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Olga Petrova
- The University Press of Kentucky
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OLGA PETROVA Olga Petrova was a major performer on stage, onscreen, and in vaudeville; she also wrote plays and advice columns. She was an extraordinarily strong and determined female who seized upon the entertainment industry as a means not only to wealth but also for the propagandization of her beliefs. She was patrician, stubborn, self-centered, and eccentric. In the history of American popular culture of the twentieth century, Olga Petrova is quite unique, but because her films are not known to exist, her plays and writings long out of print, she is virtuallyforgotten. "You have never seen a film in which Itook part," she commented. "Fate willing you never will." "What is little? What is great?" she asked me. "Let me put it this way. I did achieve what I set out as a child to get, my own bread, my own butter, my own house in which to enjoy it. That-to me-is the height of what Iwill accept and acknowledge as greatness." Just as she created a unique career, Petrova also created her own background and family history. She was born Muriel Harding on May 10, 1884, perhaps in Liverpool, England, or perhaps somewhere in Wales or on the Welsh border, and was of Welsh ancestry. Generally, she claimed Polish or Russian ancestry and a first husband, who mayor may not have existed, named Boris Petrov. Throughout her public and private life, Petrova had a semi-Russian accent, that, if one listened very closely, contained a Welsh burr. Critic Janet Flanner once made reference to Petrova as "an exotic, bewilderingly vocal actress," and there was something very bewildering about the accent that seemed to get stronger with age and the more years the actress spent in the U.S. As Muriel Harding, Petrova began her stage career in London, where a theatrical booker suggested the name change. With her red hair, temperament , and regal bearing, she did not look like a Muriel Harding. On April 5, 1911, Petrova became a star at the London Pavilion. She was seen by Jesse L. Lasky and Henry B. Harris and booked for their new Follies Bergere cabaret in New York. Modeled after the French establishment, the Follies Bergere was the first major attempt in the U.S. to create a nightclub with sophisticated entertainment, but neither it nor Petrova was a success. In order to promote herself, Petrova accepted a leading role in the Lionel Monckton musical comedy The Quaker Girl, which ran for 240 performances beginning on October 23, 1911. Petrova's success in The Quaker Girl led to a New York vaudeville engagement and a performance on the legitimate stage in 1914, opposite Milton Sills, in Monckton Hoffe's much-filmed Panthea. Between 1914 and 1918, Petrova starred in 26 films, the first sixteen of [44.197.116.176] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:20 GMT) 302 Olga Petrova which were produced by Popular Plays and Players for release by Metro. The last four were produced by the Petrova Picture Company. Petrova shot all of her films on the East Coast, and she never set foot in Hollywood. Her first film, The Tigress, three others from 1915, The Heart of a Painted Woman, MyMadonna, and The Vampire and the 1916 production of What WiJJ People Say? are directed by the screen's first female filmmaker, Alice Guy Blache, and the two women were obviously well suited both in terms of temperament and creativity. In many of the films, Petrova portrays a vamp, a woman who is generally little more than a high-class prostitute but often with an ulterior motive for her profession. for example, in The Soul of a Magdalene, released in May 191 7, the actress becomes the mistress of a libertine in order to raise money for an operation on her mother. She is a vamp in her first production. The Tigress. and in the second and third films directed by Blache. Petrova is a vamp with a pure heart. using money from a wealthy lawyer to found a hospital for orphans in The Heart ofa Painted Woman and working with the poor in My Madonna. In The Vampire. released in August 1915, she is simply a ruthless vamp wreaking vengeance on mankind. In the last of the Blachedirected features. What WiJJ People Say? (1916), Petrova portrays a society girl. Petrovais generally a representative of the upper or upper middle classes on screen. She is an opera singer in The Black Butterfly (1916...