90 years ago, on December 12, 1928, the future famous Soviet actor, film director and screenwriter Leonid Fedorovich Bykov was born. The actor passed away early, he died at the age of 50 in a car accident, and today we can only guess how many more roles he could play and how many films to make. For Soviet and then Russian viewers, Leonid Bykov will forever remain one of the favorite artists. Roles in the films "Maxim Perepelitsa" and "Tiger Tamer" made him a star on the screen, and his film "Only Old Men Go to Battle", in which he played a major role, made him immortal for many generations of viewers.
Leonid Bykov was born on December 12, 1928 in the village of Znamenka, Slavyansky District, Donetsk Region, into a family of ordinary workers. In 1938, the family moved to the city of Kramatorsk, Bykov's parents got a job here at a metallurgical plant. The conscious childhood of the future actor passed in Kramatorsk, here he graduated from high school №6. Here he will first appear on the stage of the local House of Culture named after Lenin, which many years later will be named after Bykov himself. It was here that his creative inclinations first appeared. Already in elementary school, Bykov played in impromptu performances, which were staged for other children, neighbors and relatives. His school friends were then involved in these productions, and he wrote the scripts for some of them on his own.
During the Great Patriotic War, he and his family from 1941 to 1943 were evacuated to Barnaul. Here is a young man who, like many other Soviet children, dreamed of aviation since childhood, decided to enter a flight school. The first time, back in 1943, he tried to enter the flight school in Oirot-Tour (today Gorno-Altaisk), where the 2nd Leningrad School of Military Pilots was evacuated. Naturally, the 15-year-old boy, who attributed to himself three years, was not taken to the flight school. In addition to age, the reason was the low stature of Bykov. The second time he entered the 2nd Special School for Pilots in Leningrad in 1945. Here he managed to study for about a month, but after the end of the war the school was disbanded, the dream of becoming a military pilot was not destined to come true. Although later Bykov did implement it, but already on the television screen.
After the dream of heaven was not realized, Bykov remembered his youth and his visit to the theater club at the Palace of Culture in Kramatorsk. In 1947, Bykov tried to enter the Kiev State Institute of Theater Arts, but this attempt ended in failure, but he managed to become a student at the Kharkov Theater Institute, the acting department of which Leonid Bykov successfully graduated in 1951. After that, for nine years he was an actor of the Kharkov Academic Ukrainian Theater named after T. G. Shevchenko, where he attracted the attention of filmmakers with his vivid roles, including the role of a dandy in the comedy "Street of Three Nightingales, 17". At the same time, he also had dramatic roles, for example, here in Kharkov he played Pavka Korchagin in the production of How the Steel Was Tempered.
Bykov played his first film role in 1952, starring in the film "Marina's Fate". His next film work was the famous comedy "Tiger Tamer", which was released on Soviet screens in 1954. In this film, Leonid Bykov played one of the main roles - the first mate of the river tug Pyotr Mokin. Already in 1955, Bykov starred in the title role in another famous Soviet comedy "Maxim Perepelitsa". These works made Leonid Bykov a famous artist in the country. After starring in the war film "Volunteers" (1958), where he played Alyosha Akinshin and the melodrama "Aleshkin's Love" (1960), he only strengthened his role as one of the most famous actors in the country, who was loved by many viewers. In the film "Aleshkin's Love" he very successfully embodied on the screen the image of a naive geologist in love.
In 1959, the actor left Kharkov and moved to Leningrad, where he spent ten years of his life from 1959 to 1969, being an actor and director of the Lenfilm film studio. In 1963, he auditioned for the role of Detochkin in the classic Soviet comedy Beware of the Automobile, but was not approved for the role. In the same year, he made his directorial debut with the first feature-length comedy The Bunny, which was released in 1964. The film was not the most successful and was criticized by critics. Although even in this light and entertaining picture, important questions about the decency and moral side of human life were quite clearly traced.
Then in the life of Leonid Bykov himself, as they say in acting circles, a simple thing happened. He did not take pictures and practically did not act on his own. Of course, various roles were offered to him, but in his opinion these were completely passable jobs, for which he did not want to take and spend his time and energy on them. In one of the letters to a friend, the actor wrote that he had not been filming for a year and managed to abandon 9 scenarios. In another letter, he wrote that he had been idle for three months already, he had refused 5 works. He noted that he seemed to have lost himself and wanted to return home. In 1969, succumbing to the persuasion of the heads of the Dovzhenko film studio, the actor moved to Kiev, but even here he did not receive the promised field for activity, from which he again fell into depression. Perhaps this simple profession and mental anguish were necessary for him and helped in further work, but they could not but affect the health of the actor, who survived several heart attacks.
For a long time, Leonid Bykov nurtured the idea of his new feature film. He decided to start working on it at the end of the 60s of the last century - it was the film "Only Old Men Go to Battle". However, after the script was ready, the case again stalled. The cinematographic authorities of the State Cinema Committee of Ukraine assessed the story proposed by Bykov as too simple, “unheroic”. The script was indeed devoid of the Soviet pathos inherent in many war films. But this time Leonid Bykov decided to bring his plan to the end, he was not going to give up. Perhaps his youthful dream of becoming a pilot played a role in this, as well as his desire to pay tribute to all pilots and technicians who fought against fascism during the Great Patriotic War. Bykov did his best to convey his story to the viewer.
