….Maria Ouspenskaya       1876 – 1949

She was tiny, Tartar and sometimes terrifying but her every performance was unforgettable. She came out of Russia to become one of America’s most skillful and familiar character actresses and brought a unique presence to the screen. Maria Ouspenskaya came to America to teach and stayed to grace both the stage and screen. She made only 25 films but managed to garner 2 Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor.

She was born in Tula, Russia on July 29th, 1876 where her father was a lawyer and began her steady journey to the stage and screen at an early age in Warsaw where she studied voice and then in Russia where she studied acting. Stock theater provided her with the basics but she studied at the Moscow Art Theatre with Constantin Stanislavski, creator of the acting style later called “Method”. The theater was founded in 1897 by Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. In 1922, when the group went on tour, Maria and Richard Boleslawski stayed back in New York, both planning to start acting schools of their own. In 1929 she opened “The Maria Ouspenskaya School of Dramatic Arts”  in New York  after seven triumphant years on the Broadway stage. Among her students were actor John Garfield and drama teachers Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg.   Boleslavski also chose New York where his “American Laboratory” later became the Actors Studio. He would go on to direct films at MGM and Fox.

John Garfield	Stella Adler	Lee Strasberg

While Maria made at least 6 silent films in Russia , her American film debut came in 1936 when she recreated her Broadway role as Baroness von Obersdorf in “Dodsworth” a play based on the Sinclair Lewis novel and directed on the screen by William Wyler. She won her first BSA nomination and moved her school to Hollywood. From that time on, this 90-pound diminutive dynamo played grandmothers and harridans, gypsies and royalty, A-films and B-flicks without missing a step and gave her best to everything she did.

"Love Affair" 1939

There was, however, often difficulties on the set when Maria was working. She sometimes stepped into teacher mode and adopted that slightly superior tone  that turned off her cast mates. A bigger problem was that Maria was addicted to astrology. She never did anything without consulting famous astrologer Carroll Righter. This seemed to fit into her roles as a fortuneteller but not into the standard movie-making protocols. “Not today! The stars are not favorable” wasn’t what the director or the money-counters wanted to hear. Soon the cast and crew were checking the schedule…not the stars…to see what days Maria was working and what days they could breathe easier.

"The Rains Came" 1939

Maria was nominated again for BSA in 1939 for her role as Janou, the wise grandmother in “Love Affair” with Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer. Film historian James Parish described her as “ a tiny, very wrinkled actress with a commanding presence”. In “The Rains Came” (1939)she played the Maharani and managed to steal a scene or two away from matinee idol Tyrone Power even though she was only half his size.
                               

The Wolf Man" with Lon Chaney, Jr.

But her signature role came in Universal’s last great horror film “The Wolf Man” with Lon Chaney, Jr. in the title role. Maria played Maleva, the old gypsy fortune-teller whose prophetic words set the mood for the film and carried down through numerous werewolf classics. “Even a man who is pure in heart…and says his prayers by night…may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms…and the autumn moon is bright.” She reprised the role in the 1943 sequel “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man”. From that time on, even parodies of the legend and countless horror films in general used were modeled after Maria’s Maleva. Much later, in the 1995 Mel Brooks’ satire on vampire movies, Anne Bancroft plays a character aptly named “Madame Ouspenskaya”.
     

"Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" 1943

Maria’s last film was “A Kiss in the Dark” as David Niven’s eccentric tenant Mme. Marina. On November 30th, 1949 Maria fell asleep while smoking in bed and died 3 days later of a stroke after suffering massive burns. She was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. But the date on her gravestone mistakenly gives the year of her birth as 1887.