Anatoli Papanov

Anatoli Papanov — Biography

Anatoli Dmitriyevich Papanov was born in the Smolensk region town of Vyazma into a family in which his father worked as a railway guard and performed as an amateur actor; as a child Papanov himself appeared in small parts on the local stage. The family relocated to Moscow in 1930. During the Second World War he served in an anti-aircraft unit, was badly wounded in 1942 and lost two toes on his right foot, leaving him dependent on a cane for years; while training afterward at the State Institute of Theatre Arts he met his future wife, Nadezhda Karatayeva.

After graduating in 1946 he performed briefly on a Lithuanian stage before joining Moscow's Satire Theatre in 1948, where he remained for the rest of his life and appeared in roughly fifty productions; he also taught acting and, in 1986, directed his only production. From the 1960s he turned increasingly to film, gaining wide recognition as General Serpilin in The Living and the Dead, and endearing himself to audiences through comedies made with his friend Andrei Mironov, including The Diamond Arm and Beware of the Car. He also became a fixture of Soviet animation, remembered above all as the voice of the wolf in the cartoon series Well, Just You Wait!.

He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1973. Shortly after completing his final film, The Cold Summer of 1953, he suffered a fatal heart attack at his Moscow home on 5 August 1987 and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery. An asteroid was later named in his honor, and a monument to him stands in his native Vyazma.