Twentieth-century Hungarian theatre abounds in outstanding acting personalities. A succession of rich, vivid, and expansive careers unfolds before us, inviting us to commemorate these figures from time to time while keeping their lives and oeuvres in view. By recalling their fates, they assist us in finding our bearings in the present and point the way towards the future. Among these great-format artists, the career of Klári Tolnay deserves to be mentioned foremost. She was one of the very few who were capable of playing everything.
If we consider the arc of her career purely in terms of dates, it spans sixty-four years on stage and screen between 1934 and 1998. The development of her theatrical career is fundamentally associated with three theatres. Between 1934 and 1945, her work was primarily linked to the Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre); from 1946 to 1948 to the Művész Színház (Artists’ Theatre); and from 1949 onwards the Madách Theatre became her artistic home. Klári Tolnay’s steady artistic development – due chiefly to the age-related, and for female actors often inevitable, necessity of changing roles – appears to falter for a brief moment; yet shortly thereafter a renewed artist once again takes to the stage. This artistic crisis characterises her career from the mid-1970s. It is at this time that the tragic crisis tormenting the actress becomes perceptible: the end of the period of youthful and then mature beauty, about which László Mensáros, who was so close to her both personally and artistically, writes as follows in his diary:
“Peace again with Klári Tolnay. If only I could speak openly with her about accepting old age! For this is her greatest problem. She is increasingly becoming a porcelain doll. She minces, simpers, and tries to maintain appearances by ostentatiously demonstrating that her femininity has not been lost even at the age of sixty-seven. This is why she cannot move forward on stage. She clings convulsively to the ruins of her youth, while preaching something entirely different. I know that one day this sermon will ripen within her and she will undergo a great turning point – but why does she squander years?! True enough, how difficult it is for all of us to come to maturity!”
What follows is an admirable and respect-worthy renewal in Klári Tolnay’s performances. It may also be put differently: the artist triumphed over the actress. As Péter Huszti writes of her at this time:
“Klári Tolnay – the dramatic ingénue, the prima donna, the heroine, the tragedienne, the grande dame – became a whirlwind comic actress. A clown-queen! She broke free from the stocks, rid herself of constraints. She became happy. She no longer cared about anything except the moment, the joy of play. She did not care about the passing of time, about wrinkles, hairstyles, or gowns – and yet she remained herself, one hundred per cent.”
From this point onwards, the final decade and a half of her career rewarded the artist with those elderly female roles that, in defiance of age, were spiritually youthful, fresh, and open to the world. Through them, Klári Tolnay was able, for many years, to experience her roles as a grand tour de force, and at last the artist found a sense of repose – to the delight of audiences and fellow actors alike.
The date marking the beginning of her professional career is 1934. It is a significant year, as this is when she first appears in noteworthy roles both on stage and on film. The much-mentioned novice nun demonstrably and promisingly becomes a priestess of Thalia at this point. At the Hunnia Filmgyár (Hunnia Film Studio), she is cast in Béla Gaál’s film Meseautó (The Dream Car) in the role of the resourceful friend of the heroine, while at the same time Dániel Job engages her at the Vígszínház), where in September 1934 she achieves her first success alongside Margit Makay and Artúr Somlay in Sinclair Lewis’s play Dodsworth.
It then took a further four years for her to attract wider attention. During this period, as a scholarship student of the Vígszínház, theatre history records a total of twenty-three premières and twenty-three minor roles in her name. It may therefore be stated that she was continuously present on stage and regularly employed; this period may be regarded as the artist’s formative years, since she did not attend a formal acting school. It is nevertheless important to emphasise that in the pre–Second World War Vígszínház she effectively completed one of the finest training grounds of the period, as this theatre performed social dramas and lighter drawing-room plays alike at an exceptionally high level. Her breakthrough came with the title role in Jacques Deval’s slightly risqué, light French farce Behold the Bride, premiered on 15 October 1938, which brought her explosive and unanimous success among both critics and audiences. According to Tibor Hegedűs, the director of the production, a miracle had occurred – something that had not happened since Irén Varsányi, the leading actress of the Vígszínház from its founding in 1896 – as Klári Tolnay received a fifteen-minute standing ovation from the audience at the public dress rehearsal. In connection with Irén Varsányi, it is worth mentioning another eminent artist: Artúr Somlay, the legendary actor of the National Theatre. Quoting a recollection by the director György Lengyel: Somlay once read aloud in his home a few lines from Dezső Kosztolányi’s theatre criticism about Irén Varsányi and Gyula Hegedűs, both of whom he deeply respected and admired. On that occasion, he remarked that Irén Varsányi’s only worthy successor was Klári Tolnay. This constituted a great tribute coming from one of the foremost figures of the National Theatre.
