The following gallery contains the pages of a scrapbook full of vintage information and material on Olga Baclanova compiled by one of her most ardent fans, a 1920’s moviegoer by the name of Grace Tuckey. 

Grace Tuckey compiled a large portion of the scrapbook in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s when Olga was in her prime as an American movie star, and made additions to it in the 1970’s and 1980’s in her retirement years.  Grace was a very talented artist in her own right, and carefully hand-colored most of the photos and added calligraphy and drawings to decorate the scrapbook.  Keep in mind that the illustrations and calligraphy you will see were drawn and colored directly onto the pages, and likewise the hand tinting (which occasionally comes out frighteningly lifelike) was applied directly onto each one of these photos.  She even learned Russian and occasionally translates items in to scrapbook from their Russian sources.   It makes for one of the most beautiful and lovingly assembled reference works on any film star from that period, and we are proud to make it available to the public here for the first time.  You can click on any page for a large-size, printable version of the original.

About the compiler of this scrapbook:

Grace Tuckey was born in Ireland in 1913.  Her father was a British civil servant, and her family traveled several assignments in China before settling in the 1920’s in Victoria, British Colombia. When she was 15 she became enchanted with Olga Baclanova, and her interest in Olga would become a lifelong obsession.  A friend of hers, Alan Phillips, moved to Hollywood and worked in the film industry, where he almost played in a scene opposite Olga in her movie Are You There? (details of their correspondence can be found on page 5).  Phillips later moved to New York to become a dress designer for Vogue magazine.  Grace was active in little theater and was a librarian by profession, which she retired from in 1972.  After her retirement she resumed her interest in Olga Baclanova and took up a correspondence with Nicholas Soussanin until his death in 1975.  In 1982 she visited the Moscow Art Theatre and Olga’s grave in Switzerland.  After Grace died in the late 1990’s, her nephew donated all of her Olga memorabilia and correspondence with Nicholas Soussanin to Olga’s granddaughter Natasha.  It is with Natasha’s kind permission that we present the Grace Tuckey scrapbook here.