Russian actress (1876-1949). A
diminutive,
soft-spoken woman, she studied singing in
Warsaw and acting with the
Moscow Art Theater, where she learned
Method acting under
Stanislavski himself. She came to the
United States in 1923 and remained to perform on
Broadway. She also ran an
acting school in
New York before working on a film in
Hollywood called "
Dodsworth" to help fund the school in 1936.
With her
dark eyes and thick
Slavic accent, she was a
popular character actor, but she is best known as the
mysterious gypsy fortune-teller in
1941's "
The Wolf Man" who speaks the
famous lines:
"Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night
May become a wolf when the wolfsbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright."
Of course, she appeared in numerous other films, including "
Sverchok na pechi" (her first film, in 1915, back in
Mother Russia), "
The Rains Came", "
Waterloo Bridge", "
The Man I Married", "
Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet", "
The Shanghai Gesture", "
The Mystery of Marie Roget", "
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man", "
Tarzan and the Amazons" (she played the
Amazon Queen, believe it or not), "
Wyoming", and "
A Kiss in the Dark".
Ouspenskaya died of a
stroke just three days after she'd been injured when a lit
cigarette set
fire to her bed.
Some research from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com)