A Lucky Filmmaker

Grigory Alexandrov: 1903-1983

In 1934, film director Grigory Alexandrov was 31 and in his prime when he created his greatest masterpiece, Jolly Fellows. Even at such a young age, Alexandrov already had many years of successful filmmaking behind him, despite a humble beginning as a costume assistant and stage hand in Yekaterinburg’s opera theater.

When he first caught the eye of the great director Sergei Eisenstein, while working as a young actor of the Proletkult First Workers Theater in Moscow, Alexandrov had not yet turned 20. Soon, however, he was playing the lead role in Eisenstein’s production of Ostrovsky’s, Too Clever by Half, and went on to appear in Eisenstein’s Strike and Battleship Potemkin before becoming the great director’s assistant.