Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (néeKnipper;
Russian: Ольга Константиновна Чехова; 14 April 1897 – 9 March 1980), known in Germany as Olga Tschechowa, was a Russian-German actress. Her film roles include the female lead in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mary (1931).
Olga Konstantinovna Knipper was born on 14 April 1897, the daughter of Konstantin Knipper[1] (1868–1929), a railway engineer, and Yelena Luise "Lulu" Knipper (née Ried, 1874–1940), both
Lutherans of ethnic German ancestry.
[2] Olga was the niece and namesake of
Olga Knipper (
Anton Chekhov's wife). She went to school in
Tsarskoye Selo but, after watching
Eleonora Duse, joined the
Moscow Art Theatre's studio. There she met the
Russian-Jewish actor
Mikhail Chekhov (Anton's nephew) in 1914 and married him the same year, taking his surname as her own. Their daughter, also named Olga, was born in 1916.[3] She became an actress under the name of
Ada Tschechowa.
During the year of the 1917
October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. In the first year of the revolution, she joined a cabaret-theatre group called Sorokonozhka (The Little Centipede), as the troupe consisted of twenty members and only forty feet. Chekhova also was given a part in a silent movie, Anya Kraeva. The following year, in 1918, she was given roles in Cagliostro and in The Last Adventure of Arsène Lupin.[4] Although part of the social circle around the Moscow Art Theatre, she never played a role there, despite her later claims to having her first theatre role in The Cherry Orchard.[citation needed]
She managed to get a travel passport from the Soviet government, possibly in exchange for her cooperation, which led to permission to leave Russia. She was accompanied by a Soviet agent on a train to
Vienna, then she moved to
Berlin in 1920. That same year, she married Frederick Yaroshi, though they divorced in 1921.[5] Her first cinema role in Germany was in
F. W. Murnau silent movie Schloß Vogelöd (1921).[6] She played in
Max Reinhardt's productions at
UFA. She made the successful transition from silent film to talkies. In the 1930s, she rose to become one of the brightest stars of the
Third Reich and was admired by
Adolf Hitler. She appeared in such films as The Hymn of Leuthen although she preferred comedies.[7] In 1936 she married for the third time, to Marcel Robbins, which ended in divorce in 1938.[8]
Joseph Goebbels
A published photograph of her sitting beside Hitler at a reception gave the leaders of the Soviet intelligence service the impression that she had close contacts with Hitler. She had more contact with the
Minister of Propaganda,
Joseph Goebbels, who referred to her in his diaries as "eine charmante Frau" ("a charming lady").[9]
She is also rumored to have been a communist spy in a Soviet conspiracy. According to the book Killing Hitler (2006) by the British author
Roger Moorhouse,[10] she was pressured by
Stalin and
Beria to flirt with Adolf Hitler in order to gain and transfer information so that Hitler could be killed by secret Soviet agents.
Later years
Olga achieved great success in the motion picture industry. Her filmography includes 138 credits as an actor, director, and producer[11] between 1917 and 1974. After the war she lived in the Soviet sector of Berlin, but eventually she managed to escape from her Soviet contacts. In 1949, she moved to Munich, Bavaria, and launched a cosmetics company, Olga Tschechowa Kosmetik.[12]
At the same time she continued acting, and played supporting roles and cameos in more than 20 films. She largely retired from acting in the 70s, after publishing a book of memoirs. Her correspondence with Russian actresses
Olga Knipper and
Alla Tarasova was published posthumously.[citation needed]
^Filmed in German by a Swiss production firm, (The Eternal Mask) adapted by Leo Lapaire from his own novel. Mathias Weimann plays an idealistic doctor who believes he has discovered a cure for meningitis. Ordered not to experiment with this serum, Weimann does so anyway, utilizing the supposed wonder drug on a terminal patient. When the man dies, Weimann is reprimanded by his superiors, and wanders out of the hospital, believing himself a failure. His depression deepens into delirium, and soon the doctor is wandering through a Caligariesque world of distorted shapes and distended shadows, where he finds it impossible to separate illusion from reality. Meanwhile, Weimann's superiors determine that the meningitis serum is indeed effective; now they must snap the doctor out of his nightmare in order for him to reveal the formula. One of the very few successful attempts to convey madness on screen.
Romani, Cinzia (1992). Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich. Translated by Connolly, Robert. New York: Sarpedon.
ISBN978-0-9627613-1-7.
External links
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