How a MK journalist helped Leonid Gaidai create famous comedies

Yakov Kostyukovsky “interceded” with the director for the “magnificent trinity” Coward-Dumb-Experienced

January 30, 2023, in fairness, should have become a “red calendar date” in our country. This day marks the 100th anniversary of the film director Leonid Gaidai, the creator of films loved by many generations of Russians, including young people. But our newspaper, or rather one of its journalists, is also related to Gaidai’s unfading success.

A former employee of Moskovsky Komsomolets, Yakov Kostyukovsky, became a co-author of the scripts for several of Gaidai’s most popular comedies – Operation Y …, Prisoner of the Caucasus, Diamond Arm.

Yakov Aronovich for several post-war years worked in the youth team of the capital, where he held the positions of editor of the department, responsible employee of the secretariat. However, later, at the height of the campaign launched in the country to “fight against cosmopolitanism”, he was forced to leave the newspaper and become “free artists”.

The “disabled person of the fifth group” who received the “wolf ticket” (as they joked then about problems with the 5th column in the questionnaire about nationality) had to raise funds for a living by publishing feuilletons in various publications, including the popular magazine Krokodil. , satirical poems, even sports articles. Later, when the intensity of Stalin’s “cosmopolitan” campaign began to decline, work became easier. Kostyukovsky wrote plays, reprises for pop and circus artists, published several books, including a collection of satirical poems “Men’s Conversation” …

At the turn of the 1960s. he began to successfully cooperate with another “specialist in humor” – Maurice Slobodsky. Together they wrote, for example, the script for the operetta “Two Days of Spring” based on the works of the composer Isaac Dunayevsky. Another field for creativity was comedy scripts, the first of which, Free Kick, was released in 1962.

After that, the cooperation of the tandem of writers-humorists with Leonid Gaidai began. Three “Shurik’s parents” were brought together by the then “master of Moscow cinema” famous director Ivan Pyryev.

According to the memoirs of Kostyukovsky himself, they immediately suggested that Gaidai make a funny film story with the participation of Yuri Nikulin, Georgy Vitsin and Evgeny Morgunov. By that time, this colorful trinity had already managed to fall in love with Soviet viewers with their adventures in two short films by Gaidai. However, Leonid Iovich did not immediately agree with the proposal. His plans then included shooting a comedy, the main character of which would be a positive hero – a young man.

As a result of the joint work of three talented writers, three short stories about the adventures of the charming bespectacled student Shurik appeared. And in the last of them, a place was just successfully found for the trio Trus-Dumb-Experienced. Although Kostyukovsky and Slobodsky managed to win back these characters not without difficulty. The fact is that Gaidai had previously filmed TBB “dumb”: there are no words about their adventures in short films, only “groovy” music and singing. The authors of the future “Operation …” agreed that the trinity would participate in the film if Kostyukovsky and Slobodskoy came up with suitable replicas for them. This ex-“emkovets” and his colleague succeeded quite well.

But in many other episodes, Gaidai’s own script work dominated. He used some situations from his own life for his comedy. Here, for example, Yaroslav Smelyakov’s poem “The Good Girl Lida”, which Shurik reads to the girl he liked, happened to be recited in his youth by Leonid Iovich himself: at the entrance exams for admission to the theater studio.

In the same short story “Delusion” a phrase once uttered by Gaidai’s wife Nina Grebeshkova was immortalized: “I always remember where I was, when and with whom”…

A comedy about the funny adventures of a bespectacled student – “Operation Y …” was released in 1965. In the first few months, about 70 million people watched it in wide release. In the wake of such a stunning success, the authors decided to make another film about Shurik. The variant with the capture of a Bigfoot in the Gaidai mountains by this restless student did not suit, but another scenario dedicated to an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the bride turned out to be suitable. From it, the next Gaidai masterpiece, “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, was obtained.

This film comedy expected even greater success with the audience. But it seemed wrong to the authors to exploit the image of the blond-haired bespectacled man further. Therefore, the next film was a tape dedicated to the adventures of smugglers.

The basis of the plot was invented by Kostyukovsky. Or rather, I read it: once Yakov Aronovich came across a newspaper article that told about clever foreign scammers who managed to transport gold and precious stones across the border, hiding them in plaster bandages applied to healthy limbs. The idea turned out to be a win-win: The Diamond Arm, starring Yuri Nikulin, Andrei Mironov and Anatoly Papanov, continued the series of successful cinematic works by Leonid Gaidai.