Grigori Aleksandrov

Though Aleksandrov remained active until his death, his musicals, amongst the first made in the Soviet Union, remain his most popular films. They rival Ivan Pyryev's films as the most effective and light-hearted showcase ever designed for the Stalin-era USSR.

The recorded working language is Russian. Subjects and genres recorded for the work are socialist realism. Employment is recorded with Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. Distinctions recorded are Hero of Socialist Labour, Order of the Red Star, People's Artist of the USSR and Order of Friendship of Peoples.

Aleksandrov was born in Yekaterinburg, Russia in 1903. Starting at age nine, Aleksandrov worked odd jobs at the Ekaterinburg Opera Theater, eventually making his way to assistant director. He also pursued a musical education, studying violin at the Ekaterinburg Musical School, from which he graduated in 1917. Aleksandrov came to Moscow after studying directing and briefly managing a movie theater. In 1921, while acting with the Proletcult Theatre he met a then 23-year-old Sergei Eisenstein. In 1923, Aleksandrov was given the main role in Eisenstein's adaptation of Alexander Ostrovsky’s 1868 comedy Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man (Na vsyakovo mudretsa dovolno prostoty) and in Eisenstein's first film Glumov's Diary (Дневник Глумова), a short film that was included in the play. Eisenstein and Aleksandrov collaborated on several plays before Eisenstein made his first feature-length film, Strike, which Aleksandrov co-wrote with Eisenstein, Ilya Kravchunovsky, and Valeryan Pletnyov. Next came Eisenstein's landmark Battleship Potemkin, in which Aleksandrov played Ippolit Giliarovsky. Aleksandrov co-directed Eisenstein's next two features, October: Ten Days That Shook the World and The General Line, which were also their last works in the silent era. Along with Eisenstein's other major collaborator, cinematographer Eduard Tisse, Aleksandrov joined the director when he came to Hollywood in the early 1930s. He also traveled with them to Mexico for the filming of Eisenstein's unrealized project about the country. An edited version of the footage, known as ¡Que viva México!, was put together by Aleksandrov in 1979.

Aleksandrov returned to the Soviet Union in 1932 under direct orders from Joseph Stalin. He directed a pro-Stalin film, International (Интернационал), the following year and after a meeting with Stalin and Maxim Gorky, he embarked on making the first Soviet musical, Jolly Fellows, starring Leonid Utyosov and Lyubov Orlova, whom Aleksandrov later married (Orlova had been previously married to an economist who was arrested in 1930). She starred in his most successful films: Circus, Volga-Volga, and Tanya.

The Great Patriotic War (June 1941) came when Aleksandrov and his wife Orlova on vacation near Riga, Latvia. They hurriedly returned to Moscow. During one of the Nazi air raids, Aleksandrov had got a contusion and injured his spine. He made a propaganda movie Fighting Film Collection #4 with Orlova singing a new version of the famous march from Jolly Fellows: "A horde of dark villains has attacked our laboring and jolly people..." At the end of October 1941, with the other Mosfilm employees, Aleksandrov and Orlova were evacuated to Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR. Soon the director was sent to Azerbaijani Baku to run a local studio. There Aleksandrov and his wife made a film A Family which was banned from being released in theatres for "poorly reflecting the struggle of the Soviet people against the German fascist invader". In September 1943, Aleksandrov was ordered to return to Moscow as manager-in-chief of Mosfilm studio.

Aleksandrov's first postwar film was Springtime, another musical comedy starring Lyubov Orlova, as well as several other top-notch actors, including Nikolay Cherkasov, Erast Garin, and Faina Ranevskaya. He also made a movie about the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, obviously pushed by his Moscow Conservatory nurtured wife. Popular public figures in the Soviet Union, Aleksandrov and Orlova had a difficult relationship with Stalin, who admired their films (he reportedly gave a print of Volga Volga as a present to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt) but frequently humiliated the pair. He taught directing at VGIK from 1951 to 1957, Leonid Gaidai was among his students. He also made several films about the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, including several about Vladimir Lenin.

