Expelled from school for bad behaviour (involving, reportedly, dangerous experiments in the cabinet of a chemistry teacher), he tried several jobs (a baker’s boy, a carpenter, a turner) before joining a ballet studio, which in 1929 sent him to Moscow for further education.

The heart problem forced Filippov to drop out, though; soon he found himself in the Saint Petersburg Comedy Theatre, led by Nikolay Akimov, where he became one of the leading actors.

1939-1940 saw Filippov cast in several major movies, playing an enemy saboteur (Zarkhi and Kheifits' Member of the Government), provision store wrecker in Kozintsev and Trauberg's The Vyborg Side, a railroad worker in Arinka by Kosheverova and Muzykant, a sailor anarchist in Sergei Yutkevich's Yakov Sverdlov.

[2] The cultural climate in the late-1941 USSR was hardly conducive for eccentric comedy, yet Klimenty Mints's Adventures of Korzinkina with Yanina Zhejmo in the lead, became hugely popular.

His parts were small but memorable: silly and arrogant Almazov in The Tiger Trainer, absurdly dull Znanie lecturer in Eldar Ryazanov's Carnival Night, two-faced official Komarinsky in The Girl Without Address.

In 1971, he starred as Kisa Vorobyaninov, next to Archil Gomiashvili's Ostap Bender in Leonid Gaidai's highly popular adaptation of Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs.

Lenfilm refused to subsidise any funeral service and (according to fellow comedy star Yevgeny Morgunov) it was Aleksandr Demyanenko who personally collected the sum needed.