1928–1979
Leonid Bykov
Director of the classic “Old Men” film
He was thrown out of flight school after a month, yet he made the best-known film about pilots. Leonid Bykov directed and starred in Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle and became one of the most beloved figures of Ukrainian cinema.
Key accomplishments
- The film Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle (1973; as Captain Titarenko), awarded the Taras Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR (1977)
- The film Aty-Baty, the Soldiers Were Going... (1977; as Sviatkin)
- Roles in the films Maksym Perepelytsia (1956) and Tamer of Tigers (1954)
- People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1974)
A pilot who never got to fly
Leonid Bykov was born in 1928 into a working-class family in the village of Znamianka in the Donetsk region and grew up in Kramatorsk. After eighth grade he enrolled in a flight school in Kryvyi Rih, but he was expelled after a month: he had added a year to his age. So Bykov went to the Kharkiv Theatre Institute instead. While still a student he was invited by the director Marian Krushelnytskyi to join the Shevchenko Drama Theatre in Kharkiv, where he acted until 1960.
From Maksym Perepelytsia to Zaichik
Film fame came in the 1950s with roles in The Tamer of Tigers and Maksym Perepelytsia. In the 1960s he worked at Lenfilm, where he first tried directing: he made the comedy Zaichik and played its lead himself. From 1969 Bykov was an actor and director at the Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv.
The sky on screen
His best-known film is Only “Old Men” Are Going to Battle, about Second World War pilots. Bykov directed it and played Captain Titarenko. The film was a huge hit, and in 1977 it won the Shevchenko State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR. That same year his film Aty-Baty, the Soldiers Were Marching came out.
On 11 April 1979 Bykov was killed in a car crash on a highway near Kyiv. He had left a letter, a kind of will, for his friends Ivan Mykolaichuk and Mykola Mashchenko, and as he asked, he was buried at Baikove Cemetery without official speeches.
Why he is remembered
Bykov’s films mix humor, lyricism and humanity, and new generations keep watching them. Kyiv has a monument to him, and a squadron of a Ukrainian aviation regiment bears his name.
