Anna Sten

Anna Sten was born on December 3, 1908 in Kiev in the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).^[4][5][6] According to her own words, she was born on June 29, 1908.^[2] There are other sources that say she was born in 1910.^[2] Her father was a ballet master of Ukrainian Cossack descent, and her mother, Swedish by birth, was a ballerina.^[2] Some sources say her father died during the First World War and Anna worked to support her mother, while according to other sources, her father survived the war, found his daughter, and toured Russia with his circus troupe.^[2] In her own words, she adopted her mother's maiden name, although the children of her friends have said that her real name was Anna Petrovna Fisakova.^[2]

In most foreign sources, her maiden names are Stenska and Sudakevich, or a combination thereof (such as a common variant Anel [Anyushka] Stenska-Sudakevich or Annel [Anjuschka] Stenskaja Sudakewitsch), which is why Sten has been mistakenly identified with the Russian actress Anel Sudakevich, who starred in Soviet cinema at the same time and with some of the same directors as Anna Sten.^[6][2]

As a teenager, Anna worked for the Kievskaya Pravda newspaper and received her education at Kiev State Theater College.^[2] In Kiev, she married the artist Boris Sten (Bernstein).^[2] After she later moved to Moscow, her relation with her husband was severed, and Boris later died on April 29, 1936 due to peritonitis.^[2] It is unknown whether Anna's stage name was borrowed from her husband or derived from her mother's maiden name.^[2]

In 1926, after completing her studies at Kiev, Sten was invited by Ukrainian film director Viktor Turin to appear in his film Provokator.^{[Note 2][2]} Her first mentor was Boris Barnet.^[2] Sten was discovered by the Russian stage director and instructor Konstantin Stanislavsky, who arranged an audition for her at the Moscow Film Academy.^[6][2] Sten went on to act in other plays and films, including Boris Barnet's comedy The Girl with a Hatbox (1927). She and her husband, Russian film director Fedor Ozep, traveled to Germany to appear in a film co-produced by German and Soviet studios, The Yellow Ticket (1928).^[2]

Making a smooth transition to talking pictures, Sten appeared in such German films as Salto Mortale (1931) and The Murderer Dimitri Karamazov (1931) until she came to the attention of American movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn was looking for a foreign-born actress that he could develop as a rival to Greta Garbo and possible successor to Vilma Bánky, with whom Goldwyn had great success in the silent era. For two years after bringing Sten to the U.S., Goldwyn had her tutored in English and taught Hollywood screen acting methods. He poured a great deal of time and money into Nana (1934), Sten's first American film, a diluted version of Émile Zola's 19th-century novel. The film was not successful at the box office nor were her two subsequent Goldwyn films We Live Again (1934) and The Wedding Night (1935). Reluctantly, Goldwyn dissolved his contract with his "new Garbo".^[3] Goldwyn's tutoring of Sten is mentioned in Cole Porter's 1934 song "Anything Goes" from the musical of the same name: "When Sam Goldwyn can with great conviction / Instruct Anna Sten in diction / Then Nana shows / Anything goes."

In the 1940s, Sten appeared in several films, including The Man I Married (1940), So Ends Our Night (1941), Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas (1943), They Came to Blow Up America (1943), Three Russian Girls (1943), and Let's Live a Little (1948). Sten continued making films in the United States and England, but none were successful. Attempting to rectify this situation by studying at The Actors Studio,^[4][7] Sten appeared in several television series during the 1950s, including The Red Skelton Show (1956), The Walter Winchell File (1957), and Adventures in Paradise (1959).

Most of Sten's later film appearances were favors to her husband. She had an uncredited bit in the Frenke-produced Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) and a full lead in The Nun and the Sergeant (1962), her final film (also produced by Frenke).

Sten was married to film producer Eugene Frenke.^[8] Sten's daughter Anya was a student at the Monticello School, Los Angeles in the early 1930s.

Sten died November 12, 1993, in New York City at the age of 84.^[3]

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