James Lloydovich Patterson
| James Lloydovich Patterson | |
|---|---|
|
|
| Born |
17 July 1933 Moscow, Soviet Union (now Russia) |
| Occupation | Poet, actor |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Period | 1936 (actor) 1950s-present (poet) |
James Lloydovich Patterson (Russian: Джеймс Ллойдович Паттерсон, [ˈd͡ʒɛjms ˈlojdɐvit͡ɕ ˈpatʲirsən]; born 17 July 1933) is a Russian writer, naval officer and child actor of African American and Ukrainian descent.
James Lloydovich Patterson was born in Moscow on July 17, 1933, the eldest of three children born to an African American immigrant to the Soviet Union and his Ukrainian wife. Having arrived in the USSR as an unemployed actor looking for work during the Great Depression in 1932, James Patterson's father Lloyd Patterson, just 22, decided to remain permanently after meeting and falling in love with James' mother, the theater artist Vera Ippolitovna Aralova.
James Patterson appeared in the Soviet cinema as a baby in the 1936 hit Soviet film Circus – where, parallel to his own life, he played the role of the dark-skinned child of an interracial couple being brought up in the manner of the politically egalitarian ideals officially embraced by the Soviet system.
Following Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, James and his mother were evacuated to the east, while his father, who had obtained a position with Soviet radio as a presenter for English-speaking listeners abroad, remained on the job in Moscow. He died during the war after suffering serious wounds in the bombardment of the city in 1942.
James was a member of the Komsomol and graduated from the Riga Nakhimov Naval School, a prestigious military academy for boys of high-school age, in 1951. Lauded as a model cadet, he proceeded to receive further training as a submariner in Leningrad. Commissioned as an officer in the Soviet Navy, Patterson began serving with the Black Sea Fleet in 1955.
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