After the release of the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, the Yukina sisters became the most famous twins of the Soviet Union.
Photo: film frame
According to the director Nikolai Lebedev (Legend No. 17, Zvezda, Crew, Nuremberg) Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors movie and today is not outdated one iota. This conditionally children’s picture was staged at the film studio. Gorky in 1963 as an outstanding Soviet director, a classic of the national film fairy tale Alexander Rowe. The script is based on the story of Vitaly Gubarev, a writer and journalist who worked for Komsomolskaya Pravda for some time. As a journalist, he was known for his publications about Pavlik Morozov and was generally considered his biographer. And as a children’s writer, he became famous when he composed the fairy tale story “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors.” It was a huge success in the early 50s. Today, the slightly forgotten Vitaly Gubarev was then compared with the English writer Lewis Carroll. Since the plot of the “Kingdom …”, where a modern girl enters the world through the looking glass, resembled the book “Through the Looking Glass”. The prototype of the main character was Gubarev’s daughter from Valery’s first marriage.
The film, based on Gubarev’s story, was no less successful than the book. The main character, third-grader Olya, does not obey her grandmother, is late for school, cheats, and is lazy. In order for Olya to look from the side at her behavior inappropriate for a Soviet pioneer, she incredibly ends up in the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. There, with her and with her reflection Yalo (Olya, on the contrary), amazing and dangerous events occur. Power in the Kingdom was seized by the greedy rich: King Yagupop (Parrot) LXXVII, chief minister Abazh (Toad) and chief minister Nushrok (Kite). Each of the ministers, like the daughter of Nushrok, the beautiful Anidag (Gadina), wants to reign. To do this, they weave intrigues and intrigues. By their order, only crooked mirrors are made. But Olya, together with Yalo, helps the inhabitants of the Kingdom defeat evil.
In search of girls for the main roles, director Alexander Rou looked through 300 pairs of twins, whose photos came to him from all over the Soviet Union. From this set, he chose nine-year-old Muscovites sisters Olya and Tanya Yukin. Looking ahead, we will inform you that, despite the success of Crooked Mirrors, they did not become actresses, although they once again starred in an episode in Alexander Row’s no less popular film tale Frost.
Minister Nushrok-Korshun was played by the “main villain” of Soviet cinema Andrey Fait. Andrei Andreevich played a bunch of negative roles in his life, from foreign spies to evil sorcerers. At the time of filming, Rowe was almost 60. Many scenes required good physical mobilization. But he managed: Veit rode on horseback along the steep, rocky, unsafe paths of the mountainous area of the Crimea, where the picture was filmed.
Minister Nushrok-Korshun was played by the “main villain” of Soviet cinema Andrey Fayt
Photo: film frame
The role of the court cook, Aunt Aksal (Laska), who helped Ole and Yalo, was played by actress Tamara Nosova, who at that time was the wife of the writer Vitaly Gubarev. He dedicated his story “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors” to her.
The role of King Yagupop of the 77th was played by Anatoly Kubatsky. He starred in many films by Alexander Row, as did Georgy Millyar, who played three roles in The Kingdom at once: the chief master of ceremonies, the dowager queen and the carter. The daughter of the chief minister – the beautiful Anidag (Gadina) – was played by the artist Lydia Vertinskaya, the wife of the great chansonnier Alexander Vertinsky.
The role of King Yagupop 77 was played by Anatoly Kubatsky
Photo: film frame
After the release of the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors, the Yukina sisters became the most famous twins in the Soviet Union.
After graduating from school, they entered the engineering college, then got a job at the thieves “Intourist”, the oldest domestic travel company. They lived quite well, often traveled abroad, including capitalist countries. Both quickly got married and had children.
In the mid-90s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were fired from Intourist. Life has gone downhill, as they say. They got a job on duty in the district military registration and enlistment office. There were no financial resources. Money was chronically lacking. Detractors gossiped that because of everyday hardships, one of the sisters began to drink, but relatives denied these rumors.
Yukina’s sisters died at a fairly young age. Olga died after two strokes in 2005, she was 51 years old. Six years later, in 2011, the second sister, Tatyana, who played in Yalo’s Kingdom, also left. The sisters are buried at the Intercession Cemetery next to their mother.
Much worse was the fate of the performer of the role of Aunt Aksal – Tamara Nosova. In recent years, the once popular actress (the star of “Carnival Night”, “Hello, I’m your aunt!”) Lived in dire poverty. She turned her apartment into a bum. When she went out into the street, no one recognized the famous actress in an elderly untidy woman. There were mental problems. Sometimes she was seen in the garbage, where she picked up things. In the spring of 2007, Tamara Nosova had a stroke, and there was no one to call an ambulance. A few days later the neighbors sounded the alarm. The police had to open her apartment: Tamara Nosova was found lying on the floor, cockroaches ran over her body. The smell in the apartment was unbearable. It turns out that there was not even a toilet in the movie star’s dwelling, she relieved herself in the bath. The elderly actress was sent to the hospital, where she died.
Anatoly Kubatsky (Yagupop 77th) lived out his life in the House of Cinema Veterans in Matveevsky, where his son assigned him. According to the memoirs of the staff of this boarding house, Anatoly Lvovich could not be called a quiet guest. Everything annoyed him: the frail old people, the stupid films that were shown in the cinema hall, and even the walls that seemed lifeless and gloomy. But despite the grouchy character, he lived a long life and died at 93 years old.
