Alexander Moiseevich Volodin (real surname - Livshits) was born on February 10, 1919 in Minsk. He was orphaned early and was brought up by his Moscow relatives. After graduation, he took accelerated courses for teachers, after which he worked as a teacher in a rural school. In 1939 he entered the GITIS theater faculty, but soon he was drafted into the army. During the Great Patriotic War, he participated in combat operations on the Western and Belarusian fronts. Among his military awards is the Medal for Courage. In 1944, he was seriously wounded and hospitalized.
After going through the war as an ordinary communications officer, Volodin on his return to Moscow entered the script faculty of VGIK (the workshop of Evgeny Gabrilovich). In 1949, after graduating from the institute, he was distributed to Leningrad, where he worked as an editor first at the Lennauchfilm film studio, then at Lenfilm. He debuted as a prose writer in 1954, publishing a collection of short stories, in which the main theme of many of Volodin’s works was already outlined – the everyday life of the most ordinary people, his contemporaries. Wide recognition of the author brought the play “Factory Girl” that appeared in 1956, which was a huge success in many theaters of the country. No less hot reception was expected and other plays Volodin - "Five evenings" (1959), "Big sister" (1961), "Appointment" (1963), which made him one of the leading playwrights of the country.
In the mid-sixties Volodin began to work in cinema, and in 1967 he released a collection of plays and screenplays "For Theater and Cinema", which also included biographical "Optimistic Notes". According to his scripts, such films as “Call, Open the Door” (1964, dir. Alexander Mitta), “The Adventures of the Dental Doctor” (1965, dir. Elem Klimov), “The Magician” (1967, dir. Peter Todorovskiy), “Daughter-Mothers” (1975, dir. Sergey Gerasimov) and “Autumn Marathon” (1979, dir. Georgy Daneliya), which earned him the title of the State Prize of the RSFSR in 1981. A number of his plays were also filmed: "The Big Sister" (1966, dir. Georgy Nathanson), "Five Evenings" (1978, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov), "Do not part with your loved ones" (1979, dir. Pavel Arsenov) and "Dulcinea Tobosskaya" (1980, dir. Svetlana Druzhinina). Volodin himself in 1968 shot a picture according to his own script “An incident that no one noticed”. Originally adhering to a realistic depiction of reality, later the playwright created several plays in the genre of parables - "Vishukhol", "Two Arrows", "Lizard". In the eighties, his plays “Blonde”, “Graphoman” and “Portrait with Rain” were released. Later, some of Volodin’s works, which remained unclaimed for decades, finally found their embodiment – so in 1988 the plays “Mother of Jesus” and “Castrucci” were staged, according to his scripts, the paintings “Cyrano De Bergerac” (1989) and “Umiliated and Injured” (1990, Andrei Eshpay) were shot.
All these years, his books continued to be published - a collection of plays "Portrait with Rain" (1980), diary prose "One-seat tram" ("Notes of a drunken man") (1991), "Attempt at repentance" (1999), a book of selected lyrics "And only without this it is impossible to live" (1999). In 2000, for many years of fruitful activity in the field of art, he was awarded the Order "For Services to the Fatherland" of the III degree. Alexander Moiseevich Volodin died on the eighty-third year of life on December 17, 2001 in St. Petersburg.