The following years – shaped both by the contemporary repertoire of the Vígszínház and by the conditions of wartime – favoured the staging of plays of a lighter tone. Significant and forward-looking artistic development on stage would come for the actress only in the years after the war. From this period, a single production stands out – one that Tolnay herself later described as an artistic advance: Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, premiered in May 1943. The actress would later refer to the role of the Stepdaughter as an “authentic role”. Dozens of appreciative reviews were published following the premiere. According to Ferenc Sinkó, with this role Klári Tolnay proved that she possessed artistic humility and enthusiasm, and that her emotional range had by then become so broad that she truly belonged among the very best. Following the German occupation in the spring of 1944, she did not appear on stage; instead, she sang her popular maidservant songs exclusively in military hospitals for wounded soldiers.
This initial period presents a dynamically unfolding film career, with forty (!) films released between 1934 and 1944, in the majority of which she already appeared in leading roles. Her most prolific years were 1938, 1940, and 1943, each with six films. These high numbers are explained by the assembly-line nature of film production at the time. At the same time, film roles were of exceptional importance for a young actor, as they brought nationwide recognition and greatly increased popularity. From this period, the 1938 film A hölgy egy kissé bogaras (The Lady Is a Bit Cracked) stands out, in which she portrays a resourceful, intelligent, and male-independent female type, without posturing in any overtly feminist role. Her partner, Imre Ráday, proves fully worthy of her. A similar level of quality is evident in her portrayal of the French governess in the 1940 film A szerelem nem szégyen (The Love is Not Shame). We must also mention the most popular Tolnay role of the era, undoubtedly the title role in Katyi (1942). The character of Katyi, rendered even more endearing to audiences by the actress’s speech evoking the Palóc dialect of her native Mohora, enjoyed extraordinary appeal. All three of the films mentioned were directed by Ákos Ráthonyi. By this time – thanks to her film work – Klári Tolnay had become a nationally beloved and widely recognised actress.
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The end of the war also meant the reopening of theatres. The theatrical world, which regained its footing with remarkable speed, seemed to sense how much strength and encouragement a single performance could offer people in those difficult times. For Tolnay, the year 1945 signified, on the one hand, a return to the Vígszínház, and on the other, a brief foray into the newly founded, small-scale Művész Színház, which promised genuine workshop-based artistic work and set out with a talented ensemble. Its director was Zoltán Várkonyi, and its artistic director Imre Apáthy. In May, the Vígszínház reopened its doors with Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths, albeit at first only symbolically. The company continued its work at a temporary venue, the former Rádius cinema in Nagymező Street (today Thália Theatre), as the theatre building itself had suffered severe bomb damage. The production – a parable of fallen yet deserving human lives – seemed a direct hit for an audience that had endured immense suffering. Tolnay herself later recalled this performance with great affection. In July, Ferenc Molnár’s A hattyú (The Swan) was added to the repertoire, in which she played Alexandra, the young princess. This Molnár play held particular significance in the actress’s life, as over the course of her career she portrayed all three princesses in the drama: Alexandra in the summer of 1945; Princess Beatrix, Alexandra’s mother, in 1972; and Alexandra’s future mother-in-law, the elderly princess, in 1989. In December, the theatre staged Sándor Márai’s Varázs (lit. Magic), its fourth premiere in succession, with Klári Tolnay and Andor Ajtay in the leading roles. At the Művész Színház, her first premiere – which was also the theatre’s inaugural production – was Jean Anouilh’s Eurydice in September 1946. Her stage partner was Iván Darvas, who made his stage debut in this production. By this time, Klári Tolnay was already a well-established and widely respected major artist. Following the premiere, the writer László Passuth wrote of her: “She is already such a great actress that she must be characterised rather than praised; her performance calls for study, not for compliments.”
At the time of the nationalisation of the theatres in the spring of 1948, she appeared in an entirely new role, alongside Gyula Benkő and István Somló. József Révai, the Minister of Popular Culture at the time, entrusted the three of them with the management of the Vígszínház for the transitional period – that is, for one season – with the explicit expectation that new layers of audiences should be drawn into the theatre. As a member of this unusual triumvirate, Tolnay referred to her position with disarming simplicity as that of the company’s “mother”. At her home theatre she appeared only rarely during this period; she was seen far more frequently at the Művész Színház.
