Vera Kholodnaya

Russian actress

Vera Vasilyevna Kholodnaya (née Levchenko; Вера Васильевна Холодная; 5 August 1893 – 16 February 1919) was an actress of Russian Empire cinema. She was the first star of Imperial Russian silent cinema. Only five of her films still exist, and the total number she acted in is unknown, with speculation ranging from 50 to 100.

Born in Poltava (Russian Empire, now Ukraine), she went to live in Moscow with her widowed grandmother at the age of 2. As a girl, she dreamed of a career in classical ballet and enrolled at the Bolshoi Theatre ballet school. From early childhood. Vera participated in family theatricals. When she was age 10, Vera was sent to the famous Perepelkina's grammar school.

At the graduation prom she met Vladimir Kholodny, who was then a student, an editor of a daily sport newspaper and a race driver, said to be one of the early Russian car racers. They got married in 1910 despite disapproval of both families.

In 1908, Vera attended a performance of Francesca da Rimini, with Vera Komissarzhevskaya in the title role. She was deeply impressed with Komissarzhevskaya's artistry and decided to venture in film acting. She approached Vladimir Gardin, a leading Russian film director, who cast her in a minor role in his grand production of Anna Karenina. In 1915 Yevgeni Bauer was to direct the film Song of Triumphant Love (Pesn Torzhestvuyushchey Lyubvi), a mystical love drama (after Turgenev) and was searching for an actress of outstanding beauty. When Vera Kholodnaya was introduced to Bauer, he at once approved her for the role, being impressed by her beauty. a drama with pretensions to revealing social problems. Tremendous success was Pyotr Chardynin's tragic melodrama The Mirages (1916), followed by the 'fancy drama' Beauty Must Reign in the World by Yevgeni Bauer, melodrama Fiery Devil, and another melodrama A Life for a Life, which turned one of the most popular films in Vera Kholodnaya's career and brought her the title 'the Queen of Screen'. Like many of her films, it was based on a Russian traditional love song. At the same time there was probably no other film so much criticized, especially after the revolution. By the middle of 1918 Vera Kholodnaya turned from just a popular and admired actress into a real phenomenon of the Russian cinema. Her latest movies were Krasnaya zarya (1918), Zhivoy trup (1918), The Last Tango (1918). However, only five works with Kholodnaya have been preserved. The Children of the Age was the earliest of them. The other four extant films are: The Mirages (1916), A Life for a Life (1916), A Corpse Living (1918), and Be Silent, My Sorrow, Be Silent (1918). A Life for a Life was the film that definitively established Kholodnaya's star status.

After her husband was drafted to fight in World War I, Kholodnaya signed with a rival Khanzhonkov studio. During World War I, Kholodnaya took part in charity concerts, selling gifts to support soldiers and their families. Soldiers worshipped Kholodnaya, calling her "our Verochka". In breaks between shooting sessions, Kholodnaya travelled to the front to visit her husband. By the time of the Russian Revolution, a new Kholodnaya film was released every third week. At the Fire Side (1917) was her massive commercial success: the movie was run in cinemas until 1924, when the Soviet authorities ordered many of the Kholodnaya features destroyed. At the Fire Side was a drama based on a love triangle. The film's success prompted its director Petr Chardynin to make a sequel, Forget about the Fire, the Flame's Gone Out (1917), which was released during the October revolution. Forget about the Fire, together with another film, Be Silent, My Sorrow, Be Silent (1918) both with a circus theme broke all commercial records for Russian pre revolutionary cinema. While that seems quite likely, there is much speculation around her death. Other stories claim she was poisoned by the French ambassador with whom she reportedly had an affair and who believed that she was a spy for the Bolsheviks.

Her life was dramatised in Nikita Mikhalkov's film A Slave of Love (1976). A documentary on her life was filmed in 1992. A year later, her image was depicted on a postage stamp and in 2003 a life size bronze statue of her was erected in Odessa, created by the artist Alexander P. Tokarev.