Ksenia Alexandrovna Kuprina (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 writer

Alexander Kuprin Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin (russian: link=no, Александр Иванович Куприн; – 25 August 1938) was a Russian writer best known for his novels ''The Duel'' (1905)Kuprin scholar Nicholas Luker, in his biography ''A ...

, she was known in France by her stage name Kissa Kouprine.

Biography

Ksenia Kuprina was born in 1908, to

and his second wife Elizaveta Geinrich (1882–1942), a daughter of the Hungarian revolutionary Morits Rotoni-Geinrich. At age ten she left

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

with her parents to settle in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. In the mid-1920s she worked for a

Paul Poiret Paul Poiret (20 April 1879 – 30 April 1944, Paris, France) was a French fashion designer, a master couturier during the first two decades of the 20th century. He was the founder of his namesake haute couture house. Early life and care ...

agency, then embarked upon the career in films. Kissa Kouprine, as by then she has been known, appeared in eleven films, starting with ''Le Diable au cœur'' (1927, with

Betty Balfour Betty Balfour (born Florence Lilian Woods; 27 March 1902 – 4 November 1977) was an English screen actress, popular during the silent era, and known as the "British Mary Pickford" and "Britain's Queen of Happiness". She was best known to au ...

) by

Marcel L'Herbier Marcel L'Herbier (; 23 April 1888 – 26 November 1979) was a French filmmaker who achieved prominence as an avant-garde theorist and imaginative practitioner with a series of silent films in the 1920s. His career as a director continued unti ...

. It was followed by Herbier's adaptations of

Gaston Leroux Gaston Louis Alfred Leroux (6 May 186815 April 1927) was a French journalist and author of detective fiction. In the English-speaking world, he is best known for writing the novel '' The Phantom of the Opera'' (french: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, ...

's ' (1930) and ' (1931), as well as '' L'Aventurier'' (1934) and '' La Route impériale'' (1935). She appeared in three films by Jacques de Casembroot and, finally,

Jacques Deval Jacques Deval (1895–1972) was a French playwright, screenwriter and film director. Novels *''Marie Galante'' (1931) Plays *''Une faible femme''; a comedy in three acts (1920) *''Dans sa candeur naïve''; a comedy in three acts (1926); translate ...

's comedy ''

Women's Club The woman's club movement was a social movement that took place throughout the United States that established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While women's organizations had always been a part ...

'' (1936), with

Danielle Darrieux Danielle Yvonne Marie Antoinette Darrieux (; 1 May 1917 – 17 October 2017) was a French actress of stage, television and film, as well as a singer and dancer. Beginning in 1931, she appeared in more than 110 films. She was one of France's g ...

, which proved to be her final appearance on screen in France. By this time Kouprine was rich enough to settle at

Champs-Élysées The Avenue des Champs-Élysées (, ; ) is an avenue in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France, long and wide, running between the Place de la Concorde in the east and the Place Charles de Gaulle in the west, where the Arc de Triomphe is l ...

. In the 1930s she was romantically involved with Jean Marais, and became friends with the yet unknown singer,

Edith Piaf Edith is a feminine given name derived from the Old English words ēad, meaning 'riches or blessed', and is in common usage in this form in English, German, many Scandinavian languages and Dutch. Its French form is Édith. Contractions and var ...

, on whom she would later write a book in Russian. In 1958 Kuprina returned to the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

where she worked as

stage actress An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), lite ...

scriptwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. T ...

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

and later

memoirist A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

, who had massive success with her book ''Kuprin 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 by Alexander Proshkin) and ''Ksenia 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 the Khrushchev government's Minister of Culture Ekaterina Furtseva, never got a decent part at the

Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre The Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow, Russian Federation created in 1950 on the base of Alexander Tairov's Chamber Theatre, which was founded in 1914 and shut down in 1949 for ideological reasons. The theatre is based in ...

("Here I am anonymous actress," she once remarked) and for many years had to rely on her 100-ruble pension, according to the biographer Vladimir 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 of

brain tumor A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and seconda ...

and was interred in Volkovskoye Cemetery in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

.Могила К. А. Куприной на Волковском кладбище
. K.A. Kuprina's grave at the Volkovskoye Cemetery

Selected filmography

* ''

Little Devil May Care ''Little Devil-May-Care'' (or '' The Devil in the Heart'') (French: ''Le Diable au cœur'') is a 1928 French-British silent drama film directed by Marcel L'Herbier and starring Betty Balfour, Jaque Catelain and Roger Karl. Plot In a small coasta ...

'' (1928) * ''

The Mystery of the Yellow Room ''The Mystery of the Yellow Room'' (in French ''Le mystère de la chambre jaune'') is a mystery novel written by French author Gaston Leroux. One of the first locked-room mystery novels, it was first published serially in France in the periodical ...

'' (1930) * ''

The Perfume of the Lady in Black ''The Perfume of the Lady in Black'' ( it, Il profumo della signora in nero) is a 1974 giallo-horror film directed by Francesco Barilli. The film had nothing to do with the similarly-titled novel by Gaston Leroux. Plot Silvia ( Mimsy Farmer) is ...

'' (1931) * '' The Last Night'' (1934)

References

External links

Ksenia, Kuprin's Daughter
Ксения, дочь Куприна. TV Kultura documentary (YouTube, in Russian) {{DEFAULTSORT:Kuprina, Ksenia French female models French stage actresses French film actresses Russian film actresses Russian stage actresses Soviet writers Female models from Saint Petersburg Russian expatriates in France French people of Russian descent 20th-century Russian actresses 20th-century French actresses 1908 births 1981 deaths Women memoirists