Bolesław Ryszard Srzednicki (1889-1937) was a Polish-born director who acted in and directed a few Polish and Russian films during the mid-1910s, and also appeared in Dreyer’s Die Gezeichneten (1922) in Germany.
In 1922, Boleslawski moved to New York and began teaching Stanislavskian acting techniques alongside fellow immigrant Maria Ouspenskaya, with whom he founded the American Laboratory Theatre. Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg trained there before founding the Group Theatre.
Boleslawski’s first involvement with American cinema was shooting new footage for Queen Kelly (1930) after the firing of Erich Von Stroheim. He directed his first film, The Last of the Lone Wolf (1930) for Columbia, but his first picture of note was MGM’s Rasputin the Mad Monk (1932).
Boleslawski went on to direct a total of twenty-five pictures, including Les Miserables (1935) and the screwball classic Theodora Goes Wild (1937), before his sudden death from a heart attack.
In 1934, Boleslawski was the lead director on MGM’s Hollywood Party.