The year 1949 brought profound changes to the Hungarian theatrical world. As a consequence of nationalisation, theatres were reorganised and many of the existing ensembles were dissolved. Actors were reassigned to venues designated by cultural policy. The Művész Színház, despite its great promise, also fell victim to these changes, and Klári Tolnay – together with Iván Darvas, Sándor Pécsi, Margit Dajka, Ella Gombaszögi, Tivadar Uray, József Tímár, and many other artists – was transferred to the Madách Theatre. From 1951 onwards, the Madách Theatre operated in two buildings: the Kamara Színház (Chamber Theatre) on Madách Square, and the “main theatre” housed in the then still intact Magyar (Hungarian) Theatre, called Magyar Theatre of Pest today. In its early years, under the direction of a functionary, the theatre’s operation was marked by the demagogy of Stalinist principles, by stupidity, by Szabad Nép (Free People) [Szabad Nép was a Hungarian daily newspaper which was the central organ of the Hungarian Communist Party (1942-1948) and from February 1948 the Hungarian Working People's Party ] half-hour sessions, and by simplistic productions and vapid, papier-mâché-like roles.
Meanwhile, in 1951, the actress was awarded her first Kossuth Prize (the most prestigious cultural award in Hungary) in recognition of her stage work up to that point.
It was only after a change in the theatre’s management that members of the company were afforded opportunities for noteworthy stage performances. In 1953, Klári Tolnay was cast in the female leading role of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, shared with Hédi Váradi – contemporary reviews report a beautiful and convincing performance. With her surging, passionate impulses she was described as liberated, beautiful, and an exciting young girl, despite the fact that she was already nearing forty at the time. Observers noted that her performance became even more compelling on those occasions when Romeo, played in multiple casts, was embodied specifically by Iván Darvas. Another important role of the period was Irina in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, yet the most significant performance of these years was unquestionably playing the lead in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, premiered in December 1954. In the role of the self-aware woman on the verge of breaking out of the marital stocks, Tolnay excelled. Where does an actor draw the truth inherent in her roles? What makes a performance so credible and authentic for us as spectators? “The role of Nora was sustained by the memories of my first marriage as well – the doll’s house created by Ákos Ráthonyi: the villa, the maid, the cook, the chauffeur, the actress’s coquetry,” Klári Tolnay later recalled, at the same time hinting at the reasons why her marriage to the film director Ráthonyi eventually broke down.
From the second half of the 1950s onwards, her most cherished stage partner at the Madách Theatre was Miklós Gábor. They performed together frequently, forming a professionally highly attuned and harmonious partnership. As Iván Darvas was imprisoned at this time, roles that might otherwise have been intended for him were often assigned to Gábor instead. Upon Gábor’s death, the actress remembered him in the following words: “We were friends and comrades-in-arms; if I add up our years together at the Madách, I realise that I was given more than twenty years with him as a gift.”
Around this time, a role came to Tolnay that – much like Ferenc Molnár’s A hattyú – accompanied her throughout her career. A lasting theatrical memory (fortunately preserved also in the television archives) is her “tour de force” in Miklós Hubay’s magnificent one-act play Ők tudják, mi a szerelem (lit. They Know What Love Is), performed with Imre Sinkovits. In this work, the actress played the role of the elderly yet eternally beautiful Estella at three different stages of her own life. In all three instances, her partner as Berlioz was Imre Sinkovits. The play’s premiere took place in 1959, when Tolnay was still only forty-five years old; for the sake of a more convincing portrayal, she still had to don a grey wig. The play was seen again in 1983 in the form of a television play, and then returned to the stage in 1993, this time with the actors now genuinely advanced in years. It is said that on the third occasion she received the ageing Berlioz’s pleading courtship with greater indulgence and deeper nostalgia. By the time of this final revival, both she and Imre Sinkovits had reached the age of the characters they portrayed, and the refined lady no longer required a wig.
It was thus in the 1950s that she found her place professionally, artistically, and personally, and it did not take long for her to become a leading artist of the Madách Theatre. A strong professional community played a significant role in this development, as from the very first years Klári Tolnay worked with outstanding young directors – István Horvai, Géza Pártos, István Bozóky, and later the younger Ottó Ádám and László Vámos.
