The founder of the acting dynasty, Georgy Menglet, was devoted to the theater all his life; he considered it the main thing in life and preferred live communication with the audience to a movie camera. He talked about it like this:
Even one actor on stage (without scenery or direction) is still theater, while talented editing of shots, two hours of musical vivid story on the screen, where there is not a single actor, is still cinema.
When his daughter Maya played the main role in Stanislav Rostotsky’s film “It Was About Penkov,” people started talking about her instantly, and photographs of the actress began to be sold in all kiosks. She then surpassed her father in popularity. Georgy, then already People's Artist of the RSFSR, was even asked if he was a relative of that famous Maya Menglet.
Maya herself did not say a word to her parents that she was going to be an artist. She simply confronted everyone with a fait accompli when she was already enrolled in the course. However, after such early popularity, she, like her father, preferred the theater stage rather than cinema.
Maya gave birth to two sons - Alexei and Dmitry. They bear the surname Menglet, and it was her conscious decision that the dynasty had to continue. The eldest son really became an actor, but he appears on the stage of a completely different country. Maya’s grandchildren, much to her regret, practically no longer speak Russian...
Menglet Dynasty: George, Maya, Alexey
French roots of the Menglet dynasty
The Menglet dynasty owes its unusual surname to a Frenchman named Louis. He fought in Napoleon's army, where he rose to the rank of captain. After the War of 1812, he was captured by the Russians, and when the Napoleonic regime fell, he decided to stay in Russia and even retained his rank of captain in our army. By that time, he had married a Russian girl, and when he retired, he settled in the Podolsk province. Judging by the documents that have survived to this day, he received the title of nobility.
By the beginning of the next century, the Menglet family lived in Voronezh, where Georgy was born in 1912. His mother Ekaterina Mikhailovna came from a different family; her father was the famous General Okhotin, who participated in the defense of Shipka during the Russian-Turkish War.
The acting dynasty was supposed to begin with her. However, fate decreed otherwise. Catherine lost her mother early and had to raise three younger brothers. All of them, unfortunately, died during the Civil War. She herself married serviceman Pavel Menglet and gave birth to a son, George, the future People’s Artist of the USSR.
Georgiy Menglet - the founder of an acting dynasty
Georgy Menglet in his youth
As a child, Georgy had many hobbies - cinema, theater, football. For the first time, his acting talent was noticed by a school teacher and assigned to a theater club. After school, he went to Moscow and entered GITIS the first time. Menglet had patronage in the form of a letter of recommendation to Stanislavsky himself, which was written by his niece, who was also the mother of George’s classmate. However, he never used it.
Alexey Dikiy had a great influence on Menglet’s work. When he was appointed artistic director of the BDT, he took Georgy and other students with him to Leningrad. Dikiy was later arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activities. At this time, his troupe, led by Menglet, went to Tajikistan and, in support of the teacher, founded the Russian Drama Theater in Dushanbe (then Stalinabad). In 1941, the case was dropped and Dikiy was released, and Georgy, at a very young age, received the title of Honored Artist of Tajikistan for his great contribution to the culture of this republic.
During the war years, Menglet performed at the front as part of propaganda brigades, after which he received an invitation to Moscow and began working at the Satire Theater, to which he devoted more than 50 years of his life and appeared on stage almost until the very end. In the second half of his life, Georgy changed the role of a hero-lover to sharp-character roles. Then they began to invite him to the movies more often.
Childhood. Beginning of the biography
Menglet Maya Georgievna was born on August 8, 1935 in Moscow into an artistic family. Her grandfather was of noble origin and had French roots (one of his ancestors was a French officer).
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During the Great Patriotic War, the future actress lived with her family in Stalinabad, the capital of Tajikistan, where her father, People's Artist of the USSR Georgy Menglet, directed a drama theater, which consisted mostly of former actors from the studio of director Alexei Dikiy, who was arrested in the late thirties. Georgy Menglet also headed the front-line theater of the Tajik Republic, as part of which he visited different fronts with performances for soldiers.
In 1945, he received an invitation to play at the Moscow Satire Theater and moved with his family to the capital.
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As can be seen from the biography of Maya Menglet, the family of the actress’s parents was closely connected with the theater. Growing up in such a family, Maya had a love for the acting profession from infancy. For several years she attended the theater group of the Palace of Pioneers. Maya made her film debut at the age of nine, starring in the film “Lermontov” in a cameo role.
