Valentina Mikhailovna Leontyeva (Alevtina Torson) is a popular Soviet television presenter and announcer of Central Television. In addition, she is the People's Artist of the USSR and the RSFSR, laureate of the USSR State Prize.
Millions of children living in the USSR knew and loved "Aunt Valya" - the host of the most popular children's programs. And adults remember Valentina Mikhailovna from the programs “With all my heart”, “Blue Light” for many years that appeared on the screens of the country.
Childhood and youth
The biography of the girl began in Petrograd, where she was born in 1923, on August 1. Her parents - native Petersburgers, worked as accountants. Dad is on the railway, and mom is in the city hospital. The atmosphere of love and care always reigned at home.
Valentina Mikhailovna in her memoirs more than once talked about the magnificent balls, carnivals and musical evenings that were held at their home. Dad loved his girls very much, and they also adored him. Even many years later, in memory of her father, Valentina and her sister Lyudmila retained their maiden names when they got married.
War time
In the first years of the outbreak of the war, the family remained in Leningrad. Valya and her sister joined the ranks of the air defense squad. When there was almost no food left in Leningrad to save his family from imminent hunger, his father went to donate blood so that he would be given extra food. One day, storing firewood for heating an apartment, Mikhail Grigoryevich deeply injured his hand and an infection got into the wound. When the sisters brought his father to the hospital, he already had a blood poisoning. There was not enough medicine, the doctors could not help him, and soon his father passed away.
In 1942, Valentina, her sister, who recently had a baby, and her mother left the besieged Leningrad. On the "Road of Life" they were able to cross Ladoga. The three were saved, except for the little son of his sister, who died on the way from the besieged city.
In the evacuation, the family lived in a small village in the Ulyanovsk region, where Valentina graduated from high school. After the war, they first returned to Leningrad, and then moved to Moscow.
Creative way
Valentine was planning to get higher education in the capital. The girl entered the Moscow Art Institute, but soon stopped studying and began to earn money, because there was not enough money in the family. After a few years, she decides to continue her studies, but chooses a different profession. Leontiev enters the studio at the Moscow Art Theater and Shchepkinskoye School. At one of the meetings with studio students, she is noticed by the director of the Tambov Theater and invites her to her troupe. Valentina accepts the offer and moves to Tambov. There she begins work in a local theater.
In the early 1950s, Leontyeva returned to the capital and successfully passed the competitive selection of young talents on television. V. Zaikin, who headed the commission, recalled that Valya subdued everyone with her spontaneity, intelligence, and how she splendidly recited the text proposed to her by heart, without a hint.
Leontiev was immediately hired, but her debut performance in a new capacity was not very successful. Valentina could not cope with internal stress and excitement, because she had to urgently replace a sick colleague and without any preparation to appear in front of the camera. As a result, the performance was a failure, and they even wanted to fire her right away, but the announcer O. Vysotskaya, who worked on All-Union Radio, stood up for her young colleague. So Leontiev remained on television.
She has come a long way before becoming a famous and beloved TV presenter. In the early years of working with her, funny and sometimes dramatic situations happened. For example, on Valentina’s Blue Flame, the heel stuck between the floorboards so that she couldn’t move her leg on her own, and she had to stand in one place the whole program. And once in one of the programs dedicated to circus art, she was bitten by a teddy bear. Only after the end of the broadcast did everyone see that the hand of the presenter was wrapped in a handkerchief, but she didn’t even show that something had happened to her and brought the live broadcast to the end.
Soon Valentin Leontiev already knew the whole country. The presenter became the face of Central Television, which conducted numerous festive broadcasts from Red Square, loved by all viewers, “Blue Lights” and the program “With all my heart”, where she penetratedly talked about the fates of people scattered by fate around the country and their unexpected meetings that took place directly in a studio. Every time the audience eagerly awaited the next broadcast, this program became one of the most popular programs that aired on the DH.
In the 1960s, the TV presenter’s creative career underwent fundamental changes: Valentine turned into “Aunt Valya”. She becomes the host of the children's programs "Good night, kids", "Visiting a fairy tale", "Skillful hands", "Alarm clock". Children wrote hundreds of letters to her, she tried to read each and kept children's drawings and messages in old boxes until the end of her days. Valentina Mikhailovna told me that it seemed to her that the funny toys - Khryusha, Stepashka, Karkusha - were really alive, and she even came up with birthdays for each of them.
Leontyeva was awarded many titles for her invaluable contribution to the development of television, creativity and work. She received the State Prize and the famous "TEFI" for the program "With all my heart." Leontiev - the only one of the women who worked as broadcasters, received the title of People's Artist of the USSR.
Personal life
The first husband of Leontyeva is Yuri Reshar, the director of the theater in Tambov, whom she met in her youth. They married in Tambov, and soon moved to the capital. Their marriage did not last long. The husband wanted to see Valentina as a housewife, and his wife flatly refused to stay at home and devoted all her time to work.
The second husband is Yuri Vinogradov, a diplomat, with whom Leontyeva lived in America for some time in the 1960s. Love arose between them at the first meeting, which took place in one of the capital's restaurants. Soon they formed a relationship, and the couple had a son, Dmitry.
Unfortunately, the relationship between mother and son did not work out due to the fact that Valentina practically did not educate Dmitry and did not devote time to him. He could not forgive this, and even at the end of his life, Leontyeva did not succeed in reconciling with her son.
