Marika Kotopouli ΜΑΡΙΚΑ ΚΟΤΟΠΟΥΛΗ
Born in Athens 1887 Died in Athens 1954
The Plaza, Number 83
Sculpture by Kleanthis
Loukopoulos (Κλεάνθης Λουκόπουλος)
I never thought I could be anything else but an
actress. (1).
It is not easy to encapsulate a woman of Marika Kotopouli’s talent and character, - and even harder to capture the essence of her impact on the theatre world because we did not have the privilege of seeing her perform. She was, by all accounts, driven, passionate, and a very savvy business woman. Her personal life was fascinating as well. According to some, she was bi-sexual and, at times, a substance abuser.
Her talent was immense, with a repertoire ranging from Aeschylus to Goethe, to Ibsen, to modern Greek plays. For a time, she had her own theatre in Omonia Square and, in 1936, the Rex Theatre on Panepistimiou Street was built for her troupe.
Her Life
The Beginning:Dimitrios Kotopoulis and his wife Eleni had their own theatrical company in the late 1800s and Marika, the youngest of their four children - all girls - was on stage even before she was born. Her mother was in mid performance when her labour pains required a hastier final curtain than usual. All of the Kotopouli girls would become actresses, but only Marika went on to become a theatrical phenomenon.
A small, delicate child with a noticeably deep voice, she grew up on the narrow streets of Metaxourgio in Athens when her parents were not on tour. She recalled that as a child she had to wear all of her sisters’ cast off clothes, a fact which might explain why as an adult she spent a small fortune on clothes, furs and the latest fashion in hats.
She was just 7 when she appeared in a review
called A Little of Everything (Λίγο απ' όλα). In a segment called “The Demonstration of the Children”, several
children dressed as students sang: Today
I was not beaten; today I am free. Down
with the teacher, down with the teacher.
Not
exactly Shakespeare, but it was a start!
By 1900
she was 13 and already a seasoned performer, having acted in many roles
alongside of her parents. From her own perspective, there was no real distinction
between the theatre and her life growing up. In a 2003 tribute, the newspaper Kathimerini
wrote: For her the world was divided into two kinds of people – actors on
the stage and the others - those who attended the theatre.
By 1902 she had been signed on by the Royal Theatre. The pitch and range of her voice were apparently quite unique. Bassilis Rotas (Βασίλης Ρώτας) once described it as fast flowing with a cello in the larynx (γοργοκίνητη με το παλιό βιολοντσέλο στο λαρύγγι). Her diction was perfect. Many times during her career, she would scold actors with the words: When every vowel and every consonant in the Greek language are united inside a word, they have a consciousness and accord - and a harmony emerges. (2)
Her stint at the Royal theatre resulted in her becoming both well known and popular with the theatre going public. She had a role in the infamous production of Sophocles’ Oresteia in 1903 when an attempt to introduce more modern Greek into the ancient play, caused a riot in which lives were lost.(3)
As Iphigenia in 1905
Marika in the early 1900s
And there were other issues...A fellow actress at the Royal Theatre was Anna Frankopoulou. Every time Thomas Economou, actor turned teacher and then director wanted to use Marika in a role because he considered her the more talented of the two, he had to go up against the theatre management.
When a frustrated Economou left the Royal theatre, Marika exited as well and joined her father’s troop in Chalkida. Economou followed her. Although 23 years her senior, he was in love. She and Economou started their own troupe: The Thomas Economou Company which played at the Old Variety (Παλαιό Βεριετέ) Theatre. Her family joined the company but there were often fireworks between her father and Economou over presentation - with Marika awkwardly in the middle.
This collaboration was not a financial success and, after Marika was pressured by her family to leave, and a difficult economic period ensued. Marika would later muse about the insecurity of actors during that period: the theatre then had nothing of the economic security that exists today. The sudden switches in our lives were dramatic. It was black caviar... or nothing! ... Have you ever experienced what it feels like to be hungry? I have. (4)
Paris
Marika left for a four month stay in Paris towards the end of 1906. As it happened, her acting rival Kivelli was also there with her new lover Konstantinos Theodoridis. Both would benefit from their exposure to the Paris theatre scene and both brought new ideas back to Athens.
By this time in her career, Marika had already played in Macbeth, Othello, Electra and a work by the Greek feminist Kalliroi Parren. Then, in 1908 she took part in the Panathinaia Review, a kind of variety show. Some of her fans disapproved but her participation in these kind of reviews made money and that allowed her to form a second group to perform dramatic plays that were cultural successes but not always money makers.
Stella Biolante
Playwright Gregoris Xenopoulos (Γρηγόρη Ξενόπουλο) had written a short story called Stella Biolante which Marika considered to be just the kind of red meat she needed on stage. It was the story of a young girl in Zakynthos who defied her father by refusing to marry an older man of his choice and instead preferred a young man who had the nerve to ask her, not her father, for her hand in marriage. He locked her in the attic for a year on bread and water (!) and then taunted her with the fact that her young lover, in the meantime, had married someone else. She dies heartbroken.
