Mikheil Gelovani

Mikheil Gelovani (Georgian: მიხეილ გელოვანი, Russified as Михаи́л Гео́ргиевич Гелова́ни, Mikhail Georgievich Gelovani; January 6 [O.S. December 25, 1892] 1893 – December 21, 1956) was a Georgian-Soviet actor, known for his numerous portrayals of Joseph Stalin in cinema, starring in fifteen historic movies mostly about the early Soviet era.

Mikheil Gelovani
Born(1893-01-06)January 6, 1893
Lasuria, Kutais Governorate, Russian Empire
DiedDecember 21, 1956(1956-12-21) (aged 63)
Moscow, Soviet Union
OccupationActor, director
Years active1913–1956

Biography

Early life

Mikheil Gelovani was a descendant of the old Georgian princely house of Gelovani.[1] He made his stage debut in a theater in Batumi during 1913. From 1919 to 1920, he attended the Drama Studio in Tiflis. In the two following years, he was a member of the cast in the city's Rustaveli Theatre. From 1923, he worked as an actor and a director in Georgian SSR's Goskinprom film studio.[2] In 1924, he first appeared on screen in the film Three Lives.[3] He moved to the Armenian SSR's Armenkino production unit in 1927. In addition to his cinematic work, Gelovani continued to appear in theater, and performed on stages in Kutaisi and Baku. In 1936 he returned to the ensemble of the Rustaveli Theatre, and remained there for three years.[4]

Antebellum

In 1938, Gelovani first portrayed Stalin in Mikheil Chiaureli's The Great Dawn. His performance won him the Order of the Red Banner of Labour on 1 February 1939 and the Stalin Prize during 1941.[2] Afterwards, Gelovani "established a monopoly on the role of Stalin", which he continued to portray in twelve other pictures until the premier's death.[5] Gelovani greatly resembled Stalin physically, except in his stature: he was much taller than the latter.[6] Reportedly, he was not the premier's favorite candidate for depicting himself on screen: since he was Georgian, he mimicked Stalin's accent "to perfection". Therefore, the leader personally preferred Aleksei Dikiy, who used classic Russian pronunciation. However, Gelovani appeared in his role much more than Dikiy.[7] According to The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats, Gelovani had probably portrayed the same historical figure more than any other actor.[8] When the two met, the general secretary told the actor: "you are observing me thoroughly... You do not waste time, do you?"[9]

Soviet cinema played an important part in cultivating the leader's cult of personality: from 1937 and onward, in a gradual process, Stalin's reign was legitimized by depicting him as Vladimir Lenin's most devout follower[10] and by positively presenting historical autocrats - like in Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible.[11]

Later years

Due to his identification with Stalin, Gelovani was barred from playing other roles in cinema; he was not allowed to depict "mere mortals".[12] From 1942 to 1948, he was a member of the cast in the Gorky Moscow Art Theatre.[4] During World War II, the personality cult was abandoned in favor of patriotic motifs, but returned already at the war's late stages, and with greater intensity than ever after 1945: Stalin was soon credited as the sole architect of victory.[13] In the postwar films in which he portrayed him – The Vow, The Fall of Berlin and The Unforgettable Year 1919 – Gelovani presented the leader as "a living god".[14]

The actor was awarded three more Stalin Prizes, all of which were granted for his performances of the premier in film: in 1942 for The Defence of Tsaritsyn, in 1947 for The Vow and in 1950 for The Fall of Berlin. On 3 June 1950, he was given the title People's Artist of the USSR.[2]

After Stalin's death in 1953, Gelovani was denied new roles in films, since he was completely identified with the character of the dead ruler.[15][16] From 1953 until his death in 1956, he acted in Moscow's State Theater for Film Actors.[4] Andreas Kilb wrote that he ended his life "a pitiful Kagemusha" of Stalin.[17] Gelovani is buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery, alongside his wife Ludmila.[18]

Following Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech in 1956, most of the pictures he appeared in as Stalin were either banned or had the relevant scenes removed.[15]