Two marriages of George Menglet
Valentina Koroleva - the first wife of Georgy Menglet
Georgy Menglet and Valentina Koroleva
While still a student, Georgy met actress Valentina Koroleva. Their marriage produced a daughter, Maya, who inherited the exotic beauty of Valentina, whose mother, Latvian Berta Rusman, had Jewish roots. She was an ardent revolutionary and was involved in underground activities in Riga from her youth. Many times she was on the verge of death, but she lived to be 91 and saw her great-grandchildren.
Valentina went through with her husband all the stages of his development as an actor, but she pushed her career into the background, playing small roles in theaters where Menglet was a star. In many ways, he succeeded as an artist thanks to the sacrifice of his wife; everything in the house was for him and for his sake.
Nina Arkhipova - the second wife of Georgy Menglet
When Koroleva was not yet forty, she was fired from the Satire Theater, where she and her husband then worked. After suffering an infection from the medications, she recovered greatly and practically dropped out of theatrical life. Then Valentina found a new hobby - she began sewing to order. However, her husband did not appreciate any of her victims and soon left for an artist of the same theater, Nina Arkhipova, with whom he lived until the end of his days.
The great actor passed away on May 1, 2001, Nina’s birthday.
Nina Arkhipova and Georgy Menglet
For a very long time, the only daughter Maya could not forgive Georgiy for leaving the family. When he came to their house, she asked why his mother wouldn’t let him down the stairs. Valentina, although she was in great pain, simply accepted the choice of her ex-husband and devoted the rest of her life to her daughter and grandchildren. She passed away in 1986, and at the end she was seriously ill. Ironically, Valentina’s attending physician was Nina Arkhipova’s son and did a lot to ease her suffering.
Knight of the Order of Friendship (2000)
Born 08.08.1935, Moscow
Maya Menglet was born on August 8, 1935 in Moscow in the family of the outstanding theater actor Georgy Menglet and actress Valentina Koroleva. During the war, Maya had the opportunity to live in evacuation in Stalinabad (now Dushanbe). After the victory, George Menglet was invited to work at the Satire Theater, and the whole family returned to the capital.
The cult of the father reigned in the Menglet family, and this is not accidental. In those years, Georgy Pavlovich, who brilliantly performed the roles of heroic lovers at the Satire Theater, was a real idol of women. Maya Georgievna recalls: “For me, he was, perhaps, the most beloved person in life, in the family, because he was so democratic, so possessed of such humor that I, without fear or embarrassment of anything, told him about all my stories, intrigues, news, some kind of children's love novels, and dad always knew how to listen to it. But I was still deprived of my father’s love...”
Maya has been in love with theater since childhood. She studied for several years in the theater studio of the city palace of pioneers and even once starred in a small role in one of the films. However, at first Maya did not intend to connect her future with the acting profession. As the actress later admitted, she was afraid of the stage and strongly doubted her external characteristics.
And yet the genes took their toll. After graduating from school, together with her friends Igor Kvasha and Svetlana Miziri, Maya went to the Shchukin School for an audition. It was there that she met her future husband, actor Leonid Satanovsky.
Maya Georgievna recalls: “And we had such a vibe. A childhood romance on my part, but then it stopped, and he and I had completely parallel, different lives, and then, so to speak, it all resumed again. I've never liked handsome men. This is not my type. I have always loved bright and very charming, sincere people, so to speak, you know, with some kind of inner charm. I guess, so to speak, this is what amazed me. Then I really liked the way he moved, the way he sang, he won me over because he sang such cruel romances to me, he sang wonderfully.”
Maya did not enter Shchukinskoye, she submitted documents to the Moscow Art Theater School. Moreover, she did this secretly from her parents, saying that she was entering the Institute of Foreign Languages. The parents learned about their daughter’s choice only after Maya was accepted into the V.O. course. Toporkova. And soon there were changes in the personal life of the future actress - she married Leonid Satanovsky. In 1975, their first child was born.
Maya Menglet was invited to audition for Stanislav Rostotsky’s film “It Was About Penkov” when she was in her final year. Many famous actresses applied for the role of the modest girl Tony, who came to work in the village as an agronomist. Among them was even the director’s wife Nina Menshikova. Well, what chances could an unknown student have?! However, Rostotsky’s choice was not her!
Maya Menglet recalls: “... I went to Gorky’s studio, and then, you know, it was fashionable, a suitcase with iron corners, and then there was an audition, Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Tikhonov auditioned with some actress, and so I settled down on this suitcase somewhere near Wall, very modestly, sat down on him and with all her eyes, so to speak, began to stare and watch and observe what was happening there. And then director Rostotsky said that I might as well not give you the test, because I saw how you react, how spontaneous you are, and how you are, so to speak, naive in something, which is exactly what it seemed to me, that you are exactly the Tonya who should be in my picture.”
