Some time during her stint at the Liepaja Theatre my grandmother Mirdza met and fell in love with a young actor - Evalds Valters. He was a decade older than her, had dashing matinee idol looks and a charismatic personality and looking at these photos I can certainly see the attraction. They say opposites attract and in this case I’m sure it was true. My grandmother was serious-minded and refined and he had a reputation for being a bit on the wild side. In his youth, he was apparently known as the Black Thrush. With his untypical non-Latvian looks - dark hair and eyes, thick eyebrows, sensual lips - he was very attractive to women!
My grandfather in his youth and the title of a book about his life, inscribed to my parents
He came from a modest background - his father was a forester and his mother a weaver. His father died in a forestry accident when Evalds was only three and from an early age he had to earn a living, taking a variety of jobs including gardener, magician, hairdresser, as well as working in a match factory! He went to Moscow as a young man and subsequently joined the Latvian Riflemens Regiment during the Great War and fought with the Soviets against the German army. It was there that he got a taste for acting, joining a soldiers’ acting group. After the war, he worked at the Liepaja Theatre where he met my grandmother. They married in the summer of 1926 and shortly afterwards my mother was born. Of course this was never referred to but I can’t help wondering if they would have married if my grandmother hadn’t been pregnant. I imagine he must have felt trapped with a wife and child to support as his career was just taking off but the marriage lasted more than a decade. In a book of interviews written about his life and career, my grandmother is only mentioned briefly - he talks of friendship blossoming into love and her quieter, more restrained personality persuading him to take life more seriously and taming his wildness (unfortunately only temporarily!)
The book of interviews about my grandfather’s life and career - the title translates as Liepaja’s Crooked Devil
In costume
My grandfather (left) in the actors’ troupe, 5th Rifleman’s Regiment during the Great War
As a young man
He went on to become the most famed actor in Latvia, as well as an accomplished linguist and translator of books and throughout the long years of Soviet rule he remained a symbol of Latvian national identity.