Maria Ouspenskaya

Maria Alekseyevna Ouspenskaya (; 29 July 1876 – 3 December 1949) was a Russian actress and acting teacher. She achieved success as a stage actress as a young woman in Russia, and as an older woman in Hollywood films. She was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Dodsworth and Love Affair (1939). Ouspenskaya is the first Russian actress to be nominated for an Oscar.

Life and career Ouspenskaya was born in Tula, Russia. She studied singing in Warsaw and acting in Moscow. She was a founding member of the First Studio, a theatre studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. There she was trained by Konstantin Stanislavsky and his assistant Leopold Sulerzhitsky.

The Moscow Art Theatre traveled widely throughout Europe, and when it arrived in New York City in 1922, Ouspenskaya decided to stay there. She performed regularly on Broadway over the next decade. She taught acting to Lee Strasberg among others, at the American Laboratory Theatre, and in 1929, together with Richard Boleslawski, her colleague from the Moscow Art Theatre, she founded the School of Dramatic Art in New York City.

Although she had appeared in a few Russian silent films many years earlier, Ouspenskaya stayed away from Hollywood until her school's financial problems forced her to look for ways to repair her finances. According to ads from Popular Song magazine in the 1930s, around this time Ouspenskaya also opened the Maria Ouspenskaya School of Dance on Vine Street in Los Angeles. Her pupils included Marge Champion, the model for Disney's Snow White.

In spite of her marked Russian accent, she did find work in Hollywood, playing European characters of various national origins. Her first Hollywood role was in Dodsworth (1936), earning her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and making her the first Russian actress to be nominated for an Oscar. She received a second Academy Award nomination in the same category for her role in Love Affair (1939).

She portrayed Maleva, an old Romani fortuneteller in the horror films The Wolf Man (1941) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), both with Lon Chaney Jr. and Bela Lugosi. Her films depicting World War II were Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm (1940), and Darryl F. Zanuck's The Man I Married (1940). Other films in which she appeared were: The Rains Came (1939), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Beyond Tomorrow (1940), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), and Kings Row (1942). An award-winning biographical film about Ouspenskaya, She-Wolf in Hollywood: The Story of Maria Ouspenskaya (which used materials from Ouspenskaya's archives at UCLA), was released in 2024.

Death Ouspenskaya died several days after suffering a stroke and receiving severe burns in a house fire, which was reportedly caused when she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette.

Filmography Year Title Role 1936 Dodsworth 1937 Conquest Love Affair Grandmother Maharani 1939 Judge Hardy and Son Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet Beyond Tomorrow Waterloo Bridge Dance, Girl, Dance Maleva Kings Row 1943 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Maleva 1945 Tarzan and the Amazons Amazon Queen 1946 I've Always Loved You 1947 Wyoming Maria 1949