The plot of the film was based on a classic love triangle. The main character is a village boy-tractor driver Matvey Morozov (Vyacheslav Tikhonov) - an extraordinary, rushing man, whose vague aspirations no one can understand, not even his wife (Svetlana Druzhinina). But then Tonya arrives in Penkovo, and the usual way of life begins to change. Love for a girl helps Matvey find himself.
Many doubted the choice of Rostotsky. They didn’t believe that Tikhonov and Druzhinina could play a village boy and girl. And what can we say about Maya Menglet! The aspiring actress really didn’t succeed at first. The fact is that at the same time as filming, she was rehearsing with Oleg Efremov for a role in her graduation performance. The roles were completely different, and Maya sometimes did not have time to adapt. “And then I came to the rehearsal, Efremov said: “Maya, what’s wrong with you, that you’re so constrained, where did everything go that we found yesterday.” When I came to the shoot, Rostotsky said: “Maya, what’s so maddening, what’s wrong…” recalled Maya Georgievna. Fortunately, Stanislav Rostotsky did not listen to the advisers; he continued to believe in Maya, as it turned out, not in vain...
Filming took place in the village. The actors lived here, wore the clothes they were filming in, and all this contributed to the quickest adaptation to the role. Over time, local residents began to completely identify them with the characters in the film, sometimes forgetting that these were metropolitan artists. Probably, it is in such an atmosphere that real masterpieces are born...
Maya Menglet's film debut was truly triumphant. The audience enthusiastically received the film, sincerely sympathizing with its characters. Until recently, an unknown actress suddenly became popular throughout the world. Portraits of Maya Menglet could be seen on numerous posters and on postcards sold at Soyuzpechat kiosks. It got to the point that in one of the Russian television programs, Maya Menglet’s father, the famous People’s Artist of the USSR Georgy Menglet, was once asked: “Tell me, are you related to that famous Maya Menglet?”
Fortunately, Maya was internally prepared for this stream of fame. She admits: “Well, I understood, I’m a person who also has a little humor, I understood that, of course, cinema brings a flurry of fame, sometimes it happens completely illegally, and this does not mean that you, so to speak, are a good actor or are already venerable an actor, but sometimes a young person may not be able to bear this burden of fame, he may break down and turn up his nose, this will cripple his entire future fate, but fortunately this did not happen to me.”
In the same 1957, Maya graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School, and in 1958 she was accepted into the Stanislavsky Theater, where Leonid Satanovsky was already working. By the way, for Satanovsky, his wife’s placement in the theater troupe was a pleasant surprise. And she got there thanks to her friend, actor Evgeniy Urbansky. He once called and invited Maya to try out for a role in the play “The Open Window.”
The famous Mikhail Yanshin and Evgeny Leonov auditioned Maya Menglet. They liked the actress, and Maya was accepted. There was a lot of work in the theater. Maya very quickly began to be introduced into various performances, at first, being assigned the roles of “blue” heroines. And a little later, the actress began to be trusted with characteristic roles. Maya Menglet admits: “It was a happy time of meeting and working with such wonderful people as M. Yanshin, B. Lvov-Anokhin, L. Varpakhovsky, A. Popov, A. Vasiliev, B. Morozov, I. Raikhelgauz, R. Bykova, E. Leonov, P. Glebov, L. Savchenko, A. Balter..."
What about the movie? Surprisingly, the role of Tony in the film “It Was About Penkov” remained the actress’s most significant work on the screen. For several years, Maya continued to actively act, often in leading roles - in the musical film by Isidor Annensky “The Sailor from the Comet”, the film story by Viktor Zhilin “Corrected to Believe”, the film by Alexander Abramov “Home” and others. But these works could not be compared with the film “It Was About Penkov.”
Over time, Maya Menglet paid more and more attention to the theater and appeared less and less on the silver screen. “Well, I love theater more than cinema,” the actress admits. - How can I say, I am faithful to him in the first place, and if the question arose: theater or cinema, I always outweighed the theater, because it was always more interesting to me, then we were at the Stanislavsky Theater, where I worked, there were interesting roles, performances, interesting directors."
Unexpected changes in the Menglet family life occurred in 1961. Georgy Pavlovich, Maya’s father, decided to leave the family for the famous actress Irina Arkhipova. Valentina Koroleva, Maya’s mother, bravely endured this breakup. After the divorce, Georgy Pavlovich came to their home for a long time, and his ex-wife received him, hemmed his trousers, and provided other small household services.