Filmography
As actor
YearFilm
1924Three Lives
1925Rider from the Wild West
1926The Ninth Wave
1927Two Hunters
1927Evil Spirit
1931Out of the Way!
1934Good-bye
1934The Last Masquerade
1937The Return of Maxim
1937Orange Valley
1938The Man with the Gun
1938The Great Dawn
1939Lenin in 1918 (scenes deleted)
1939The Vyborg Side
1940Siberians
1941Valery Chkalov (scenes deleted)
1942The Defense of Tsaritsyn
1946The Vow (banned)
1949The Fall of Berlin (banned)
1950The Lights of Baku
1953The Fires of Baku (scenes deleted)
1952The Miners of the Donetsk
1952The Unforgettable Year 1919 (banned)
1953Jambyl Jabayev
1953Hostile Whirlwinds (scenes deleted)
As director
YearFilm
1927Evil Spirit
1929Youth Wins
1931Deed of Valour
1931True Caucasian
gollark: I mostly just rewrite stuff by components, it's much easier.
gollark: Why even rewrite then?
gollark: There's one known in-the-wild exploit, another alleged one, and one hypothetical one I thought of when working on some other components.
gollark: It might not, really, assuming I do most things the same.
gollark: I would lose out on so many of the accumulated bugfixes.

References
  1. Dumin, Grebelskii, Lapin. p. 80.
  2. Torchinov, Leontiuk. p. 146.
  3. Yutkevich, Afanaseev. p. 92.
  4. Prokhorov. p. 160.
  5. Rappaport. p. 40.
  6. Beumers. p. 96.
  7. Taylor. p. 228.
  8. Robertsons. p. 105.
  9. Montefiore. p. 517.
  10. Plamper, Heller. pp. 228-229.
  11. Dobrenko. p. 59.
  12. Taylor, Spring. p. 164.
  13. Youngblood. p. 95.
  14. Boobeyer. p. 113
  15. A. Bernstein (September 1989). "Mikhail Gelovani: One-Role Actor". Soviet Film. 9: 16–17. ISSN 0201-8373.
  16. Zaleski. p. 146.
  17. Andreas Kilb (20 September 1991). "Die Meister des Abgesangs" [The Masters of the Swan Song]. zeit.de (in German). Die Zeit. Retrieved 19 September 2011.
  18. Mikheil Gelovani Archived 2015-07-05 at the Wayback Machine. novodevichiynecropol.ru.

Bibliography
  • S. V. Dumin, P. Kh Grebelskii, V. V. Lapin. Dvorianskie Rody Rossiiskoi Imperii: Kniazʹia Tsarstva Gruzinskogo. IPK Vesti (1994). ISBN 978-5-86153-005-7.
  • Aleksandr Prokhorov (chief editor). Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Volume 6). Collier Macmillan Publishers (1982). ISBN 9780028801100.
  • Valeri Torchinov, Alexei Leontiuk. Vokrug Stalina: Istoriko-Biograficheskii Spravochnik. Filologicheskii Fakultet Sankt-Peterburgskogo Universitet (2000). ISBN 5-8465-0005-6.
  • Helen Rappaport. Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO (1999). ISBN 1-57607-084-0.
  • Birgit Beumers. A History of Russian Cinema. Berg Publishers (2009). ISBN 978-1-84520-215-6.
  • Sergei Yutkevich, Yuri Afanaseev. Kino: Entsiklopedicheskii Slovar. Soviet Encyclopedia (1987). ISBN 5-900070-03-4.
  • Klaus Heller, Jan Plamper. Personality Cults in Stalinism. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (2004). ISBN 978-3-89971-191-2
  • Evgeni Dobrenko. Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution. Edinburgh University Press (2003). ISBN 978-0-7486-3445-3.
  • Denise J. Youngblood. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914-2005. University Press of Kansas (2007). ISBN 0-7006-1489-3.
  • Richard Taylor. Film propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. I.B. Tauris (1999). ISBN 978-1-86064-167-1.
  • Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin - The Court of the Red Tsar. Phoenix London (2004). ISBN 0-7538-1766-7.
  • Philip Boobbyer. The Stalin Era. Springer Verlag (2000). ISBN 978-0-415-18298-0.
  • Richard Taylor, D. W. Spring. Stalinism and Soviet Cinema. Routledg (1993). ISBN 978-0-415-07285-4.
  • Patrick Robertsons. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats. Abbeville Press (1991). ISBN 978-0-85112-706-4.
  • Konstantin Zaleski. Imperiia Stalina: Biograficheskii entsiklopedicheskii slovar. Veche (2000). ISBN 5-7838-0716-8.
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