Igor Ilyinsky Movies and Career Information

Igor Vladimirovich Ilyinsky (1901-1987) was the favorite comic actor of Vsevolod Meyerhold who starred in a number of his world-famous productions, including Magnificent Cuckold (1922), Vladimir Mayakovsky's Bedbug (1928), and Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector (1926). Following Meyerhold's repression he moved to the Maly Theatre, where he worked for several decades, until being overpowered by blindness. Shortly before his death, he was declared a Hero of Socialist Labour. Ilyinsky's career in movies was launched with a role of a private detective in Yakov Protazanov's Aelita (1924), and as a love-struck actor who meets Mary Pickford in A Kiss From Mary Pickford (1927). He is best remembered by wider audiences as roguish bureaucrat Byvalov in Volga-Volga (1938) (Stalin Prize in 1941), in which he played against Lyubov Orlova, and Ogurtsov in The Carnival Night (1956), in which he played against Lyudmila Gurchenko. In the enormously popular Hussar Ballad (1962) Ilyinsky played Field-Marshal Kutuzov. His autobiography was published in 1961. A minor planet 3622 Ilinsky, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1981 is named after Igor Ilyinsky.