A Leading Light of Russian Satire

October 28 is the centenary of the illustrious actor of stage and screen, Erast Pavlovich Garin (1902-1980). Born in Ryazan, he joined the Red Army in 1919 after finishing at the Ryazan gymnasium, acting in the garrison theater in Ryazan and in the First Independent Theater of the Red Army.

His professional life changed in 1921, when he enrolled in Vsevolod Meyerhold’s studio, going on to become one of that great director’s favorite and most trusted students—Meyerhold once said that Garin had “a ministerial mind.”

Garin’s first big role was actually seven—when he played as many characters in the play “D.E.”, based on Ilya Ehrenburg’s The D.E. Trust. Even this early, he demonstrated an amazing versalility and plasticity of character and mimicry, an incredible control over voice, emotion and action—particularly in playing eccentric, buffoonish characters. It was a talent that would later come to be called “in the Garin style.”

On the stage, Garin’s 1925 role as Gulyachkin, in Nikolai Erdman’s “Mandate,” and his portrayal the following year of Khlestyakov in Gogol’s “The Inspector General,” both under Meyerhold’s direction, marked him as a serious talent—a leading light of Russian satire.

By 1936, Garin was ready to move on, and he struck out on his own at the Leningrad Comedy Theater, where he worked until 1950 as both an actor and director.

Garin, of course, became famous across the nation for his roles in film. But he did not simply play comedic roles. He excelled equally in tragedies and dramas, acting in dozens of films, from his first in 1934, until his last in 1977. He is perhaps best remembered for his role as Tarakanov in Musical History (1949), as the king in Zolushka (1947), and as the two kings in King Cain XVII and Ordinary Miracle. In the 1970s, he played supporting roles in the blockbuster Gentlemen of Fortune (1972) and in Poshekhonskaya Starina (1977).