Twenty years ago, on October 4, 1997, the outstanding Soviet and Russian theater and film actor Georgy Yumatov passed away. People's Artist of the RSFSR, Georgy Alexandrovich (1926-1997) played roles in many of the most popular Soviet films. Most of the films in which he starred were devoted to military history. It was he, Georgy Yumatov, who was the main character of "Officers", played in the films "Admiral Ushakov", "Ships storm bastions", "Heroes of Shipka", "Pedagogical Poem", "Different Fates", "They were the first."
It was not by chance that the military-historical theme attracted Georgy Aleksandrovich Yumatov. He knew firsthand what a military feat was. Like many of his peers, Georgy Yumatov dreamed of the sea. Meanwhile, on June 22, 1941, the Great Patriotic War began. When Georgy Yumatov learned about the wound of his brother Konstantin, he decided to go to the war himself. He was only 15 years old. As a boy, Yumatov entered the Moscow Naval School. Thus began the first page of his heroic biography - the path of a military sailor. In 1942, Yumatov was enlisted as a cabin boy on the Otvazhny torpedo boat. Yumatov was then only sixteen years old. In the following year, 1943, he became the helmsman - signalman of a torpedo boat. The boat was part of the Kerch brigade of armored boats of the Black Sea Fleet. Anyone who is more or less familiar with the history of the Great Patriotic War will understand everything from the very first word in the name of the brigade. It was a real warring unit, and the service on the torpedo boat was very difficult. But seventeen-year-old Yumatov was quite capable of it. George perfectly mastered the profession of a signalman, achieving the highest success in it and quickly becoming an unsurpassed master of his craft.
The brigade of armored boats, where Yumatov served, went from Yeisk through Kerch and Odessa to the Danube. There an enemy torpedo hit the boat. Many colleagues of the young signalman were killed, but Yumatov managed to swim out. George was not the only signalman on his torpedo boat. More than once, as a simple marine, he went into bayonet attacks, since the tasks of the armored boats were to support landing operations in the rear of the enemy. In dozens of landing operations, Yumatov managed to survive. He survived three drowned combat boats, three severe wounds and a concussion, and frostbite of his hands. After the death of Georgy Yumatov, his fans learned that during the war the young sailor was almost awarded the high title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But, like many real heroes who were never awarded this title, Georgy's fate did not work out. He misbehaved somewhere, after which the awarding ceremony for the brave sailor was turned down in the political department or at the headquarters.
In August 1945, after being wounded, Georgy Yumatov was demobilized from the ranks of the Navy. George was only nineteen years old, and he was already a veteran with two years of fierce fighting behind his back. “For the capture of Budapest”, “For the capture of Vienna”, Ushakov's medal … All these are his awards. Yumatov received the Ushakov medal for number six, and in fact it was given to sailors only for their personal courage. It is likely that Georgiy Yumatov could have made a good naval officer, but the young man chose a different path in life, which he never regretted later. Almost immediately after returning to Moscow, director Grigory Vasilyevich Alexandrov noticed him and invited him to appear in his films. It was a pure coincidence - Aleksandrov, while relaxing in a cafe, noticed a young sailor with a textured appearance and immediately decided to invite him to his place, to the shooting.
So yesterday's helmsman-signalman of the armored boat Georgy Yumatov became an actor. He first played a cameo role as an assistant make-up artist in the 1947 film Spring. Then there was the role of a soldier in the military-patriotic film "Private Alexander Matrosov" directed by Leonid Davidovich Lukov. Then came the turn of "Young Guard" directed by Sergei Apollinarievich Gerasimov - a film about the legendary underground workers of Krasnodon, filmed in 1948. In it, Georgy Yumatov played the underground fighter Anatoly Popov.
A naval sailor, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Georgy Yumatov, was repeatedly invited to appear in films dedicated to the heroic history of the Russian Navy. In the film On Peaceful Days, one of the first Soviet action films, filmed in 1950, Yumatov played the role of the cook of the sailor Kurakin. The film tells about a Soviet submarine that was blown up by a mine. In 1953, Yumatov starred in the film "Admiral Ushakov" in the first part of the trilogy directed by Mikhail Ilyich Romm, where he played Viktor Ermolaev. In the same year, the second part of the trilogy was released - "Ships storm the bastions", where Yumatov also plays Ermolaev. In 1954, Yumatov played the soldier Sashko Kozyr in the film Heroes of Shipka, dedicated to the events of the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. The liberation of Eastern Europe is a topic close to Yumatov. He personally took part in the battles for Ishmael, Budapest and Bucharest, stormed Vienna, distinguished himself during the assault on the Imperial Bridge, a tactical landing operation of the Danube Flotilla. Now in the cinema, Yumatov played a Russian soldier liberating Bulgaria from the Turkish invaders.
The actor Georgy Yumatov turned out to be great. Although he did not have a specialized education, his innate talent and natural ingenuity allowed him to easily get used to the images of movie heroes. Appearance was also suitable - Yumatov easily reincarnated from a young Komsomol member of the underground into a Russian soldier of the last century, from a sailor to a worker. Period 1950s - 1960s became a time of incredible demand for young Georgy Yumatov. He was invariably invited to paintings dedicated to wars and revolutions, especially if he was to play sailors or naval officers. "The collapse of the emirate", "They were the first", "Storm", "Ballad of a soldier", "Cruelty", "Empty flight", "Attention, tsunami!", "Dangerous tour" - these are not all adventure and military historical films starring Georgy Yumatov in the 1950s - 1960s.
