From childhood, many remember Alexander Rowe's fairy tale films. They were not just kind, but warm and bright. Among them stands out a 1963 motion picture entitled “Kingdom of Curved Mirrors”. In addition to an interesting and exciting plot, this movie was loved by the audience thanks to the leading performers. These were the sisters Yukina, Olga and Tatyana. Although most of them were remembered as the capricious girl Olya and her reflection Yalo. Participation in the film Row instantly made two Moscow schoolgirls famous throughout the USSR.
Who are Olya and Tanya Yukins
Bold, mischievous twins with blond hair and huge blue eyes - these are exactly what the sisters of Yukina remembered.
After the release of the film with their participation, it was difficult to find a child in Moscow who would not know them. Many expected that after such a successful debut, the Yukina sisters would certainly become actresses and would appear in more than one movie, but the girls chose a different path.
Yukins family
The Yukins family consisted of four people: father Gennady, mother Maria and two perky daughters, Olya and Tanya. In the early sixties, the Yukins received an apartment in Moscow. Although it was located in Kuzminki, after communal apartments in the basement, the separate living space seemed almost a paradise.
The girls' father worked in a pillow factory, and her mother worked as a seamstress in an atelier. Despite the difficult time and the addiction of the head of the family to alcohol, the Yukins lived together. And although sometimes father and mother made scandals, pretty soon they put up, and the family again heard laughter and funny songs.
Childhood Olya and Tanya
The future actresses of the sister Yukina were born in October 1953. From childhood, they were very talented and bright girls. Sisters knew many verses from memory, danced and sang folk songs beautifully. Olya and Tanya had many friends in the yard and at school. In addition, the twins tried to study well.
Once in a local House of Culture a contest was organized for the best pair of twins. Children from all over the district gathered to participate. Also came to this competition and the Yukina sisters, who by that time were nine years old. Seeing the girls dancing and singing briskly, the harsh judges had no doubts and the victory was awarded to Olya and Tanya. From the contest, the girls brought home a bunch of prizes and award certificates.
Participation in the film "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" 1963
The great Soviet storyteller Alexander Rowe was just preparing for the film adaptation of Vitaly Gubarev’s famous novel “The Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”. According to the plot, the main characters are similar to each other like two drops of water. So Rowe was desperate to find a suitable pair of twins throughout the capital. At the same time, he wanted the girls to have completely different characters with an absolute external identity. During the search, he reviewed about three hundred pairs of twins, but no one liked the demanding director.
Once in the hands of Row got photos from the twin contest, which was attended by the sisters Yukina, Olga and Tatyana. Interested in the blonde sisters from the photographs, he invited them to audition. Soon after, mischievous girls were approved for the main roles in the film “Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors”.
Since the film was shot in Yalta, with the beginning of summer, the entire crew and twins with their mother went to the sea.
When the actresses of Yukina’s sister just appeared on the set, what is the name of the girls, not everyone knew. Upon learning that one of the little actresses bears the same name as one of the heroines, in order to avoid confusion, she was assigned the role of Olya, and Tanya - her mirror image of Yalo. It is noteworthy that by the nature of Tanya was more like a character named Olya, and twin Olya - to Yalo.
Since Tanya and Olya got the main roles in the movie, they had to learn whole pages of text. In addition, they shot a lot of them, so the girls were sometimes so tired that they did not have the strength to go swimming in the evening to the sea. However, the young actresses of the Yukina's sister, Tatyana and Olga, did not complain and endured all the difficulties, like adults. In addition, the acting profession had huge advantages for them, because here, on the seashore, the girls first tried delicacies that they could not even imagine at home. They lived in comfortable hotels, rode in soft cars and felt like princesses. Sometimes it seemed to the girls that they got into a real fairy tale. The whole work on the painting lasted a whole summer, and with the beginning of the new school year, Olya and Tanya returned home.
The early glory of the twins
For almost three months of working in the cinema, the girls received only 80 rubles each (at that time the cleaning lady earned so much in one month), but the memories of the time spent by the sea were much more expensive for the Yukins. Moreover, soon the film "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" with their participation was released, and the girls became incredibly popular.
Letters came from all over the USSR to talented twins, so the girls simply did not have time to write the answers. At school, the Yukins sisters were generally treated like two queens - they were the center of attention, they fell in love with them, they admired and envied them. In addition, Olya and Tanya were once even invited to the Kremlin, where they congratulated and presented luxurious gifts.
Soon the girls were tired of such annoying attention, but next year, with the beginning of summer, they again wanted to get on the set. Therefore, Olya Yukina wrote a letter asking Alexander Row to the film studio. Soon, the Yukina sisters were invited to the new fairy tale film “Frost”.
Roles in the movie Frost, 1964
Having received an invitation to act in films again, the girls were very happy at first.
