Soviet theatre and film actor Pavel Massalsky handwritten note, size 6” x 8.1/4”

The note addressed to Moscow State University, where he performed on September 26, 1978, 

He wrote:

I had a great pleasure performing for you. You have a wonderful audience

Grateful People's Artist of the USSR

P. Massalsky ( signature

September 26, 1978

Pavel Vladimirovich Massalsky (August 22 (1904-1979)) was a Soviet theatre and film actor, one of the leading teachers of the Moscow Art Theatre School. People's Artist of the USSR (1963). Laureate of the first degree Stalin Prize (1952).

The actor had excellent external data, innate charm and artistry, notes of lordly swagger, and strove for the character of the images he created on stage. He successfully performed roles in the works of classical and modern playwrights.

In 1934, the premiere of the play "The Pickwick Papers" based on Charles Dickens took place, where Massalsky played the role of Jingle, which he loved very much; no recordings of the play have survived, but later this role was played very similarly by Massalsky's student Oleg Basilashvili.

He first appeared in films in 1927, but he became famous for his role as the American entrepreneur of German origin Franz von Kneishitz, the main antagonist in Grigory Alexandrov's comedy "Circus" (1936).

In 1941, during the first days of the Great Patriotic War, the Moscow Art Theatre was on tour in Minsk. The troupe had to urgently leave the city on foot and travel a week to Moscow; then the theatre was evacuated to Saratov, and then to Alma-Ata. There, in 1944, Massalsky starred in Sergei Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible" as the Polish king Sigismund. After that, he no longer had a single significant role in film.

Since 1947, he taught at the Moscow Art Theatre School, and since 1961, he became a professor. In 1970, he became head of the acting department. His students included Yevgeny Yevstigneyev, Vladimir Vysotsky, Tatyana Doronina, Mikhail Kozakov, Oleg Basilashvili, Boris Shcherbakov, Viktor Sergachev, Avangard Leontyev, Alexander Baluyev, Gennady Yalovich, Villor Kuznetsov, Viktor Markhasev and others.

He called the role of the author in the 1952 play Resurrection based on Leo Tolstoy “a great happiness,” which Vasily Kachalov had played before him and which, according to the latter, was more difficult than Hamlet. In 1960, Massalsky played the chairman of the court in a film based on the novel, and in 1978, on Central Television, in the series “One Actor’s Theatre”, he recorded chapters from the novel in the film “L. N. Tolstoy. On the 150th Anniversary of His Birth. “Resurrection”. Performed by Pavel Massalsky.” Massalsky was a friendly person, he could joke, sometimes mischievously. He had excellent taste and always dressed elegantly.