Picture Gallery: Portraits and Publicity

American Theatre and Radio

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Even though we remember her for her movies, Olga was a stage actress first. These photos allow us to glimpse "through the glass darkly" at her career in America on stage and on the radio.

Olga with an artist who created a sculpture of Olga as the nun 
in her initial American triumph The Miracle (West Coast production, 1926).

Olga with Bramwell Fletcher in a publicity still for The Silent Witness (West Coast production, 1931).

Olga with Ian Keith in the 1932 West Coast stage production of Grand Hotel.  If you've seen the movie Grand Hotel (also from 1932), you will recognize Olga in Greta Garbo's role as the temperamental ballet dancer and Keith in John Barrymore's role as the impoverished Baron.

Another lovely portrait of Ogla as the dancer Grusinskaya in the theatrical version of Grand Hotel.
   
 

A publicity portrait for The Cat
and the Fiddle (West Coast
production, 1932).

A publicity portrait for Mutual
Broadcasting's 1938 radio
program Olga Baclanova's
Continental Revue.

  
   
 

Olga in her longest-running stage role as Madame Daruschka in Claudia (1942), which was a huge Broadway hit and Olga's final stage triumph. Two Broadway productions of Claudia and one touring company kept Olga busy from Feb. 1941 until Jan. 1943.  Olga ended up playing the same part in the film version, which was released by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1943. This photo features Olga with the other ladies from the cast; Olga is the second from the right.

  

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