Olga Chekhova

Olga Konstantinovna Chekhova (; ; 14 April 1897 – 9 March 1980), known in Germany as Olga Tschechowa, was a Russian-German actress. Her film roles include the female lead in Alfred Hitchcock's Mary (1931). Biography Olga Konstantinovna Knipper was born on 14 April 1897, the daughter of Konstantin Knipper (1868–1929), a railway engineer, and Yelena Luise "Lulu" Knipper (née Ried, 1874–1940), both Lutherans of ethnic German ancestry. Olga was the niece and namesake of Olga Knipper (Anton Chekhov's wife). She went to school in Tsarskoye Selo but, after watching Eleonora Duse, joined the Moscow Art Theatre's studio. There she met the Russian-Jewish actor Mikhail Chekhov (Anton's nephew) in 1914 and married him the same year, taking his surname as her own. Their daughter, also named Olga, was born in 1916. She became an actress under the name of Ada Tschechowa. During the year of the 1917 October Revolution, Chekhova divorced her husband but kept his name. In the first year of the revolution, she joined a cabaret-theatre group called Sorokonozhka (The Little Centipede), as the troupe consisted of twenty members and only forty feet. Chekhova also was given a part in a silent movie, Anya Kraeva. The following year, in 1918, she was given roles in Cagliostro and in The Last Adventure of Arsène Lupin. Although part of the social circle around the Moscow Art Theatre, she never played a role there, despite her later claims to having her first theatre role in The Cherry Orchard.