Ouspenskaya, Maria

(1876-1949)

   Born in Tula, Russia, Maria Ouspenskaya joined the Moscow Art Theatre (MAT) and appeared in Russian motion pictures before the Revolution. When the MAT visited New York for a season in 1922-1923, Ouspenskaya decided not to return to Russia and, with Richard Boleslavski, cofounded the American Laboratory Theatre (ALT), which aimed to bring the acting theories of Constantin Stanislavsky to American actors. While devoted to her ALT classes, Ouspenskaya occasionally acted on Broadway in productions of The Saint (1924), The Witch (1926), The Passing Present (1931), Abide With Me (1935), Daughters of Atreus (1936), and Outrageous Fortune (1943), most of which were short-lived. During the 1930s and 1940s, she appeared in about two dozen Hollywood movies in character roles, most memorably as Maleva, the gypsy fortune-teller, in The Wolf Man (1941), and its sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).