But Maya could not forgive her father for a long time: “When dad came, I locked myself in the bathroom or toilet and couldn’t - I sobbed and sobbed. And when dad left, I told my mom: “Why are you letting him in, take him down the stairs, it hurts you, it’s impossible to survive.” In those difficult years, Maya’s family helped her recover from the shock; after some time, her second son was born. In addition, work in the theater distracted me from problems...
Maya made peace with her father only after 25 long years. I made peace and even found the strength to establish friendly relations with Irina Arkhipova...
Another unexpected turn in the fate of the Menglet family occurred in 1978. Maya’s eldest son, who by that time was graduating from GITIS and had good prospects for working at the Mayakovsky Theater, decided to go abroad. The reason for this was his love for a German girl who studied at Moscow University. The young couple lived in Germany for two years and then moved to Australia.
It was a big blow for the family. In those days, communication with foreigners, to put it mildly, was not welcomed by the intelligence services. In addition, for the parents, leaving their son abroad was tantamount to losing him.
Fortunately, changes soon began in the country, and Maya Georgievna and her husband had the opportunity to go to see their son. Meanwhile, the youngest son decided not to follow in his parents' footsteps. He became interested in chemistry, became a doctor of science, and in the 90s emigrated following his brother to Australia.
Moscow Drama Theater named after. Maya Menglet gave 43 years to K. S. Stanislavsky. She dreamed of playing here all her life. But after the death of the main director V. Lansky, everything changed in the theater. Maya Georgievna recalls: “All management passed into the hands of the director, a completely uncreative person, but with great “commercial acumen.” Many of the theater's premises were rented out. There was no place for creativity in the temple of arts, so many artists left the stage. After one of the insulting antics of the “theater businessman,” my husband and I submitted a letter of resignation, which was immediately signed.”
The loss of their native theater was a real tragedy for the Menglet-Satanovsky couple. As Maya Georgievna admitted, they simply did not know what to do with themselves, how to live further. The decision came unexpectedly - the sons invited their parents to come to Australia.
Currently, Maya Menglet and Leonid Satanovsky work at the Montreal Russian Drama Theater. L.V. Varpakhovsky, organized by Anna Varpakhovskaya and Grigory Ziskin. They toured with the theater to many cities in the USA and Canada. In addition, Maya Menglet worked in performances of the Russian enterprise Mikhail Kozakov.
Despite emigration, Maya Menglet and Leonid Satanovsky remain Russian citizens. They sincerely love their homeland and periodically come to Moscow.
Filmography:
1957 It was in Penkovo 1958 Sailor from the "Comet" 1959 Believe Corrected 1960 Home 1961 Alenka 1967 Quiet places here 1972 Yulka 1974 Big attraction 1984 Chance 1990 Women's Day 1991 Meet me in Tahiti 1995 On the corner, at the Patriarchs - series
Actors section
Personal life of Maya Menglet
There was a period when Maya blamed herself for her parents’ breakup:
...I felt guilty, because after the birth of my son, my mother took all the care of him, and, as it seemed to me, this distracted her from my father. She began to pay less attention to him.
In the biography and in all interviews of Maya Menglet, there is only one man - a graduate of the Shchukin School Leonid Satanovsky, whom she met at a student party during her studies at the Moscow Art Theater School. The young people soon got married.
However, the natural father of her eldest son Alexei, whom she gave birth to at the age of 18, is considered to be actor Stanislav Korenev, Maya’s school love. When she starred in the film “It Was About Penkov,” she already had a child.
Maya Menglet and Stanislav Korenev
The marriage with Korenev did not work out due to the fact that Maya was not accepted by her mother-in-law, and her too young husband was not yet ready to go against her domineering mother. Stanislav died in 2006; he never communicated with his son.
In her marriage to Satanovsky, Maya gave birth to another son, Dmitry.
Alexey Satanovsky and Maya Menglet
Personal life, children
The biography of Maya Menglet is forever linked with the biography of actor Leonid Satanovsky.
Two destinies were linked by lifelong love. Maya Georgievna says that she fell in love with her future husband at first sight. She admits that in men she has always valued not external beauty, but spiritual qualities: honesty, sincerity. She also liked Leonid for his flexibility and ability to sing romances beautifully. In 1955 they got married. In the same year, the couple had their first son, and after some time the second. The actress lived with her husband for 60 long years, until his death in 2015.
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Maya Menglet - Soviet Sophia Loren
After the release of the film “It Was About Penkov,” Maya became famous throughout the Union, was a frequent guest of international festivals, where everyone was delighted with her non-classical beauty and called the Soviet Sophia Loren.
Perhaps Menglet really should have been born somewhere else - for example, in France, the homeland of her paternal ancestors. In any case, her talent remained extremely underestimated in Soviet cinema, which cannot be said about the theater.
