Klara Rumyanova

Klara Mikhailovna Rumyanova (; 8 December 1929 – 18 September 2004) was a Soviet and Russian actress, voice actress and singer. She was active from 1951 to 1999. Her childlike and endearing voice was easily recognized by generations of Soviet people from their early childhood, because she voiced numerous Russian animated films and sang countless children's songs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union her songs have been heard even more, because of numerous releases of compact discs and tapes of children's songs from cartoons of the Soyuzmultfilm studio. She played roles in several films. Biography Klara Rumyanova was born on 8 December 1929 in Leningrad. In 1947, Klara moved to Moscow and on the first attempt she entered VGIK, where she studied at the course of Sergei Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova. In childhood and adolescence, Klara had a completely different voice, a contralto. The ability to speak with her famous children's voice, she found only in her student years after a serious illness. Klara, like all the students of VGIK, toured with concerts on the Moscow Oblast and once she was very cold and almost died of croupous inflammation of the lungs. After lying in the hospital for more than a month, Klara lost her voice. The continued study at the VGIK was in jeopardy. Sergei Gerasimov showed her to a phoniatrician, but he explained that Klara has very rare vocal cords and he does not guarantee that she will be able to properly practice vocal after recovery. For half a year Gerasimov forbade Rumyanova to talk even in a whisper, and they communicated through writing. When her voice recovered, Rumyanova suddenly discovered that she could now speak in a very high voice, which came to be familiar to millions of moviegoers. In 1953, Klara graduated from VGIK and became an actress of the National Film Actors' Theatre.