page_title: Olga Baclanova
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Olga Baclanova / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: Actress Olga Baklanova
context_page_description: Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova, known professionally as Olga Baclanova, was a Russian-American actress of stage and screen, radio host and performer, operatic singer, and ballerina. She achieved prominence during the silent film era, after taking several years off her age and changing the spelling of her Russian surname from Baklanova. She was often billed under her last name only, as Baclanova, similarly to the surname-only nomenclature of her fellow countrywoman Nazimova.
  An exotic blonde temptress, she was known as the "Russian Tigress". She emigrated to America in 1925, and started appearing in Hollywood films, which she remains most noted for portraying the fictional Duchess Josiana in the Universal Pictures silent The Man Who Laughs and slimy circus trapeze artist Cleopatra in Tod Browning's cult horror movie Freaks, which features a cast of actual carnival sideshow freaks.
context_section_description: Baclanova's father died a natural death in 1922 according to her family. She was married three times, firstly to lawyer Vladimir Zoppi, and bore two sons with her first and second husbands. The birth of her second son with actor Nicholas Soussanin was front page news and was covered quite extensively in the press in 1930. Her third marriage was to Russian-born David Judovitch, better known as Richard Davis (1900–1984), who owned the Fine Arts Theatre in New York. In 1931 Baclanova became a naturalised American citizen. Her likeness to the American pop singer Madonna in the 1980s has been frequently mentioned as particularly evident in The Man Who Laughs. 
  In Russia, Baclanova's departure from the USSR is well remembered for its involuntary significant contribution to the unrivaled success of a Soviet movie star Lyubov Orlova, a struggling ex-pianist with a certain likeness to Olga. In 1926, Orlova was promoted from a choir, after two months in a theatre, by the heart-broken Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, a rumored lover and/or admirer of Baclanova, his favourite student.
caption: Olga Baclanova in 1922
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