Maya Menglet and Sophia Loren
Work at the Stanislavsky Theater became the main work of life not only for Maya, but also for her husband Leonid Satanovsky. The couple devoted more than forty years to this place and they rightfully got the most interesting roles.
Drama in the parents' family
An unexpected blow for Maya was the departure of her father from the family. He left for his new lover, actress Nina Arkhipova. Maya Menglet's mother, Valentina Koroleva, went through this ordeal with dignity. Even after the breakup, the ex-husband often visited them, and Valentina, out of habit, took care of him: hemmed and ironed his clothes, and did the laundry for him. Maya held a grudge against her father for a long time and could not forgive him.
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The tabloid press even wrote that they supposedly had not communicated with their father for more than twenty years. In fact, it was only at first that she refused to talk to him. She felt sorry for her mother. After all, it was Valentina Koroleva who largely contributed to Georgy Menglet’s success as an actor.
She completely freed him from all household duties, exchanging work in the theater for the role of a housewife.
Maya Menglet and her resentment towards the theater
They did not intend to leave this stage further, but at the end of the 90s the management changed, there were practically no interesting roles, and those that were available were given to other actors. One day, Satanovsky, returning to the theater after illness, saw another actor in his stage costume - a replacement was quickly and silently selected for him. He took this as rudeness and wrote a letter of resignation, which was cynically signed. Maya also left for her husband.
No one apologized to the spouses then and, of course, had no intention of returning it. There was a feeling that their departure was even beneficial to the theater, which was going through hard times.
Maya Menglet and Leonid Satanovsky in the film “On the Corner of the Patriarchs” (1995)
By that time, Georgy Menglet, perhaps the only relative who remained with Maya in Russia, had passed away. The couple decided to move to Australia - where both of their sons had long lived and their grandchildren were born. However, they did not change their citizenship; for some time they still periodically came on tour and played in enterprise performances. Exactly as long as health allowed.
In 2020, Leonid Satanovsky passed away. Maya still considers herself a citizen of Russia, who, due to circumstances, is where her family lives. It just happened that way...
George and Maya Menglet
Changes in life
Forty-three long years of Maya Menglet’s creative biography were associated with the Moscow Drama Theater. It was in this theater that she dreamed of playing from early childhood. And in adult life, it became a second home for her and her husband. However, I had to break with the theater due to the dishonesty of the new director. Maya Georgievna describes this unfortunate incident as follows. In 2002, a few weeks before the release of the new play, Leonid missed two rehearsals due to illness. In two days they managed to hire another artist to play his role. When Maya Georgievna found out about this injustice, she went to the director of the theater to clarify the situation. No one answered the door for a long time. When the door finally opened, it turned out that the director was drunk. He had one answer to all Maya Menglet’s questions: “If you’re not happy, quit!” On the same day, she wrote a statement of her own free will, which was immediately signed. My husband did exactly the same. After that, officials from the Ministry of Culture begged them to return, but they did not want to return to their native theater to see the arbitrariness of the new leadership. Parting with the place to which most of her life was given was one of the saddest pages in the biography of Maya Menglet and her husband.
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Alexey (Alex) Menglet
Only one son of Maya chose acting as a profession. The younger Dmitry graduated from Moscow State University and devoted his life to science, and the older Alexey was just studying at GITIS. In his youth he played in several Soviet films.
Alexey had a good future ahead of him at the Mayakovsky Theater, which was ready to open its doors to him. However, unexpectedly for his parents, the young man fell in love with a German student who was then studying at Moscow State University, and decided to emigrate. For Maya, her world collapsed at that moment.
Alexey Menglet in the films “Boys” (1971) and “The Old Fortress” (1973)
Menglet Jr. was a rebel before: he grew his hair, listened to forbidden music, did poorly at school, and even at the institute, the course director, Andrei Goncharov, complained about his behavior. However, he inherited the acting talent of the Menglet dynasty, and Maya hoped that her son would make an excellent career in his native country.
For another year after Alexei’s departure, his parents were not allowed to see him, and plainclothes agents were constantly on duty at the entrance. Apparently, they were afraid that Maya and Leonid would also decide to emigrate, which, given their status, was fraught with scandal. When they were left alone, the couple visited Alexei in Germany.
Alexey Menglet
A few years later, Alexey’s family moved to Australia, where he made a good acting career and to this day plays in the theater, acts in films and TV series.
Younger brother Dmitry also decided to move to Australia in the 90s; now he lives and works in Malaysia. The granddaughters of Maya Menglet did not continue the dynasty and practically do not speak Russian. One became an architect, and the second moved to France and works as a translator. Maya already has a great-granddaughter.