Perhaps the peak of the film actor's career for Georgy Aleksandrovich Yumatov was the role of the regular soldier Alexei Trofimov, who went through almost all the wars of the Soviet Union in the first half of the 20th century, in the sensational film "Officers", filmed in 1971. "There is such a profession - to defend the Motherland" - these words from the film spread throughout the Soviet Union and for a long time became a life motto for many thousands of Soviet career officers. Georgy Yumatov played Alexei Trofimov brilliantly. The make-up artists did not even have to “paint” the wound - in the episode where Alexei Trofimov returned from Spain, he shows his wife his real scar from the wound (Georgy Yumatov was wounded more than once at the front).
"Officers" brought Yumatov all-Union fame and popularity. Probably hundreds of thousands of Soviet women were secretly in love with him, and even more young men dreamed of "making life" with the valiant officer Alexei Trofimov. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Georgy Yumatov starred in numerous Soviet films, mainly, again, on military history and adventure themes. He played in The End of the Taiga Emperor, in the Preliminary Investigation, in 38 Petrovka. Finally, Yumatov had to play himself in the popular film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears." However, gradually the roles in which Yumatov starred become more and more secondary and episodic. The aging actor is less and less invited to the shooting. And the reason for this is not only age.
Back in 1947, Georgy Yumatov married Muza Krepkogorskaya. The girl was two years older than Yumatov. Unlike the self-taught Yumatov, Muza Krepkogorskaya was a professional actress, and even hereditary - her father was a musician, one of Shalyapin's accompanists. On the set of Young Guard, Krepkogorskaya met a charming young man Georgy Yumatov. But at his own wedding, the actor went overboard with alcohol so much that the celebration continued without him. It was this pernicious tendency that played a tragic role in the life of Georgy Yumatov. We will not dwell on the sad passion of the actor, but we note that it was she who became one of the reasons for the gradual decline of the creative career of both Yumatov himself and the Muse of Krasnogorskaya, who was also not alien to the bohemian way of life.
While Georgy Alexandrovich was actively invited to the cinema, the family lived very well. Yumatov and Krepkogorskaya bought a three-room apartment in Moscow, in a cooperative house near the Aeroport metro station. Yumatov was constantly invited to restaurants and cafes by numerous colleagues and fans, which already exacerbated the actor's addiction. However, for the time being, everything went more or less well. Yumatov's talent and fame were so great that the directors preferred to turn a blind eye to his lifestyle. The situation was aggravated by the fact that Muza Krepkogorskaya, also an actress, and a professional one, was never able to achieve success equal to her husband's fame. She was invited only to episodic roles, and then she completely dropped out of the clip of domestic cinema.
In the early 1990s, Georgy Aleksandrovich Yumatov was already an elderly man. He had no children with the Muse of Krasnogorskaya, so the only ones he took care of were his wife and dogs. The actor was very kind to dogs. In March 1994, his beloved dog, the mongrel Frosya, died. With the help of a local janitor, Yumatov buried the pet, and then invited the 33-year-old janitor to remember the dog to his home. A glass - the second, word for word, and so the young janitor began to express to Georgy Alexandrovich - “You, grandfather, they say, fought, and if you would have fought worse - and we would have lived better now under the rule of Germany”. This drunken veteran of the Great Patriotic War could not stand. Nobody knows what happened on that ill-fated day in the apartment. But the result of joint drinking of strong drinks was sad - Georgy Yumatov shot the janitor with a gun. The 68-year-old actor was arrested. It was an extraordinary event. The legend of Soviet cinema, the protagonist of the most popular film "Officers" was arrested for drunken murder. Yes, and Yumatov's age, his state of health were already such that he could not bear the impressive term of imprisonment for such a crime.
In the end, they managed to retrain the case from murder to exceeding the limits of necessary self-defense. After all, the young janitor clearly posed a great threat to the 68-year-old pensioner. In addition, a knife appeared in the case - it is possible that the janitor could begin to threaten Yumatov with it. In June 1994, Georgy Yumatov was released on his own recognizance from the Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison. The actor spent only two months in prison. A year later, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Victory, Georgy Aleksandrovich Yumatov, as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, was amnestied and the case of the janitor's murder was closed.
The story of the murder and arrest was a great shock for Georgy Yumatov. Returning from the remand prison, he stopped drinking and began to go to church often. In fact, it was he who took the main chores of housekeeping and caring for his constantly ill wife Muza Krepkogorskaya. However, the state of health of Georgy Yumatov himself was getting worse - both the injuries of his youth and the unhealthy lifestyle that the actor led for decades affected. Yumatov was diagnosed with an aneurysm of the abdominal aorta and underwent surgery. However, soon there was again a hemorrhage in the stomach, but Yumatov refused hospitalization.
The murder of the janitor put an end to the actor's film career. The directors began to fear inviting Yumatov to the shooting, although he stopped drinking. For the last time on the TV screen Yumatov appeared in the festive program "Field of Miracles" before the next anniversary of the Great Victory in 1997. On October 4, 1997, Georgy Aleksandrovich Yumatov died from a ruptured abdominal aorta at the age of 72. The funeral of Yumatov, a lonely and poor man, was organized by the famous director Viktor Merezhko. He barely managed to get the actor to be buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery, next to his mother-in-law, Muzy Krepkogorskaya's mother. The widow of Yumatova herself experienced the death of her husband very hard and two years later, in 1999, she died. Their grave is very modest - and you can't say that one of the most popular actors of Soviet cinema for several decades is buried here.
Georgy Yumatov can rightfully be called a representative of the golden galaxy of Soviet film actors. Like many of his colleagues, Yumatov not only made a huge contribution to the development of domestic cinema, but was also a great patriot of his country, shedding a lot of blood for it during the Great Patriotic War. Unfortunately, fate turned out so that Georgy Alexandrovich had to endure terrible trials at the end of his life, which crippled his already shaken health.
