Maria Ouspenskaya

About Maria Ouspenskaya

Who is it?: Actress, Soundtrack
Birth Day: July 29, 1876
Died On: December 3, 1949(1949-12-03) (aged 73)\nLos Angeles, California, U.S.
Birth Sign: Leo
Occupation: Actress Acting teacher
Years active: 1915–1949

Maria Ouspenskaya Net Worth

Maria Ouspenskaya was born on July 29, 1876, is Actress, Soundtrack. The daughter of a lawyer, Ouspenskaya studied singing at the Warsaw Conservatory and acting at Adasheff's School of the Drama in Moscow. She received her practical training as an actress touring in the Russian provinces. She later joined the Moscow Art Theatre. It was here that she first worked under the direction of the great Konstantin Stanislavski, whose "Method" she would go on to promote for the remainder of her life. She came to America with the Art Theatre in 1922 and, upon their return to Moscow, defected to the US to become a dominant Broadway actress for more than a decade until she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York in 1929. It was to help keep the school funded that she accepted her first Hollywod film, Dodsworth (1936). She had appeared in six silent movies in Russia earlier in her career. This lucrative association, for Ouspenskaya, Hollywood and the viewing public, would last for more than a dozen years and two dozen films. Thanks to her often-superior demeanor and addiction to astrology, she could prove maddening on the set. She remained in nearly daily communication with L.A. Times' astrologer Carroll Righter who would advise her on the best times to appear on camera along with when and where to travel. As a consequence, most casts and crews disliked the over-bearing, wispy 90-pound actress intensely. She bounced between prestigious A-pictures (Love Affair (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940)) and B-movies (Mystery of Marie Roget (1942), Tarzan and the Amazons (1945)), performing, and behaving, with equal intensity. She is especially notable for having appeared in the last great Universal horror entry, The Wolf Man (1941) and the interesting Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). 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.
Maria Ouspenskaya is a member of Actress

💰 Net worth: Under Review

Some Maria Ouspenskaya images

Famous Quotes:

"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. Now you will have peace for eternity."

Biography/Timeline

1922

The Moscow Art Theatre traveled widely throughout Europe, and when it arrived in New York City in 1922, Ouspenskaya decided to stay there. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade. She taught acting at the American Laboratory Theatre and in 1929, together with Richard Boleslawski, her colleague from the Moscow Art Theatre, she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York City. One of Ouspenskaya's students at the school during this period was Anne Baxter, then an unknown teenager.

1930

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. According to ads from Popular Song magazine in the 1930s, around this time Ouspenskaya also opened the Maria Ouspenskaya School of Dance on Vine Street in Los Angeles. Her pupils included Marge Champion, the model for Disney's Snow White.

1936

In spite of her marked Russian accent, she did find work in Hollywood, playing European characters of various national origins. Her first Hollywood role was in Dodsworth (1936), which brought her a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. (Her onscreen appearance in that film was one of the briefest ever to garner a nomination.) She received a second Oscar nomination for her role in Love Affair (1939).

1941

She portrayed Maleva, an old Gypsy fortuneteller in the horror films The Wolf Man (1941) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Other films in which she appeared were: The Rains Came (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Beyond Tomorrow (1940), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), and Kings Row (1942).

1961

In Season One's "What's in a Middle Name?" episode of "The Dick Van Dyke Show", (1961-1965), characters Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell have an animated discussion of baby names, as follows: