Maria Ouspenskaya
Maria Ouspenskaya (,
July 29,
1876 â€"
December 3,
1949) was an
Oscar-nominated
Russian actress who achieved success as a stage
actress as a young woman in
Russia, and as an elderly woman in
Hollywood films.
Ouspenskaya was born in
Tula, Russia to a lawyer father. She studied singing in
Warsaw and acting in
Moscow and performed extensively in Russian
theater.
A member of the
Moscow Art Theatre, Ouspenskaya was directed by
Konstantin Stanislavski, and for the remainder of her life advocated and taught his
method. The Moscow Art Theatre travelled widely throughout
Europe and when it arrived in
New York in
1922 she decided to stay there. She performed regularly on
Broadway over the next decade, and in
1929 she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York. One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was
Anne Baxter, then an unknown teenager.
Although she had appeared in a few Russian silent films many years earlier, Ouspenskaya stayed away from Hollywood until her school's financial problems forced her to look for ways to repair her finances. Her first Hollywood role in
Dodsworth (
1936) brought her a nomination for an
Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She received a second nomination in
1939 for her role in
Love Affair. She was best known for her portrayal of Maleva, an old
Roma fortuneteller in the
1941 horror classic
The Wolf Man. Her other successes included
The Rains Came 1939,
Waterloo Bridge (
1940),
The Mortal Storm (
1940), and
Kings Row (
1942). Despite her two Academy Award nominations her later films were inferior productions such as
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (
1943) and
Tarzan and the Amazons (
1945).
Ouspenskaya died from a
stroke several days after receiving severe burns in a house fire, which she had caused by falling asleep while smoking a cigarette.
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Maria Ouspenskaya's Gravesite
