The cult film "Gentlemen of Fortune" is a comedy created by director Alexander Serov in 1971, which immediately became the leader of the box office. The film was "stolen" for quotes, it is still watched and revised. Everyone knows the legendary performers of the main roles, but few minor characters are known.
Main roles
Of course, the most striking, central actor of the film was Yevgeny Leonov (died in 1994), a great artist of Soviet cinema, who played two characters in a comedy at once: the shy and intelligent Zhenya Troshkin, a kindergarten teacher and a hardened criminal Associate Professor, "thief in law", cruel and greedy. In the plot, these two are alike, like two drops of water.
Together with Troshkin, with whom the police replaced "Associate Professor" at the request of Professor Maltsev, in order to find out from the accomplices the location of the stolen relic, three prisoners "escape" from the prison. Two of them are friends and accomplices of the "Associate Professor" ("Khmyr" and "Kosoy"), and another is a petty swindler Vasya, who happened to be in the company of others.
"Khmyr" was played by the equally famous actor Georgy Vitsin (1917-2001), famous for his roles in Soviet cult comedies, one of the "great trinity" of comedy actors (Nikulin, Vitsin, Morgunov).
The role of "Oblique" went to another legend - Savely Kramarov, a graduate of GITIS, the son of repressed parents, whose career was abruptly cut short by the departure of relatives to Israel, and therefore the actor became "unreliable". Films with his participation were “put on the shelf”, and he himself went to America. And only in the nineties, viewers were able to see many of the paintings with his participation.
Vasya is a less famous, but no less eminent Soviet artist Radner Muratov, a Tatar, Honored Artist of the RSFSR. In the eighties he hosted a weekly TV program "Chess School". He died of a stroke in 2004.
Professor Maltsev was played by the famous filmmaker of the Soviet Union Erast Pavlovich Garin, artist, director, screenwriter, born in 1902. His directorial work is known to many: "An Ordinary Miracle", "The Prince and the Pauper." And as an actor he first appeared in the film "Lieutenant Kizhe" in 1934. He passed away in 1977, and his wife called the absence of his favorite job the cause of death - in the seventies Garin was no longer invited to work in the cinema.
Minor characters
Three policemen were played by Oleg Vidov, Alexander Lebedev and Nikolai Olyalin. The species is little known in Russia, his main activity unfolded in the United States, where he left in 1985 and organized a studio for the distribution of Soviet cartoons there. He died in 2017.
Olyalin, People's Artist of Ukraine, an actor who created courageous images in heroic Soviet films, passed away in 2009. Lebedev played in more than a hundred films, taking on small roles, but he was a very popular professional and made a good career. He died in 2012.
The small role of the chess player was played by the talented Papanov, who needs no introduction. This is a world-class magnitude, an honored artist of the USSR, a theater-goer and a filmmaker, but his greatest popularity was brought, perhaps, by the sounding of a wolf in "Well, wait!". Sadly, he died in 1987.
Female roles
The professor's daughter, Lyudmila, "a beautiful woman, an activist, a Komsomol member", was played by the charming Natalya Fateeva. She starred in many Soviet films. After the nineties, she went into politics, becoming one of the activists of the Russian opposition. She is known for her harsh remarks about the current government.
The role of Lena, a teacher in Troshkin's kindergarten, was played by Natalya Vorobyova, who perfectly plays capricious beauties. The most famous is the role of Ellochka the "cannibal" in the film "12 chairs" in 1971. Today he lives in Croatia.
The head of the kindergarten, who hired escaped criminals for a small job, was played by the charming Lyubov Sokolova, in whose piggy bank there are many creative works in the theater, awards "for the best female role" in films. She died in 2001.
