[2] His 1958 comedy The Dead Affair was described by Minister of Culture Nikolai Mikhailov as "a lampooning of Soviet Reality" and was cut to 47 minutes by censors as a result, and released as A Groom from the Other World.

[9] His first success came six years after graduation, with a segment of the short film collection Absolutely Seriously (1961), which instantly became highly popular.

[2] After his characters and directing style won the public's love, his name gained massive selling power in USSR's cinemas.

[10] Between 1961 and 1975, Gaidai directed a number of top-selling films, each one a huge financial success and becoming wildly popular in the Soviet Union.

[1] Following his break with Morgunov, Gaidai disbanded the trio, while casting Nikulin in what was to become the most popular Soviet comedy ever made, The Diamond Arm (1968).

[2] In the 1970s, Gaidai worked primarily with the comedians from his own studio group, which included Vitsin, Kuravlyov, Pugovkin, Kramarov, Seleznyova, Krachkovskaya, and his wife Nina Grebeshkova.

He also filmed a play by Mikhail Bulgakov, Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future (1973), Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs (1971), Nikolai Gogol's Incognito from St. Petersburg (1977), and Borrowing Matchsticks (1980), a story by the Finnish author Maiju Lassila.

[1][11] At $8 per ticket (regular fare in an American movie theatre in 2005), it would have generated revenue comparable to the US box office champion Titanic.

[1][11] After 1975, Gaidai went into a period of significant decline;[1] his only other notable work was a joint Soviet-Finnish film Borrowing Matchsticks (За спичками, Tulitikkuja lainaamassa), completed in 1980.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he directed only one more film, capitalizing on the early perestroika business activities and starring Dmitry Kharatyan.

[1] He continued to suffer interference from censors, and said of his films "We will use the means of satire to fight the flaws which still sometimes hinder the lives of Soviet people".