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Let us now consider how her film career developed after 1945, in parallel with this intense period of theatrical activity. Owing to the changed structure of film production, far fewer films were made than before the war. During these years, one or two films a year were produced with Tolnay, sometimes in leading roles, sometimes in character parts, yet she invariably left a lasting impression on audiences. One of the major successes of this period was the large-scale biographical film Déryné (Mrs Déry), directed by László Kalmár. The impact of the film was such that it was cited in 1952 among the reasons for the awarding of her second Kossuth Prize. The truly significant roles of mature women, however, followed only thereafter. If one were to characterise the principal quality of the women she portrayed in a single word, it would not be beauty – which is fleeting – but harmony. Klári Tolnay radiated serenity in films such as Mese a 12 találatról (Tale on the Twelve Points), Micsoda éjszaka! (What a Night!), and Fűre lépni szabad (lit. Don’t Keep Off the Grass). The outstanding performances of this cinematic period include the 1954 adaptation of Zsigmond Móricz’s novel Rokonok (Relatives), as well as Pacsirta (Drama of the Lark), filmed from Dezső Kosztolányi’s novel, in which she formed a compelling partnership with Antal Páger. This latter film was a contender for the Best Foreign Film award and was screened at Cannes, marking an important episode in the actress’s career.
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In the 1960s and 1970s, Tolnay’s oeuvre reveals the full flowering of her artistic career, displaying the lavish diversity of her acting across a wide range of roles. Among the peak achievements of this period, foremost is her portrayal of Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in 1960. Tolnay was brilliant, delivering one of the most demanding and outstanding performances of her life, superbly conveying the shifts in the character’s moods and patterns of behaviour. Later that same year, Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge was premiered. Sándor Pécsi gave what is widely regarded as the greatest performance of his life in the role of Eddie Carbone, while his wife, Beatrice, was portrayed by Klári Tolnay with refined sensitivity and the quiet, sorrowful tragic quality inherent in the role.
For an actor, the nature of their relationship with directors is of crucial importance. László Vámos’s directorial attitude proved an excellent match for Klári Tolnay’s acting temperament and emotional constitution. The actress often compared Vámos to her first director at the Vígszínház, Dániel Jób. In essence, it was Jób who had been her master and her benchmark. On the basis of what she had learned from him, Tolnay consistently expected strong and purposeful actor direction from those she worked with. “I don’t need to be respected – I need to be pushed hard!” she was fond of saying. Dániel Jób and László Vámos were the two directors with whom she most loved to work. In their persons, she encountered directors who, in her own words, were able to draw the role out of her with the necessary degree of forcefulness. It is perhaps no coincidence that it was precisely László Vámos who, in 1962, guided Tolnay towards what would become the greatest performance of her career: the role of Blanche in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Of Vámos, Tolnay recalled: “He was an exceptionally actor-centred director. It was from him that I received the wonderful role of Blanche.” In my observation, the career of every great actor is defined by a role into which they immerse themselves so deeply that they often struggle to find their way back to their everyday self. For Klári Tolnay, this was that role. “Tennessee Williams’s Blanche was the most wonderful role of my life. A prolonged celebration, during which I burned with a forty-degree fever. During rehearsals I lived through Blanche’s gradual nervous breakdown so intensely that I slowly began to fear myself.” The profession, the audience, and the artist herself alike regarded this as the defining performance of her life.
The next milestone in her career was Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, directed by György Lengyel in 1967. Writing about the actress in a tone of immeasurable affection and understanding, he observed: “Klári Tolnay must have known a great deal about female abandonment and the bitterness of loneliness; yet her feminine wisdom, faith, and love of life harmonised all this into understanding and artistic creation.” We may add that the entire oeuvre exemplifies, even in its tragic moments, a noble form of artistic humility. The secret and value of Tolnay’s Martha lay in a specifically feminine all-knowingness, in the process of awakening to the intricate and complex fabric of life and intimate relationships. Her partner was Miklós Gábor, an actor whom she loved working with and held in the highest esteem. I would single out a special little gem from this phase of her career: Samuel Beckett’s absurd drama Happy Days. If anything, the world of the absurd lay far removed from her artistic disposition. Yet despite this, she virtually revelled in the role of Winnie, the last woman at the end of the world. At all costs, she sought to discern a positive resonance in the play, in this figure embodying the cosmic loneliness of modern humanity:
“I think Beckett loves Winnie, because she does not give up her efforts. It was at this point – in her clinging to joy, in this strained exertion of will – that I felt the character to be close to me. For I, too, believe that even in the most difficult hours of life one can and must hold on to something. To another person, if possible, but if not, then to memories or to a song.” Thus she articulated a thought of an almost ars poetica character.
