Muhsin Ertuğrul

Muhsin Ertuğrul — Biography

Muhsin Ertuğrul is credited with founding Turkish theatre in the Western sense and, as nearly the only person making films in the country between 1922 and 1939, with shaping early Turkish cinema as well. He developed an interest in theatre at Tefeyyüz Mektebi and first appeared on stage with the Burhanettin Theatre in 1909; when his family objected he left home and travelled to Paris in 1911, later being deported after a political incident and returning to France again. Settling in Istanbul in 1912, he staged Shakespeare's Hamlet in Turkey for the first time and played the title role himself.

During the First World War he went to Berlin and set up his own film company; after his theatre closed in 1925 he moved to the Soviet Union to join Nâzım Hikmet and observed the work of Stanislavski and Meyerhold. From 1927 to 1949 he served as artistic director of Darülbedayi, turning it into a proper city theatre, and at İpek Film, which he helped found in 1928, he directed İstanbul Sokaklarında and Bir Millet Uyanıyor, the first Turkish sound films.

He married Neyyire Neyir, the lead actress of Ateşten Gömlek, in 1929; after her death in 1943 he married actress Handan Uran in 1950. He received Germany's Goethe Medal for Art and Science, and was later given Turkey's Presidential Grand Award for Culture and Arts. He died of a heart attack in İzmir shortly after an honorary-doctorate ceremony at Ege University, and is honoured today by two theatre stages in Istanbul and one in Ankara.