Early Years
Born out of wedlock, Vertinsky was brought up by his father's sister in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. He was expelled from school in 1905 and tried a variety of jobs before starting to earn his living by contributing short stories to the Kievan periodicals. In 1912, Vertinsky and his sister moved to Moscow, where he failed in his ambition to join Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre. During that time, he became addicted to cocaine, a habit that would claim the life of his sister.
By 1916, Vertinsky started to employ a scenic figure of Pierrot, with powdered face, singing miniature novellas-in-song known as ariettas, or "Pierrot's doleful ditties". Each song contained a prologue, exposition, culmination, and a tragic finale. The novice performer was christened the "Russian Pierrot", gained renown, became an object of imitation, admiration, vilified in the press and lionized by the audiences.
Simultaneously with his booming singing career, he played screen bit parts in Aleksandr Khanzhonkov's silent movies. From that time stems a lifelong friendship with Ivan Mozzhukhin. His famous piece "Vashi paltsy pakhnut ladanom" was dedicated to another film star, Vera Kholodnaya. Shortly before the October Revolution Vertinsky devised a stage persona of Black Pierrot and started to tour Russia and Ukraine performing decadent elegies with a touch of cosmopolitan chic, such as "Kokainetka" and Tango "Magnolia" ("V bananovo-limonnom Singapure"). In the words of the British researcher Richard Stites, "Vertinsky bathed his verses in images of palm trees, tropical birds, foreign ports, plush lobbies, ceiling fans, and "daybreak on the pink-tinted sea" — precisely those things which the war-time audience craved for.
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