Paradoxically, Aleksandrov found it harder to work in the more politically relaxed atmosphere called "Khrushchev Thaw" that followed Stalin's death. He was even punished for his success during the Stalin era. The level of harsh criticism about his movie Russian Souvenir (1960) was very derogatory, the satirical magazine Krokodil has published a feuilleton dedicated to the film, entitled "Is this specificity?" Immediately, as if on command, critical articles began to appear in other publications. The case went so far that Aleksandrov's colleagues were forced to defend the director. Izvestia has published a letter in support of Aleksandrov, signed by Pyotr Kapitsa, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergey Obraztsov, Yuri Zavadsky and Sergei Yutkevich. The attacks on Aleksandrov had stopped but after that, he basically stopped filming. According to Russian actor Aleksandr Shpagin, Aleksandrov's humor wasn't understood then as clear as now.

Twelve years after his previous feature film, at the high of Brezhnevian stagnation, Aleksandrov was suddenly given enough money for a film about the Soviet spies during WWII. His last narrative feature was Skvorets i Lira (Starling and Lyre) (1973), which starred Orlova in her last role and was not released. However, the movie's existence has become a source of "Sclerosis and Climax" reference, a popular joke. Orlova died in 1975. In 1983, he worked on a documentary about the career of his late wife. He died in December 1983 of a kidney infection and was buried on the same line as Orlova, but not next to her, in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow.

Aleksandrov's 10-year-long partnership with Sergei Eisenstein was a source of rumors about their romantic relationship. According to film critic Vitaly Vulf, the "friendship is still a subject of speculation and gossips, although there is no evidence they had had a sexual relationship. Aleksandrov himself took these rumors calmly: 'Maybe he was infatuated by me... I've never been infatuated by him.' Eisenstein, for the rest of his life, believed Aleksandrov had betrayed him when he married Orlova."

The first marriage to an actress Olga Ivanova (died June 1941), from 1925 to 1933. During Grigori's three-year-long trip to Europe and Hollywood she became involved with a famous actor Boris Tenin, separated from Aleksandrov and eventually married Tenin. She died in labor, along with Tenin's child, just before the start of the Great Patriotic War. Son, Douglas Aleksandrov (1926–1978), named after Douglas Fairbanks, Aleksandrov's favorite actor. Forcefully renamed to Vasili during his arrest by OGPU in 1952. He was falsely charged on treason when the secret police tortured him to testify about his father being an American spy. He was released shortly after Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, after having his first heart attack in prison. Douglas-Vasilii died after his second heart attack in 1978, survived by his widow Galina Krylova. Olga (b. 1946), granddaughter Grigori (1954–2012), grandson The second marriage to Lyubov Orlova, from 1934 to 1975 (her death). In June 1941, she adopted Douglas, after his mother's death. According to Orlova-Aleksandrov's archive owner, Jewish lawyer Aleksandr Dobrovinsky: "Many argued there was no relationship between Orlova and Aleksandrov. But they were, however, very strange. They never spoke to each other at all. These people, who have lived with each other for dozens of years, never said a single word to each other! They corresponded. We have tons of these notes in our office. Lyubov Petrovna insisted on this method of communication. Of course, in public, at a party, they talked, but in private it was only in writing. Klavdiya Shulzhenko, knowing about this, dedicated to them her romance "Don't Talk About Love". Why is that? Because Orlova did not want her husband to confess to her about his previous relationship. And she agreed with him that they are playing such a game, they didn't talk as a joke. Since Jolly Fellows, he had to prove to her his love, and he did it as he liked but not in words. Why words when you can explain yourself on the screen? Of course, there were sexual relations between them." Dobrovinsky also added: "And the legend about a fictitious relationship emerged due to the fact that Orlova and Aleksandrov never slept in bed together. And it is true. But we have managed to find out why. The director's diary contains the following entry: “Her first husband, Andrei Berzin, was almost taken out of the matrimonial bed by the Chekists with bayonets. This injury remained with her forever and she could not physically fall asleep with another person. She had to sleep alone." The third marriage to his son's widow Galina Krylova, from 1979 to 1983 (his death). Grigori Aleksandrov's mental health after the death of his second wife didn't allow him to process his son's death in 1978. He was sure "Douglas went to buy a loaf of bread". However, the documents were signed and his new widow had prevented Orlova sister's relatives from the inheritance of property.