"The way you walked was thorny....."
"The way you walked was thorny, through no fault of your own, but as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the sea, so tears run to a predestined end. Your suffering is over. Now you will find peace for eternity."
For fans of the Universal studios horror films, and in particular, the '41 classic The Wolf Man, they know this dialog well, spoken by the old gypsy woman Maleva, as she knelt over the body of lycanthrope Larry Talbot, in the final scene.
What many may not know, is the diminutive (5' 1, 90 lbs.) actor was an emigrant from Russia and brought her knowledge and skills to America and founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York, in 1929. It was to help keep the school funded that she accepted her first Hollywood film, Dodsworth (1936).
Her name was Maria Ouspenskaya.
Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Tsarist Russia, on July 29, 1876. She studied singing in Warsaw and acting in Moscow. She was a founding member of the First Studio, a theatre studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. There she was trained by Konstantin Stanislavsky and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky, whose "Method" was promoted by her for the rest of her life.
She received two supporting Oscar nominations, for Dodsworth (1936) and Love Affair (1939). She appeared in the former for only four minutes and in the latter a total of ten minutes.
Her role as Maleva, cemented her legacy in horror film history, a role she repeated in '43 Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. She also appeared as the Amazon Queen in Tarzan and the Amazons in '45.
A fun fact is that she always wanted to be in a western! “I would like to be a pioneer woman in a Western. I can ride, and I have good aim with a gun,” she told an AP reporter who mentioned she even trained her horses to obey her whistle, as she lived on a ranch in Victorville, CA. She got her wish years later. After portraying an 84-year-old, wheelchair-bound grandmother in “Kings Row” and reprising the Maleva role in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,” Ouspenskaya signed on for a part in “Wyoming,” produced by Republic Pictures in 1947.
Written by Lawrence Hazard and Gerald Geraghty, “Wyoming” is a Western of the land-snatching sort. It starred “Wild Bill” Elliott and featured George “Gabby” Hayes, longtime film partner of Apple Valley’s own Roy Rogers.
A heavy smoker, she fell asleep in bed with a lit cigarette in late November 1949 and suffered massive burns. She died of a stroke in the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital three days later on December 3, at the age of 73.
(Sources: Wikipedia, IMBD, Daily Press)
For fans of the Universal studios horror films, and in particular, the '41 classic The Wolf Man, they know this dialog well, spoken by the old gypsy woman Maleva, as she knelt over the body of lycanthrope Larry Talbot, in the final scene.
What many may not know, is the diminutive (5' 1, 90 lbs.) actor was an emigrant from Russia and brought her knowledge and skills to America and founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York, in 1929. It was to help keep the school funded that she accepted her first Hollywood film, Dodsworth (1936).
Her name was Maria Ouspenskaya.
Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Tsarist Russia, on July 29, 1876. She studied singing in Warsaw and acting in Moscow. She was a founding member of the First Studio, a theatre studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. There she was trained by Konstantin Stanislavsky and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky, whose "Method" was promoted by her for the rest of her life.
She received two supporting Oscar nominations, for Dodsworth (1936) and Love Affair (1939). She appeared in the former for only four minutes and in the latter a total of ten minutes.
Her role as Maleva, cemented her legacy in horror film history, a role she repeated in '43 Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. She also appeared as the Amazon Queen in Tarzan and the Amazons in '45.
A fun fact is that she always wanted to be in a western! “I would like to be a pioneer woman in a Western. I can ride, and I have good aim with a gun,” she told an AP reporter who mentioned she even trained her horses to obey her whistle, as she lived on a ranch in Victorville, CA. She got her wish years later. After portraying an 84-year-old, wheelchair-bound grandmother in “Kings Row” and reprising the Maleva role in “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man,” Ouspenskaya signed on for a part in “Wyoming,” produced by Republic Pictures in 1947.
Written by Lawrence Hazard and Gerald Geraghty, “Wyoming” is a Western of the land-snatching sort. It starred “Wild Bill” Elliott and featured George “Gabby” Hayes, longtime film partner of Apple Valley’s own Roy Rogers.
A heavy smoker, she fell asleep in bed with a lit cigarette in late November 1949 and suffered massive burns. She died of a stroke in the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital three days later on December 3, at the age of 73.
(Sources: Wikipedia, IMBD, Daily Press)
