Olga Chekhova

Biography

Born Olga Knipper, she was the daughter of Konstantin Knipper, a railway engineer, and the niece and namesake of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife), both Lutherans of ethnic German ancestry. She went to school in Tsarskoye Selo but, after watching Eleonora Duse, joined the Moscow Art Theatre's studio. There she met the great Russian-Jewish actor Mikhail Chekhov (Anton's nephew) in 1914 and married him the same year, taking his surname as her own. Their daughter, also named Olga, was born in 1916.

During the year of the 1917 October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. She managed to get a travel passport from the Soviet government, possibly in exchange for her cooperation, which led to permission to leave Russia. She was accompanied by a Soviet agent on a train to Vienna, then she moved to Berlin in 1920. Her first cinema role was in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau silent movie Schloß Vogelöd (1921). She played in Max Reinhardt's productions at UFA. She made the successful transition from silent film to talkies. In the 1930s, she rose to become one of the brightest stars of the Third Reich and was admired by Adolf Hitler. She appeared in such films as Der Choral von Leuthen although she preferred comedies.

Joseph Goebbels

A published photograph of her sitting beside Hitler at a reception gave the leaders of the Soviet intelligence service the impression that she had close contacts with Hitler. She had more contact with the Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who referred to her in his diaries as "eine charmante Frau" ("a charming lady"). She is also rumored to have been a communist spy in a Soviet conspiracy. According to the book Killing Hitler (2006), by the British author Roger Moorhouse, she was pressured by Stalin and Beria to flirt with Adolf Hitler in order to gain and transfer information so that Hitler could be killed by secret Soviet agents. Also, the controversial Argentine theater book Hotel Berlin 1933 by Pablo Sodor shows a relationship between Chekhova and Karl Heinrich von Stülpnagel.

Later years

During World War II her acting career was less successful; her one film made in Hollywood was unpopular, largely because her accent was too strong. After the war she lived in the Soviet sector of Berlin, but eventually she managed to escape from her Soviet contacts. In 1949, she moved to Munich, Bavaria, and launched a cosmetics company. At the same time she continued acting, and played supporting roles and cameos in more than 20 films. She largely retired from acting in the 70s, after publishing a book of memoirs. Her correspondence with Russian actors Olga Knipper and Alla Tarasova was published posthumously.

Her niece Marina Ried also became an actress.