Quite a pot boiler, but it was not without a real social message in an era in Greece when father always knew best. Xenopoulos did adapt it for the stage but then presented it in Patras’ Apollon Theatre with her rival Kivelli as Stella!
Never, mind. She got to play Stella in 1909 and it was a success!
In 1910, she was a great success in The New Woman with this little ditty (translated by myself so you get the gist):
I‘m a modern woman; I’ll whistle and smoke. Each one of us is worth a 10. I don’t give men notice - I don’t want men or buttons or beads and resign as house keeper and cooking slave! And, just like my husband, I’ll rant and I’ll rave. (5)
Light weight for sure and pretty tame stuff now, but it would have gone over a treat back then. Musical numbers were one thing where there could be no competition with her rival Givelli. Givelli could not sing.
In comic mode
The truth is that Marika was good at everything she turned her hand to. Her impulse all through her career was to push herself, to risk, and to enter every endeavour with enthusiasm and elan. She was very aware of every bad review and felt such a strong sense of responsibility for a good performance that she apparently suffered first night stage fright before every performance.
Somehow she dazzled in every role. Although she was not pretty, when she was on stage, the audiences fell in love because of her voice, her fluidity of movement, and her interpretation of her role.
The Rivalry Between Marika
and Kivelli
Kivelli and
Marika Kotopouli were the same age and both were very young when they became known
to the theatre going public, just into their early teens! Marika was petite, dark, and not at all a beauty; Kivelli
was tall, blond and attractive. They were the two actresses whom
everyone followed during this era. They even had rival fan groups, partly
because of their different acting styles but also because Givelli would
eventually support the republican (Venizelist) political faction whereas Marika
favoured the royalist cause, this at a time when these labels really mattered.
Their rivalry, partly real and partly, no doubt, encouraged by the media, enhanced both their careers, kept them on their toes, and
kept their names in the newspapers. In
the early thirties when both were well established, they would collaborate with
great success.
Marika and Kivelli with playwright Spiros Melas
Her Politics and Outlook on Life
Her career coincided with the turbulent politics of the era – the push on the part of Venizelists to get rid of the monarchy and the push back from Royalist supporters who, just as fervently, wanted a king on the throne. And yet, unlike many in this tug of war in the first decades of the 1900s, Marika was not a fanatic. There is a lovely story told of Venizelos visiting her backstage at one of her performances. He was a charmer and so was she. Apparently they chatted for an hour and finally she called out that he simply must leave because, if he stayed another moment, she might become a Venizelist!
And yet, she was not a conservative; quite the opposite. She was a rebel and a free spirit who supported women writers, women’s rights, and fought hard for the use of demotic Greek in the theatre well before it became the norm. Actress and communist party member Olympia Papadouka would say that Marika was not interested in personal beliefs, that she was above factions and ideologies. She would prove this during the German occupation when she used whatever influence she had to protect leftist artists and during the Greek civil war as well when she would save leftist actors from being sent into exile or imprisoned, by claiming them as vital to her acting company.
Apparently she could be a caustic critic, but always face to face. Anna Sinodinou recounted the time when she was auditioning in front of Marika for a place in the National Theatre Drama School. She had chosen a dramatic speech from Electra. When she finished, Marika said: Are those tears for Electra or because you know your performance was terrible?
The Love Affair with Ion Dragoumis
He encountered Marika before they actually met! He attended a play in Cairo where Marika was performing. It was 1905. He was sitting in one part of the orchestra and Penelope Delta, his former love, was sitting in the same theatre with her husband. The awkwardness of this proximity was erased when Marika appeared on stage. He was thunderstruck by her stage presence and her voice. Who is that voice? He exclaimed. He was enchanted but chose to wait until she was of age to express his admiration in person. They met face to face in Constantinople in 1908 when he was First Secretary at the Greek Embassy there.
The Dragoumis family was a prominent one in Greece (his father was Prime Minister of Greece briefly in 1910) . They were not at all happy about the burgeoning affair – a Dragoumis and an actress! As their liaison became known, political opponents of his father hinted darkly that Marika was likely selling diplomatic secrets to the Turks or pilfering money meant for the Macedonian struggle, so dear to the Dragoumis family’s heart.
It put Dragoumis in a difficult position, but not difficult enough to end the romance. It turned out to be an affair that neither was prepared to end. At one point she wrote to Dragoumis: I met you on the same day I was introduced to morphine. I am glad I gave up morphine, but I cannot do the same with you (7)
They never married. Apparently when one did want to, the other did not. They remained lovers until Dragomis was tragically murdered by fanatic Venizelists in 1920. Marika’s friends hid the news from her for days, they were so afraid of her reaction.
In mourning in Italy
after the death of Ion Dragoumis
Georgios
Helmi and Marriage
During the period when the Venizelist faction had control in Greece and the royalist Dragoumis was in exile in Corsica, Marika had met Georgios Helmis, a business man and theatrical entrepreneur.
