Mark, who bore the name Menachem-Man and the surname Neiman, was born into a poor Jewish family in Nezhin, but at the age of five moved with his parents to Kharkiv, where he finished school and, at his father's insistence, began to learn the profession of an accountant.
But the calculations quickly bored the young man, and he dropped out of school to attend acting courses at a technical school in Kharkiv. The truth was revealed and caused a major scandal in the family, but barely having celebrated his seventeenth birthday, the young man left his home and headed straight to Moscow.
In the big city, the young man began working at the Maly and Bolshoi theaters, where he started as a minor employee and then began to receive his first small roles. To ensure that his Jewish roots did not hinder his career, the enterprising young man adopted the pseudonym Mark Bernes, with which he became famous throughout the country as a well-known Soviet actor and singer less than a decade later.
In 1930, when fame was still far off, Mark was acting at the Korsh Theater and participated in a production alongside a nineteen-year-old prima donna – Paola Linetskaya. Bernes could not take his eyes off her deep violet-colored eyes and promised to marry the girl, who, by the way, was married to a wealthy and well-known engineer in the USSR. But after two years of courtship, Paola gave in, and in 1932, the lovers got engaged.
The couple's life was not easy. Money was tight, and Mark was a complicated, contradictory person. Although Paola loved him and felt secure with him, Bernes did not miss the opportunity to have affairs on the side. Moreover, he did not hide this and would casually say “Hello, my dear” when he came home in the mornings. No other words were needed: those were spoken by Linetskaya, who forgave her careless husband's behavior and justified it as artistic fickleness and inconsistency.
In 1954, after more than twenty years of marriage, the family welcomed a late, much-awaited child. Natasha made Mark and Paola the happiest. The actor settled down and began to devote all his free time to his daughter and wife. But after two years, Paola began to feel unwell and started to literally fade away. The diagnosis was terrible – cancer in the final stage.
Bernes fell into horror and experienced wild fear. He was very afraid that the disease would be passed on to him, even though everyone around him, including doctors, rightly claimed that oncology is not contagious. But Bernes, who had experienced the death of two close relatives (his sister and father) from cancer, did not believe it. He was afraid and ordered the staff to divide the family home into two parts. The man did not cross the boundary of his sick wife's territory and did not allow her to approach his half.
Paola suffered from physical and emotional pain. She spent her last months within the hospital walls, and even during this most terrible period, her husband, with whom she had spent almost a quarter of a century, did not dare to approach his beloved. His fear proved stronger than feelings of shame and love. In 1956, Linetskaya passed away.
After becoming a widower, Bernes did not give up on his personal life, engaging in many short affairs, and at the age of 49, he married Lilya Bodrova. In 1969, Mark, who had always carefully monitored his health, began to complain of back pain.
At first, doctors diagnosed him with infectious radiculitis, but then they issued a verdict – cancer. The actor refused to believe it, but soon could not cope with the illness and died at the age of 57. His second wife was with him before his death and supported him.
