Ksenia Kuprina

Ksenia Kuprina
Kissa Kouprine in 1937
Born	Ксения Александровна Куприна (1908-04-21)21 April 1908 Gatchina,Saint Petersburg Governorate,Imperial Russia
Died	8 December 1981(1981-12-08)(aged 73) Moscow,USSR
Occupation(s)	actress, model, translator, memoirist

Ksenia Alexandrovna Kuprina(‹See Tfd›Russian:Ксе́ния Алекса́ндровна Куприна́,21 April 1908 – 8 December 1981) was a French model and actress of Russian and Hungarian origins. A daughter of the Russian writerAlexander Kuprin,she was known in France by her stage nameKissa Kouprine.

Biography

Ksenia Kuprina was born in 1908, toAlexander Kuprinand his second wife Elizaveta Geinrich (1882–1942), a daughter of theHungarian revolutionaryMorits Rotoni-Geinrich.At age ten she leftSoviet Russiawith her parents to settle inParis.In the mid-1920s she worked for aPaul Poiretagency, then embarked upon the career in films. Kissa Kouprine, as by then she has been known, appeared in eleven films, starting withLe Diable au cœur(1927, withBetty Balfour) byMarcel L'Herbier.It was followed by Herbier's adaptations ofGaston Leroux'sLe Mystère de la chambre jaune(1930) andLe Parfum de la dame en noir(1931), as well asL'Aventurier(1934) andLa Route impériale(1935). She appeared in three films byJacques de Casembrootand, finally,Jacques Deval's comedyWomen's Club(1936), withDanielle Darrieux,which proved to be her final appearance on screen in France. By this time Kouprine was rich enough to settle atChamps-Élysées.In the 1930s she was romantically involved withJean Marais,and became friends with the yet unknown singer,Edith Piaf,on whom she would later write a book in Russian.

In 1958 Kuprina returned to theUSSRwhere she worked asstage actress,scriptwriter,translatorand latermemoirist,who had massive success with her bookKuprin Is My Father(Куприн - мой отец, 1971). Two films about Ksenia Kuprina came out in the USSR:There Is No Life for Me Without Russia(Мне нельзя без России, directed byAlexander Proshkin) andKsenia Kuprina Speaks(Ксения Куприна рассказывает, Y.Reshetnikova and O. Dosik).For all that, Ksenia Kuprina's life in Russia was marred by disappointments and humiliations. She did not receive a dime from all the re-issues of her famous father's books, was refused an audience by theKhrushchevgovernment's Minister of CultureEkaterina Furtseva,never got a decent part at theMoscow Pushkin Drama Theatre( "Here I am anonymous actress," she once remarked)and for many years had to rely on her 100-ruble pension, according to the biographerVladimir Obolensky.

Ksenia Kuprina's main concern in her later years was the Alexander Kuprin Museum in Narovchat that she had been instrumental in creating. She died in 1981 ofbrain tumorand was interred inVolkovskoye CemeteryinSaint Petersburg.

Selected filmography

• Little Devil May Care(1928)
• The Mystery of the Yellow Room(1930)
• The Perfume of the Lady in Black(1931)
• The Last Night(1934)
• The Adventurer(1934)

External links

• Ksenia, Kuprin's Daughter.Ксения, дочь Куприна.TV Kulturadocumentary (YouTube, in Russian)