Valentina Serova

Valentina Serova

Valentina Serova (Russian: Валенти́на Васи́льевна Серо́ва) (December 23, 1917 – December 12, 1975) was a Soviet film and theatre actress of Ukrainian origin. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1946).[1] Winner of the Stalin Prize of the second degree (1947).[2]

Life

Serova was born Valentina Polovikova (Валентина Половикова) in 1917 in Kharkiv. In 1938, she married her first husband, Anatoli Serov, a Soviet Air Force general, a test and fighter pilot. In 1939 Anatoli Serov died in a crash testing a new plane.[3] In the same year, her film "Devushka s harakterom" (eng. "A Girl with Character") had a huge success and she became one of the biggest film stars of the Soviet Union.

In 1940 she met Konstantin Simonov, a famous Soviet author, whom she married in 1943. Simonov's poem "Wait For Me", one of the most famous Russian war poems, is dedicated to her. She subsequently inspired a series of love poems, collected as "With You and Without You" ("С тобой и без тебя"). Their relationship was a troubled one. During the war it was widely rumored that Serova was a mistress of Gen. K.K. Rokossovski.[4] While it's true that Serova, working as a hospital volunteer, met Rokossovski several times while he was recovering from a wound from a shell fragment in early 1942, there is no evidence that they were lovers.[5] Rokossovski already had a mistress at this time, Dr. Lt. Galina Talanova, with whom he had a daughter in 1945.[6]

Her career declined after the 1940s. Simonov left her in 1957. She became an alcoholic and died in Moscow in 1975.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Валентина Васильевна Серова — Биографии, мемуары, истории
  2. ↑ Мария Симонова, дочь актрисы Валентины Серовой: «Меня вернули маме после суда» на сайте газеты Известия
  3. ↑ Скандал вокруг сериала «Звезда эпохи»: Домогарову запретили читать стихи Симонова.
  4. ↑ 7 фактов о советской актрисе Валентине Серовой — Николай Грищенко — Российская газета
  5. ↑ Braithwaite, Rodric; Moscow, 1941, Vintage Books, New York, 2006, p 295
  6. ↑ Braithwaite, Rodric; Moscow, 1941, Vintage Books, New York, 2006, p 208
  7. ↑ Braithwaite, Rodric; Moscow, 1941, Vintage Books, New York, 2006, p 314
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