Salme Reek

Salme Reek (November 10, 1907 – June 6, 1996) was an Estonian stage, film, radio, and television actress and stage director whose career spanned nearly seventy years; sixty-six of which were spent as an actress at the Estonian Drama Theatre.

Salme Helene Reek was the oldest of three siblings born to paper pulp factory worker Juhan Reek and housewife Julia Reek (née Erberg) in Pärnu. Her younger siblings were Hilda (1911–1990), and Oskar (1922–1939) who died at age seventeen. During Reek's early years, the family lived in near-poverty in a one-room apartment on Suur-Kuke Street, later moving into a two-room studio apartment. Both of Reek's parents were keenly interested in music; her father Juhan played the piano and the harmonium and her mother Julia sang as a first soprano in the family's Lutheran church choir. Both parents were also theatre enthusiasts and Reek often attended theatre productions at Pärnu's Endla Theatre during her early childhood.

Reek began her primary school studies in Pärnu before the family relocated to Tallinn, then returning to Pärnu approximately four years later. The family subsequently returned once more to Tallinn, where Reek attended secondary school at Tallinn 2nd Girls' Gymnasium (now, Tallinn Kristiine Gymnasium), graduating in 1927. Reek performed well in history and language classes and excelled in gymnastics.