But, having arrived at the shooting of the film "Morozko", they were slightly disappointed. They were not taken to the tender summer sea in a soft carriage of a train. In addition, they were given only small roles of girls in handkerchiefs with baskets picking mushrooms in the forest. And although the sisters played their roles perfectly, it was all wrong.
The fate of the Yukins sisters after graduation
After the film “Frost”, Yukina’s sisters where were they shot? Alas, they did not appear on the screen anymore. However, this was not such a tragedy for the girls. Indeed, even those two roles in the films that they performed glorified them all over the country, and after a few years the girls were still stars in their school and district.
The twin mother was categorically against the acting career of her daughters. Therefore, all invitations to participate in the local drama circle of the twin Yukina were rejected.
A little later, Olya and Tanya showed themselves well as athletes, they were offered to play tennis professionally, but this was again prevented by the girls' mother.
After graduation, the sisters Yukina, Olga and Tatyana had to choose some profession. The biography of these girls could have developed differently, if they had decided to connect their fate with the cinema. The childhood friends of the twins say that Tanya even tried to enter the theater institute, and Olya - in the technical. But it did not work out, and the girls, on the advice of their mother, entered the local technical school of mechanical engineering.
Sisters of Yukina: personal life
However, the girls were not able to work in their specialty. The girls had barely turned twenty years old when they both jumped out to marry.
Olya married a guy from her own school named Victor Lamonov. However, the husband was not a prince at all, pretty soon all the hardships of providing for the family fell on the shoulders of the young wife. After suffering for several years, Olga Yukina divorced her husband.
The chosen one of Tanya was Alexander Zamolodchikov. He worked as a driver and turned out to be a more caring husband for Tanya than Lamonov for Olya. Together they lived their whole lives.
Children of Olga and Tatyana Yukins
Soon after marriage, Olya had a son, Maxim, and Tanya had a daughter, Julia. After the divorce, Olga Yukina returned to live with her parents, and they helped her take care of her son. And after their death, Olga and her little son Maxim began to live in the apartment alone. She had to raise her son to her feet herself, but Olga was lucky - she and Tatyana got a job together at Intourist.
Work at Intourist
It is difficult to say that contributed to the fact that the Yukins sisters without special education and skills were taken to work in such a prestigious institution. Either the girls were able to establish themselves well as female workers, or their former glory as actresses (after all, movie stars working in the country's most famous hotel is a good advertisement) helped Tanya and Ola.
In the seventies and eighties, the Intourist hotel chain was a special world where the cream of society was spinning . There were actors, foreigners, politicians, fashion designers and musicians. Working in this structure, the Yukina sisters lived almost like Christ's bosom. Their duties included the preparation of Soviet tourists for departure abroad. Thus, the twins not only went abroad more than once, but also got various scarce goods for themselves and their relatives.
The sisters had expensive clothes, foreign equipment, elite alcohol and scarce foods. And their children grew up like a prince and princess. For example, Maxim was the first of the class to become the proud owner of real jeans, in addition, he had the first VCR in their area - the subject of envy of all classmates and friends from the yard. It seemed that this well-fed happy life would always be like that, but perestroika struck, and later the collapse of the USSR.
In 1995, the Intourist Hotel became owned by businessmen, and in the process of reorganizing the institution, the Yukina sisters were dismissed. Nobody was interested in what their names were and in what films they once shot.
Recent years Yukins Olga and Tatyana
The dismissal from Intourist coincided with the hungry nineties. Getting a job was difficult, in addition, the meager salary was constantly delayed. Inflation destroyed all accumulations, and the sisters had to gradually sell all the valuables in the house. Not to die of starvation helped a small cottage in a village near Moscow.
Such a sharp transition from luxury to poverty could not but affect the morale of the sisters. Both gradually began to drink, especially Olga. Alcohol negatively affected her already undermined health, and in January 2005 she died from heart problems right in the arms of her son.
Tatyana turned out to be stronger and survived her sister for six whole years. All these years she worked at the military enlistment office for a penny. Health constantly let her down, moreover, she drank a lot. Tatyana’s husband suffered a stroke and received a disability, so care for the family almost completely fell on the fragile shoulders of an elderly woman. In March 2011, the last of the Yukins sisters did not become.
Both twins were buried next to their parents at the Pokrovsky cemetery in Moscow.
There is little information about the Yukina sisters. In those rare articles that are still found, they often write that cinema ruined their lives. It is difficult to say how fair such statements are. Indeed, it was thanks to the filming in the “Kingdom of Curved Mirrors” that the girls saw a different life, which was very different from their wretched existence before that. In addition, when the Yukina sisters, Olga and Tatyana, grew up, they, despite various difficulties, were able to secure for themselves exactly the kind of life they dreamed about. And with the collapse of the USSR, not only Olga and Tatyana, but the whole country, including famous actors, found themselves in a terrible situation. It is unfortunate that these talented girls did not manage to adapt to a new life, and they died so early. Despite this, for many viewers, they continue to be favorite actresses, albeit playing only two roles.