Russian postcard by Goznak, Moscow.
Vera Malinovskaya (1900-1988), also written as Malinovskaja/ Malinovskaia, played in several Russian films of the 1920s and a few in Germany and Austria.
Malinovskaya was born in Kiev, Ukrain. She was trained as a ballet dancer and was a pupil of the great Olga Preobrazenskaya. She debuted in the film Vsem na radost (1924). From 1925 on, Malinovskaya had leading roles in films by the Mezhrapbom film company, often playing innocent girls. In 1925 she played Dunja against Ivan Moskin as the postmaster in Kollezhskiy registrator/The Station Master, directed by Moskin and Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky, scripted by Fyodor Otsep (Fedor Ozep), after a novel by Alexander Pushkin. A station master goes after his daughter, seduced and abducted by an aristocratic army officer. When he finally finds her after many hardship, he dies of heart failure. In 1925 Malinovskaya also played in the historical horror film Medvezhya svadba/The Marriage of the Bear, directed by Konstantin Eggert and Vladimir Gardin, starring Eggert himself, and based on a play by Anatoli Lunacharsky. Eggert specialized in melodramatic films then. After another film by Eggert, Chuzhaya (1927) starring Peter Baksheev, Malinovskaya had the female lead in Yakov Protazanov's Chelovek iz restorana/The Man from the Restaurant (1927). Her male counterpart was famous stage actor and nephew of writer Anton Chekhov: Michael Chekhov, who plays an older waiter who silently witnesses and endures the fattening rich and war profiteers, while his son dies in war and his wife dies as well. His chance comes when he saves his innocent daughter (Malinovskaya) from the clutches of a fat factory owner.
Mary Pickford, who visited the Soviet Union with Fairbanks in 1926, afterwards recalled being impressed by Malinovskaya's performance in the Station Master and how they met: "In Russia I met a charming young, Russian "star" - a tall girl with fair hair. She played the principal role in the best movie I saw there - The Station keeper. By the way, this "star"was among those who met us in Minsk. She wore a plain chiffon dress that looked as if it were four years old, but was neatly mended and washed. Probably with the assistance of Douglas and I, she will come to America." It never happened. Footage of Pickford kissing a local actor was used - unknown to Pickford and Fairbanks - to make the Sergei Komarov comedy Potseluy Meri Pikford/A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), in which Malinovskaya played a part too.
KinoKultura lists a title that IMDB ignores: Takaya zhenshchina/Such a woman (1927) in which Malinovskaya had a smaller part as the peasant wife of a soldier who had previously been cheated by his aristocratic first wife.
Next followed another Eggert film, Ledyanoy dom (1928) with again Peter Baksheev in the lead and based on a story by Ivan Lazjechnikov. The story is set in the 18th century: a gypsy girl is brought to the Russian court, where a prince falls in love with her, but the envious heiress of the throne tries to poison her. Malinovskaya's last film in the Soviet Union was Khromoy barin/The Lame Gentleman, again directed by Eggert, who also had the male lead in the film, and based on a story by Aleksey Tolstoy [not to be confused with the famous novelist].
In 1928 Malinovskaya, desperate about the low wages in spite of her success, emigrated to Western Europe to play in Austrian and German historical films of the late silent era. In Berlin she played in the Aco-Film production Der Zigeunerprimas (1928) by Carl Wilhelm, in which she played gypsy king Racz Pali's (Raimondo van Riel) daughter Sari. She also went to Vienna where she played in the Sascha production Kaiserjäger (1928) by Hans Otto, opposite actors such as Mary Kid, Igo Sym and Werner Pittschau. Also in 1928 she moved to Munich to play countess Tarnowska in the Emelka production Waterloo by Karl Grune, conceiving history from the Prussian perspective and starring Otto Gebühr as general Blücher. Her last role was in the Greenbaum production Der Günstling von Schönbrunn/Favorite of Schonbrunn (1929) by Erich Waschneck and Max Reichmann, based on a story by Ladislaus Vajda. This historical comedy starred Lil Dagover as Empress Theresia and Ivan Petrovich as Oberst Trenck, Malinovskaya was the empress' rival countess Nostiz. Actually, looking at the costume on this postcard, it may well refer to Der Günstling von Schönbrunn, though the name on the card is in Russian. But it might as well be a costume from Ledyanoy dom, set in the 18th century too.
After Waterloo, Malinovskaya stopped playing in films; the arrival of sound cinema might have had a cause in that. It is said she lived in Italy for a while, but according to the filmographies of Martinelli and IMDB she did not perform in film there. Vera Malinovskaya died in Monaco in 1988.
Sources: IMDB, Cinema.nl, In Hollywood with Nemirovich-Danchenko: the memoirs of Sergei Bertensson, KinoKultura.
