Salme Reek
| Salme Reek | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Salme Helene Reek 10 November 1907 Pärnu, Estonia |
| Died | 9 June 1996 (aged 88) Tallinn, Estonia |
| Nationality | Estonian |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1929 – 1996 |
| Spouse(s) | Päären Raudvee (1930–1939) divorced |
Salme Reek (10 November 1907 – 9 June 1996) was an Estonian stage, film, radio, and television actress and stage director whose career spanned nearly seventy years; sixty-six of which were spent as an actress at the Estonian Drama Theatre.
Salme Helene Reek was the oldest of three siblings born to paper pulp factory worker Juhan Reek and housewife Julia Reek (née Erberg) in Pärnu. Her younger siblings were Hilda (1911–1990), and Oskar (1922–1939) who died at age seventeen. During Reek's early years, the family lived in near-poverty in a one-room apartment on Suur-Kuke Street, later moving into a two-room studio apartment. Both of Reek's parents were keenly interested in music; her father Juhan played the piano and the harmonium and her mother Julia sang as a first soprano in the family's Lutheran church choir. Both parents were also theatre enthusiasts and Reek often attended theatre productions at Pärnu's Endla Theatre during her early childhood.
Reek began her primary school studies in Pärnu before the family relocated to Tallinn, then returning to Pärnu approximately four years later. The family subsequently returned once more to Tallinn, where Reek attended secondary school at Tallinn 2nd Girls' Gymnasium (now, Tallinn Kristiine Gymnasium), graduating in 1927. Reek performed well in history and language classes and excelled in gymnastics.
Just after graduation in 1927, Reek enrolled in studies at the Drama Theatre Studio School in Tallinn, founded in 1920 by actor and theatre pedagogue Paul Sepp, graduating in 1930. From 1929 until 1933, Reek studied dance with Estonian choreographer and dance teacher Gerd Neggo who, because of Reek's difficult financial situation, taught Reek without charge.
Reek's first prominent stage role at the Drama Theatre School was in the role of the young boy Ubbe in a production of Otto Ernt's Ortrun and Ilsebill in 1929. Following graduation from the Drama Theatre School in 1930, Reek would join the theatre as an actress. In 1937, the theatre would be renamed the Estonian Drama Theatre. She was renowned for her versatility as an actress, and often performed in stage roles as young boys. Reek's portrayals of young boys onstage and in radio theatre were numerous throughout her career and proved to be both publically popular and critically praised.
Reek's engagement at the theatre would last sixty-six years, from age twenty-two in early 1930 until her death in at age eighty-eight in 1996, appearing in roles in nearly four hundred stage plays, making her one of Estonia's most prolific stage actresses. Her many years with the Estonian Drama Theatre spanned the interwar period of Estonia's independence from the Russian Empire during the 1930s, World War II and the Soviet occupation and annexation in 1940, the German occupation of 1941 until 1944, the Soviet occupation from 1944 until 1991 when Estonia regained its independence.
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