Then followed George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession in 1976, which proved to be her final role before the great transformation already mentioned in the introduction. By this time, she was over fifty. Miklós Szinetár’s wise observation holds that an actress’s life lasts until the age of forty – up to that point she may abound in ever finer roles. What follows is a relatively long hiatus, during which it becomes clear whether the artist is capable of stepping beyond her own shadow, of continuing her career through change and of returning in a different range of roles. Klári Tolnay succeeded in doing so. Thus began the final phase of her career, during which her principal partner was László Mensáros and, above all as a director, the young Péter Huszti. She experienced a triumphant run of successes with Alexei Arbuzov’s Old-world in 1977, performed with Mensáros. Their legendary partnership continued to illuminate the stage in further outstanding productions, among them Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar in 1981, which brought to life the relationship between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs Campbell, the celebrated actress of the period. A guest appearance at the Játékszín Theatre followed in 1985: in István Örkény’s Macskajáték (Cat’s Play), she portrayed Giza, one of the Szkalla sisters who had emigrated to Germany, alongside Irén Psota’s Mrs. Orbán.
Let us admit that these roles no longer belonged to the forefront of the theatre’s repertoire. It was as if the theatre had given up on her. Klári Tolnay sensed all this, and when in the spring of 1986 Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins – a play she herself had proposed and even translated (!) – was staged under the direction of Péter Huszti, she reflected as follows: “Before Harold and Maude, I was surrounded by silence. I had been written off, consigned to the fate of ageing actresses…” Yet, in defiance of this reality, she continued her career. What followed were those marvellous roles in which, as Huszti described her, Tolnay became the “Clown Queen”. This series was inaugurated by Higgins’s play. Her partner in this poignantly beautiful story was József Gyabronka. It speaks of life, mortality, and love through Maude, the fairy-like elderly woman, and Harold, a young man struggling with depression. According to Tolnay, curious young people began to attend the performances, about which she remarked simply: “A little crown upon my greying head.”
Continuing this sequence, Andrew Bergman’s Social Security followed in 1989 in Székesfehérvár, and then Ernest Thompson’s On Golden Pond in 1990, once again with László Mensáros. Graham Greene’s Travels with My Aunt marked an important moment, as her beloved director László Vámos was her creative partner on the production – and this also proved to be their final collaboration, in 1993. Reflecting on these late roles, Klári Tolnay remarked: “I do not play a shuffling, calcified, cantankerous old woman, but a lively, proactive matron who steers events and for whom even the forbidden fruit reserved for the young – love – does not come amiss.”
With her final premiere on 3 May 1996, the actress in essence appeared to yield to fate, playing the role that, since Lujza Blaha, has traditionally been the last part for ageing actresses: the Grandmother in Gergely Csiky’s Nagymama (Grandmother) at the National Theatre. Yet Klári Tolnay did not wish to follow the conventional path. By that time, she was already preparing for a new role, as the National Theatre planned to present her as Sister Stillmungus, the beautiful character from Magda Szabó’s Régimódi történet (Old-Fashioned Story). She fell into eternal sleep on 27 October 1998, with the script of the play in her hands.
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Péter Müller, a close friend and confidant of Klári Tolnay, articulated a profound truth when he characterised this remarkable woman and great artist as follows:
“That nun was a true seer of souls who, many decades ago, advised her – then a young novice – to go out into the world and become an actress. Perhaps it was not so much her talent that she recognised, but the burning and tormenting tension of her soul, which might have driven her mad within the walls of a convent. She became an actress, yet she carried her nunhood with her as well. On stage she seeks not only personal success, but also peace with God and with herself. She speaks the language of angels, yet knows the secrets of the devil from perilous proximity. She is a consummate, ‘full-blooded’ professional actress, yet from her stage presence there radiates something so personal and private that one occasionally flinches: this should no longer be exposed to the public eye.”
Looking back over her life’s work, it may be stated that she paid a heavy price for this vocation, one that demanded humility, devotion, service, and total immersion. She made the sacrifice that the stage required of her. And in the end, she found repose:
“I am grateful that this vocation was granted to me. I have no unfulfilled desires. In the theatre I was able to live out and realise my dreams and longings. I could find redress for my loves. I could condense my experiences and lived moments into my stage performances – everything essential and inessential that happened to me and around me in my life. Art helped me to endure everything, indeed to confront even what was bad with my head held high. As I grow older, everything superfluous falls away from me, all that I once believed to be important. I am like the aeronaut in Márai’s diary, who rises higher and higher, but to do so must throw more and more things out of the basket – the sandbags, then his personal belongings, finally even his toothbrush. He rises ever higher, yet all the while knows: the end is near…”
[2017]