The exceptional actor Jiří Sovák was born just three days after Jesus Christ. His father, the innkeeper Schmitzer, is said to have paid a round on December 27, 1920 to all the regulars in the bar. He thought at the time that his son would one day take over the famous Prague pub Na Bojišti after him.
Man means, life changes. Although Jiří Sovák obeyed his father and trained as a waiter, he was still drawn to the theater. For a few months, he earned money by serving guests on the set, but at the age of 19 he gave up and ran away from home straight to the volunteers. An angry father withheld his pocket money, so the actor earned extra money, for example in a quarry or as an insurance agent, but he did not throw away his talent and graduated from the drama department at the State Conservatory.
Source: Youtube
Why did Schmitzer change his name to Sováka?
As an opponent of the German occupation, the actor had a hard time coming to terms with his German surname. What would it look like on the posters? And so once, perhaps for fun, he told his classmates that he could be named Owl, for example. And it was just a step from Sova to Sováka. In the big acting world, we already knew Jiří as Sováka, which his father apparently never forgave him.
He made it all the way to the National…
After graduating from the conservatory, he got a job in the legendary “Déčka”, then in the Theater in Vinohrady, and from 1966 he remained loyal – until his retirement – to the National Theatre. In 1966, he shone in the detective film The Treasure of the Byzantine Merchant, and in 1969, together with Vladimír Menšík, he filmed the comedy Godfather. Other roles include the legendary Skopka from Světák, Jiří Kroup in the comedy Marečka, hand me a pen, or the warlock Vigo in the fairy tale series Arabela, as well as the comedy Kam čert neke, Who wants to kill Jessia? or Lord, you are a widow!
Privacy? Nothing much!
The actor got married for the first time shortly after the war and in 1949 he had a son, the actor Jiří Schmitzer. The first marriage, and then the second one, didn’t last too long, it only worked out for the third time for the actor, when he married Anna, a teacher eighteen years younger, whom he called Andulka all her life. Jiří Sovák was said to be a pleasure to work with, but on the other hand, he was an eternal troublemaker and choleric, so it took some time before he found a woman who was willing to put up with it. Sovák dealt with things immediately and forcefully. When an unnamed director accused him of collaboration, Sovák slapped him so hard that he took the other one off the hanger, and Sovák almost sat down. It was Andulka who saved him then, who wrote a request for pardon addressed to President Gustav Husák and forced Jiří to sign it. The hero, although wincing, finally recognized that it would not be much behind the bars and retreated from his positions.
40 years of love
The marriage of Jiří and Andulka lasted a respectable forty years. Andulka did not have an easy time with the well-known actor at his beloved cottage near Stříbrná Skalica, a frequent bone of contention was his famous love of alcohol. The two didn’t even have children together. Jiří Sovák had a very special relationship with his son from his first marriage, and he said he didn’t want any more children. Jiří Schmitzer could not forgive his father for once leaving him and his mother, and Sovák did not care much about building a relationship with his son. Nevertheless, they met together in front of the camera, and even played father and son several times, for example in Chalupáry or in the comedy Marečka, hand me a pen!
Car accident and fall in the shower
As Sovak got older, his explosive nature mellowed a bit. The serious car accident he suffered in the late eighties played a part in this. “I am not afraid of death. It just annoys me that it’s so long,” said the popular actor with a laugh. And then in 2000 came a slip in an outdoor shower, a broken neck and pre-op anesthesia. However, the popular actor did not recover from it. His loving Parakeet survived him by twenty long years, she died in April 2020.
Source: vlasta.czthe book Jiří Sovák personally, the book Such was Jiří Sovák
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2023-12-27 06:18:02
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