the investigator Myachikov in "The Old Robbers."
He also played dramatic roles: Kuzma Kuzmich in “When the Trees Were Big,” the monk Patrikey in “Andrei Rublev,” the war journalist Lopatin in “20 Days Without War,” and the grandfather in the film “Scarecrow.”
I have only two flaws: a bad memory and something else.
He left the arena at 60 and the cinema at 70.
For the last 15 years of his life, he was the director of the circus on Tsvetnoy Boulevard. When he entered the cafeteria, he wished everyone bon appétit, could tell a joke, and the door to his office was always open.
He hosted the program "White Parrot" on ORT.
He died in 1997, at 75, in Moscow, due to complications following heart surgery.
Even a small smile kills one small microbe in the body.