A year after Dragoumis’ murder, they married and remained together for the rest of her life in spite of the fact that Helmis had a roving eye where women were concerned. They had no children.
She continued to act until she was in her mid sixties. Her final stage appearance was on Syros on March 24, 1953.
Marika and Georgios
Helmis
Her Legacy
At an event
celebrating her thirty years in the theatre, Marika remarked that all of her 128 theatrical productions
whether they were successes or failures had contributed to her artistic achievement.(8) She had succeeded and done it her way: She had formed her own troupe in 1908 and again in 1912, had her own theatre in Omonia Square until 1936 until she moved to the Rex Theatre in 1936, which had been built especially for her company.
Her Marika Kotopouli Theatre in
Omonia, now dust in the wind
Marika Kotopouli worked with almost all of the theatrical and artistic giants of her era and taught or influenced many aspiring thespians: actors such as Eleni Papadaki, Katina Paxinou, Elli Labetti, Anna Sinodinou, and Melina Mercouri. In 1921 she was honoured with the Gold Cross of the Order of George I and in 1923, with the Education Ministry’s arts and letters prize.
In 1949, on the occasion of her collaboration with the National Theatre’s Oresteia under the direction of Dimiitri Rodiri, the cast and crew presented her with a gold medal engraved with the face of her as Clytemnesta.
In 1951, the Marika Kotopouli Award was founded to honour Greek actors
1953: Melina Mercouri receives the award from previous winner Elli Labetti as Marika looks on.
Her Death
Marika died suddenly
on September 11, 1954. A large crowd followed the hearse from Athens
Metropolitan church to the First cemetery where she was buried at the city’s
expense. In 1955 the Mayor of
Athens agreed that her final resting place should be in the Plaza of the
cemetery, an area designated for distinguished Greeks, She certainly qualified
but it is interesting that it took until 1955 for a woman to obtain this
privilege. One factor in the decision
was Georgos Helmis’ promise to erect a suitable monument (9)
Her home at 14 Alekou Panagoulh Street in
Zographo has been a museum to her career since 1990. Tel: 21 0777 5950.
Her Grave
In her role as
Iphigenia
Plaza, Number 83
The Map
Footnotes:
(1) Καθημερινή Επτα Ημέρες, Αφιέρωμα
στη Μαρίκα Κοτοπούλη https://web.archive.org/web/20150621184111/http://wwk.kathimerini.gr/kath/7days/2003/01/19012003.pdf
(2) ΜΑΡΙΚΑ ΚΟΤΟΠΟΥΛΗ αφιέρωμα στο
ΕΣΤΙΝ ΟΥΝ
(3) There is an account of this in our
entry on Givelli in this blog. While looking at modern Greek history, it has
been interesting to me to see how many famous protests in Greece were not about
change, but about maintaining the status
quo!
(4)
Εταιρεία Μελέτη Νέου Ελληνισμού “Μνήμων”
τόμος 12ος, Αθήνα 1989 Ελίζα Αννα Δελβερούδη (5) «Εγώ είμαι η νέα γυναίκα/ που θα καπνίζω και θα σφυρίζω, η καθεμιά μας αξίζει για δέκα /δε δίνω γι’ άντρες έναν παρά, Δε θέλω άντρες, κουμπιά και χάντρες/ και παραιτούμαι από το νοικοκυριό, /δε θα γυρεύω να μαγειρεύω/ και εις τον άντρα μου θα κάνω το θεριό.»
(6) Dragoumis’
love affairs are the stuff of legend. It would have been wonderful to do an
entry on his first love Penelope Delta, but she is buried in Kifissia! See: https://www.aixmi.gr/index.php/dragoumhskotopoulh/
(7) http://www.mixanitouxronou.gr/kathe-fora-pou-plagiaza-mazi-tou-eniotha-oti-plagiaza-me-ton-ermi-i-thyellodis-sxesi-tou-iona-dragoumi-me-tin-marika-kotopouli-kai-i-afosiosi-tou-stin-megali-idea/
(8) Her movie career was short-lived! In 1933, she played in her only
movie, the Greek-Turkish production Bad Road, based on a novel by Grigorios Xenopoulos.)
(9) The
mayor was Pausanias Katsotas. As for the
monument, some loved it and some did not. An answer to a letter-complaint from G. Anemoyiannis, who had
done some stage settings for Kotopoulis' plays, reveals that her husband had
chosen a gold leaf for his wife's monument. It is not there now.
Sources
http://www.ekebi.gr/magazines/showimage.asp?file=142004&code=8512&zoom=800https://logomnimon.wordpress.com/μαρίκα-κοτοπούλη/
https://web.archive.org/web/20150621184111/http://wwk.kathimerini.gr/kath/7days/2003/01/19012003.pdf
https://anemourion.blogspot.com/2018/02/blog-post_6.html
https://www.kathimerini.gr/1048970/gallery/politismos/8eatro/kotopoylh-papadakh-pa3inoy-sto-e8niko
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