Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (néeKnipper;Russian:Ольга Константиновна Чехова; 14 April 1897 – 9 March 1980), known in Germany asOlga Tschechowa, was a Russian-German actress. Her film roles include the female lead inAlfred Hitchcock'sMary (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), bothLutherans of ethnic German ancestry.[2] Olga was the niece and namesake ofOlga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife). She went to school inTsarskoye Selo but, after watchingEleonora Duse, joined theMoscow Art Theatre's studio. There she met theRussian-Jewish actorMikhail 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 ofAda Tschechowa.
During the year of the 1917October 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 forty feet. Chekhova also was given a part in a silent movie,Anya Kraeva, in 1917. In 1918, she was given roles inCagliostro and inThe 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 inThe 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 toVienna, then she moved toBerlin in 1920. That same year, she married Frederick Yaroshi, though they divorced in 1921.[5] Her first cinema role in Germany was inF. W. Murnau silent movieSchloß Vogelöd (1921).[6] She played inMax Reinhardt's productions atUFA. She made the successful transition from silent film to talkies. In the 1930s, she rose to become one of the brightest stars of theThird Reich and was admired byAdolf Hitler. She appeared in such films asThe 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]
Chekhova at the Göttinger film festival in October 1953, sitting withWalter Janssen.
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 theMinister 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 bookKilling Hitler (2006) by the British authorRoger Moorhouse,[10] she was pressured byStalin andBeria to flirt with Adolf Hitler in order to gain and transfer information so that Hitler could be killed by secret Soviet agents.
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 actressesOlga Knipper andAlla 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.
