Soviet art is rich in the names of many prominent people: these are writers, screenwriters, and playwrights. One of these artists was Nikolai Erdman, whose biography is not widely known. Meanwhile, it was he who wrote the scripts for such famous films of the Soviet era as “Volga-Volga” and “Funny Guys”. Consider the life story of this person and his career in more detail.
Childhood and youth
Nikolai Erdman is the same age as he was born in 1900. Moscow became his hometown. The parents of the future screenwriter and playwright belonged to different nationalities: mother Valentina Borisovna had Jewish roots, and father Robert Karlovich came from Baltic Germans.
The future writer and poet studied well enough and managed to show himself as an excellent student at the Peter and Paul Commercial College.
The revolution found him a seventeen-year-old boy, she also changed his life dramatically. In 1919 he was drafted into the active Red Army, a year later Nikolai Erdman was able to demobilize.
After demobilization, the young man plunged headlong into the creative environment of Moscow. He became interested in imagination, then popular, wrote poetry for songs, which were later performed in cabaret, satirical works, and plays. Soon his name became known in the theatrical environment, and the young author was invited to the theaters as a playwright with a sharp and tenacious feather.
Mature years
The twenties of the 20th century were very productive for Erdman. He collaborated with the famous V.E. Meyerhold. It was Nikolai Erdman who wrote the texts of the plays entitled “The Suicide” and “Mandate”, which were brilliantly staged on the stages of Moscow theaters.
In 1927, a new era begins in the life of the playwright - he becomes a screenwriter. His most famous script of those years was written for the film "Funny Guys." However, in 1933, the screenwriter was arrested and released from exile only three years later.
After the exile Erdman could not stay in Moscow, he had to live in Ryazan and Kalinin. In 1940, the writer moved to Saratov.
When the Great Patriotic War began, Erdman was sent to the deep rear as a politically unreliable person. However, it was the war that changed the life of the writer. Together with the concert crew, he began to travel along the fronts of the war, acting as an artist and reader.
After the war, fate smiled at Erdman, and he himself tried to behave modestly and did not criticize the country's leadership anymore (it was because of such criticism that he was arrested once). The writer worked mainly as a playwright, collaborated with leading theaters in the country, and in 1951 he was even awarded the Stalin Prize.
Nikolai Erdman died in 1970, was buried in Moscow.
Erdman and the NKVD
The history of Erdman's first arrest dates back to 1933. Then, together with the director of the picture, Nikolai Erdman lived in Gagra, where the film "Funny Guys" was shot. However, for Erdman, they ended tragically. He was arrested by the NKVD. Researchers of his work believe that the reason for the arrest was the text of a fable, satirically exposing the image of Stalin, which was written by Erdman, and read at one of literary evenings by actor Kachalov.
In addition to Erdman’s arrest, one more disappointment awaited - director G. Alexandrov was forced to cross out his name from the credits for “Cheerful guys”.
However, in those harsh years, Erdman was treated rather mildly: the unlucky writer was sent to exile in Siberia (to the city of Yeniseysk, and then to Tomsk). Exemption from exile occurred only in 1936. However, the playwright was deprived of his rights for several more years and was forced to be in the cities neighboring Moscow, unable to live in the capital in which he was born.
Nikolai Erdman and Angelina Stepanova: a love story
A vivid page in the life of the playwright was an affair with actress Angelina Stepanova. Erdman and Stepanova met in Moscow in the 1920s. Both had families (although Erdman lived in a civil marriage with one of the ballerinas, but Stepanova’s marriage was quite legal and respectable). As a result, a stormy romance of two talented people began, which continued both in life and in letters.
Angelina Stepanova could not endure a double life and left her husband, but Erdman was in no hurry to become a bachelor. But their romance continued. Stepanova did not refuse Erdman even when her lover was arrested. Moreover, it was she, being a famous actress, who was able to procure for her chosen one a mitigation of his fate. The actress's love for Erdman was so great that made her secretly visit her lover in exile.
However, when she learned that Erdman was not going to part with his common-law wife, Stepanova could not survive this blow and broke off her relationship with her lover. Their correspondence ceased, which lasted about 7 years.
The results of the love drama
The fate of Erdman and Stepanova diverged. The actress married writer A. Fadeev. Former lovers met only after 22 years. Stepanova wrote about this touching meeting in her diary as an unforgettable moment in her life. They never saw each other again.
Stepanova learned about the death of Erdman, while on tour in Kiev. She deliberately did not go to his funeral.
This strong and beautiful woman outlived her lover for 30 years. At the end of her life, pouring out her soul in a diary, she bitterly recalled the story of her love, wishing that she and Erdman could not save their feelings. Stepanova also ardently regretted the fate of Erdman, believing that he, with his greatest talent, could not take his rightful place in Russian literature.
Collaboration with the Taganka Theater
Erdman Nikolai Robertovich wrote many works in his life, a biography of this person is a confirmation of this.
In the second half of his creative life, when not only the burden of the past years, but the bitter characterization of the “unreliable” lay on the writer, his good friend, theater director Yuri Lyubimov, helped him a lot. Erdman met Lyubimov during the war (together they worked in the same front-line cancer brigade).
It was Lyubimov, being a talented and sensitive person, who was able to see unrealized talent in Nikolai Robertovich. Lyubimov, becoming the main director, directed many of Erdman's plays on the stage of his theater. It was thanks to the Taganka theater that Erdman could again feel himself a playwright in demand by the audience.
Erdman's work: film works for children
Modern art historians believe that Erdman Nikolai Robertovich was not able to fully realize his extraordinary talent. But he wrote great scripts for films, which were then watched with interest by millions of viewers.
Erdman was talented in everything, even when he worked on scripts for fairy tales (“Fire, Water and Copper Pipes”, “Morozko”, “City of Masters”, etc.). After his arrest and exile, the directors were afraid to invite him to work on scripts for serious films, but the animators were more loyal to Erdman's figure, so he acted as the author of the script for more than 30 Soviet cartoons. Among them are such well-known cartoons as “The Little Man I Drew”, “The Adventure of Pinocchio”, “Thumbelina”, etc.
