LEONID UTESOV – TIME SYMBOL
Leonid Utesov’s voice is remembered by people of three generations. He gave a start in life to such songs as “Polyushko-pole”, “Kakhovka”, “Two friends”. And the participation of the jazz orchestra Leonid Utesov in the film “Merry guys” made the painting immortal. Perhaps it is difficult to imagine a person, at least a little familiar with the art of the twentieth century, who would not hear about the singer, this is the most ingenious Master who brilliantly played in the cinema, and his songs forever sunk into our souls …
To the sound of the violin
Lazar I. Weisbein, namely the name of an outstanding artist, was born on March 21, 1895 in a family of a small Odessa merchant. The family lived near the port, and once the youngest, Lazarus, his father found himself on the landing under a strange door: he was lying with his ear pressed to the lower slot. When his father anxiously bent over him, the boy whispered: “Hush. Now he is again. ” A violin was heard from behind the door … Then the baby was served with tea, honey and cinnamon – lying on the floor was not in vain. But, having hardly recovered, he again settled at the door, already with others – there was a phonograph. Then the father gave Ledy to study the violin. Although the thought did not allow that music will become a matter of his life.
At the age of eight, Ledya entered the Faiga commercial school. But swotting and teacher rigor flew out of my head with the last trill of the bell. “On the boulevard!” The boy told himself. Music singer Leonid Utesov there – more than enough. In the center there is a brass band, on the left in the restaurant is Italian, on the right in the pub – Romanian. The boy knew by heart the whole repertoire and at home he played the sound of various instruments in his voice. He would have disappeared in the opera house, but the ticket cost the whole baklava dish.
The elder brother, a regular at the opera, sang arias at home, and Ledya learned all of them. Ice managed to play the violin in the symphony orchestra, the trumpet in the wind orchestra and the balalaika in the folk orchestra.
Exalted Cliffs
At the age of fourteen, he played in various orchestras, without any embarrassment, he sang in the streets with a guitar, at fifteen he performed in a circus on rings and trapezes. And by the age of twenty, he had managed to visit almost all the major cities of Ukraine – with theaters and booths. Once a famous Odessa artist Skavronsky, with whom Utesov played a sketch, advised a partner to choose a stage name.
“I decided to take for myself a surname that no one had ever had,” the artist wrote later. – Naturally, all my thoughts revolved around the hill. My God, I thought. Cliffs, cliffs! ”So Leonid Utesov appeared!
And in 1917, he took the 1st place in the competition for the coupletists in Gomel and in the same year organized a small orchestra in Moscow, which he performed in the Hermitage garden.
There is a meeting in life
At the end of the tour, Utesov was invited to the Humor Theater. He lost in salary, but he ended up in Odessa. The season began in the genre of pop narrator. singer Leonid Utesov And everything would be fine if he did not fall in love with an assistant. She was the wife of the bailiff, and he threatened to kill the artist. Everything flew to hell, Utesov fled to Kherson.
But sometimes in victory lies defeat, and in failure – success. In the train, he met the actress of his new theater. After the first rehearsal, he invited Lenochka to a restaurant, and then they went to him to wait out the rain. “She entered my room and never left her again.” As if it had rained for 49 years. ” Utesov loved to say that he had a friend-wife, advisor-wife, critic-wife, but he was not a polygamist. Elena Iosifovna was one in three persons.
Leonid Utesov sings … eyebrows
The First World War began. It may seem strange, but in this wild, unpredictable, bloody time, people, instead of hiding from house to house, poured themselves into movies, circuses, theaters. Artists were snapped up. Utesov continued to look for “his own face” in order to attract different publics, regardless of political sympathies. When he gave a benefit performance, the tickets sold out in a week.
Mkhatovites, who were touring in Odessa, told the artist many warm words. And now he is already in the capital, the singer Leonid Utesov is heading straight from the station to the Theater of Revolutionary Satire.
– I Utesov. From Odessa.
David Gutman, the main director, responded immediately:
– What is Cliffs, I do not know. But Odessa suits me.
Soon, like any rising star, he had ill-wishers. Some said, “voiceless, sings eyebrows.” Others claimed that the ceiling of his career was an operetta comic and pop kuletist. With his characteristic indomitable impudence, penetrating energy and personal charm, Leda decides to turn the tide, to prove that he can do anything!
Leonid Utesov and “Merry guys”
The cinematic biography of Leonid Utesov began as Zarudny’s lawyer in the film “Lieutenant Schmidt is a fighter for freedom”, and was continued in the film “Career of Spyrka Shpandyr”.
He managed to work in six theaters, and in 1928 after a trip to Paris, where he first heard professional jazz, gathered musicians and began to prepare his program. In 1929, Leonid Utesov’s theatrical jazz with the program “Thea-jazz” debuted on the stage of the Maly Opera Theater.
