Kira Smirnova

Kira Petrovna Smirnova (Ки́ра Петро́вна Смирно́ва; May 5, 1922, Kaluga —  January 4, 1996, Moscow) was a Soviet and Russian actress, parodist, performer of lyrical songs and romances. Honored Artist of the Russian Federation (1995).

Biography
Born on May 5, 1922, in Kaluga. She grew up in a musical family and learned to play the guitar and piano early. After moving to Moscow, she graduated from school (June 1941) and entered a factory that produced grenades. She took part in factory amateur performances. Smirnova was invited to the front-line theater, where she performed during the Great Patriotic War, where she acted in sketches, danced, sang satirical couplets and lyrical songs, and performed parodies. After the war, she worked as a proofreader in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Since the early 1950s, she performed parodies (most of which were written by her husband, the children's poet and translator Boris Zakhoder). For the parody number The Priest Had a Dog (based on Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Alexander Vertinsky, Rashid Behbudov and Lyudmila Lyadova) she received an award at the first Theater Spring Festival (1956).

In 1962, she toured Paris with the Moscow Music Hall, and then in 1964, at the invitation of the director of the Paris Olympia, Bruno Coquatrix, she performed there with a solo performance.

In the early 1960s, Smirnova changed her role and began performing lyrical songs and urban romances. One of the first non-parody programs was Kira Smirnova Sings the Songs of Novella Matveeva (1964), the poetess and bard Matveeva, which the artist actually opened to the general public.

She died on January 4, 1996, in Moscow, at the age of 74 and is buried at the Miusskoe Сemetery.

Selected filmography

 * 1967 — Arena as episode
 * 1972 — Train Stop – Two Minutes as Glafira Mironovna
 * 1978 — A Dog walked along the Piano as Baba Malanya
 * 1979 — Magic Ring as Maremyana (voice)
 * 1987 — Laughter and Grief by the White Sea as Maremyana / Perepelikha (voice)

Literature

 * Kira Petrovna Smirnova // Variety of Russia. XX century: Lexicon / Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. State Institute of Art History. — M.: ROSSPEN, 2000. — рage 554.