In every city of the Soviet Union, at all meetings with spectators and fans, Bykov always read to them excerpts from the script for the film "Only" old men "go to battle". After each such reading, a real ovation sounded from the audience in public. As a result, Bykov managed to convince the officials that his story is real and the audience wants to see it on the movie screen. In 1972, the film was finally approved, and on May 22, 1973, filming began. It is worth noting that three times Hero of the Soviet Union, Air Marshal Alexander Pokryshkin, who, having familiarized himself with the script of the film, ordered five planes to be allocated to the film crew, three times Hero of the Soviet Union also provided great assistance in the work on the film. For the film, four Yak-18P aerobatic aircraft and a Czechoslovakian Zlin Z-326 “Acrobat” aerobatic sports aircraft were allocated, which was vaguely similar to the German Me-109 fighter. For Bykov himself, a big surprise was the complete absence of Soviet aircraft during the Second World War, a similar situation was with German cars. The only real rarity - the flying Po-2 - was discovered in Poland. During the filming of the picture, the Yak-18P planes tried to make them look like La-5 fighters.
The painting was completed in December 1973. But despite the enthusiastic reaction of the front-line soldiers and personally of Pokryshkin himself, who was present at the premiere, which took place at the State Cinema of Ukraine, we literally had to fight for the release of the film. Many high-ranking military pilots and veterans stood up for the painting in front of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, for example, the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Chief Marshal of Aviation, Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Kutakhov and twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant General of Aviation Vitaly Popkov. The final decision on the release of the film in wide distribution was facilitated by the success at the VII All-Union Film Festival, at which Leonid Bykov's film received two first prizes - for the best film and for the performance of a male role, as well as a special prize from the USSR Ministry of Defense.
In 1974, the film "Only Old Men Go to Battle", dedicated to the fighter pilots who fought the enemy during the Great Patriotic War, was released in wide distribution. The picture gathered in cinemas 44, 3 million viewers, hitting the top ten highest-grossing films in 1974 - 4th place. Moreover, it was the only film in the top ten, which was dedicated to the theme of the Great Patriotic War. This work by Bykov, in which he put his soul, becoming both a director and a leading actor, and one of the script writers subsequently received many domestic and international awards at various film festivals.
It can be especially noted that the script of the picture was based on real events, and the heroes of the film really had their prototypes. For example, the prototype of the squadron commander Captain Titarenko, played by Leonid Fedorovich himself, was twice Hero of the Soviet Union Vitaly Popkov. During the war, he commanded a "singing" squadron that actually existed in the 5th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment. She was named singing because she had her own choir. Having learned about the existence of this squadron, the orchestra of Leonid Utyosov presented her with two planes built with the artist's own money. Zoya Molchanova also had her own prototype - the legendary Soviet pilot Nadezhda Popova. He immortalized in his painting Bykov and his childhood friend Schevronk, who died a month before the end of the war on the territory of Czechoslovakia. His image on the screen was brought to life by the actor Sergei Podgorny in the role of "Darkie".
It was in the 1970s that Leonid Bykov was at the peak of his popularity. After the release of "Old Men" on the screens of the country, which glorified the actor throughout the USSR, another successful film, "Aty-Baty, Soldiers Walking," followed, which in 1976 also hit the top ten highest-grossing tapes (7th place, 35, 8 million viewers). In this film, Bykov also directed and played one of the main roles. After the release of these two films on the wide screen, the actor was called on the streets only by the names of his characters. Passers-by who stopped him addressed him as the pilot Titarenko or simply called him Maestro. And in the second film of Bykov's hero, corporal Viktor Svyatkin, all viewers knew by his nickname "Swat". It so happened that these two films were the last to appear on the screen during the life of Leonid Bykov. In 1978, Bykov began shooting a fantastic film called "The Alien", which was based on the story "Alien-73" by Yevgeny Shatko, but Leonid Fedorovich did not have time to complete the work on the picture.
Shortly before his death, Leonid Bykov wrote a letter of will to his friends. In the letter, he said that he felt that he would leave in the near future and would no longer last. He also choreographed his funeral, asking them to be modest, without officialdom and honors. “No orchestras, no cinema house and no funeral speeches. Otherwise I will get up and leave - it will be embarrassing,”the famous actor wrote. His only wish was that at the funeral his favorite song "The Dark Woman" would be performed from beginning to end.
Leonid Fedorovich Bykov passed away on April 11, 1979. He got into a car accident on the Minsk-Kiev highway near the village of Dymer. Returning to his "Volga" from the dacha, located near Kiev, he tried to overtake the tractor moving in front of him. While overtaking, a passenger car collided with an oncoming GAZ-53 truck. The blow fell in the area of the right front door of the "Volga", and the seat belt could not save the famous actor from the consequences of a collision in the oncoming lane. The investigation in this case was conducted very carefully, the young truck driver was found innocent, Bykov himself was sober, but made a mistake that cost him his life, perhaps he was mistaken due to accumulated fatigue.
Leonid Bykov was buried in Kiev at the Baikovo cemetery. His merits in creative activity were highly appreciated during his lifetime. In 1965, he received the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR, and in 1974, People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR. The name of the actor is a boulevard in Kiev, as well as streets in Kramatorsk, Kurgan and other cities. In Kramatorsk, which is considered the artist's hometown, the Kramatorsk GDK is also named after him. In 1994, the International Astronomical Union assigned the name of Leonid Fedorovich Bykov to one of the discovered minor planets.
Anyone can learn more about the life and career of their favorite artist from the new film "No harp - take a tambourine", which will be shown on Channel One on Saturday, December 15 (10:15 Moscow time), the release of this documentary is timed to coincide with 90 -years anniversary of the artist. Also on December 15 on the TV channel "Culture" will be shown one of the early acting works of Leonid Bykov - the feature film "Aleshkin's Love" (1960), this picture can be seen by viewers at 15:35 Moscow time.
