How close were you and Helena?
“I feel that Helena is actually my life. I knew her for a very long time. She was the first famous person I interviewed as a journalist in 1978, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since. She used to say I was the little sister she never had. I was just looking at the photos in the family album and it’s there too Helena Ružičková from our Christmas. She was a part of our life.”
It is said about Helena that she was very welcoming to people and always had the door open at home for visitors and strangers, to whom she could, for example, prophesy.
“It is true. As they say that everyone is replaceable, so in this she was irreplaceable. When she lived in a ground-floor apartment in Volyňská Street in Prague’s Vršovice, she always had a full living room. She sat on the couch, people always made coffee or tea, she told them fortunes from tea leaves or coffee grounds, her husband next door made sandwiches… Helena never took money from anyone, she enjoyed it.”
Was it the general as we know her from many movies?
“He and Jirka Růžička Sr. had a nice marriage. I have to say that when Helena got cancer, he was so worried about it that he died before her. He got tired. He loved her deeply and she loved him. They had a really nice relationship, but such an open one, they didn’t blame each other and didn’t limit themselves. I have never experienced that they had a crisis, that Helena thought about leaving Jirka. And beware, she had a lot of love offers!’
From whom?
“Perhaps the actor and naive painter Josef Hlinomaz. She also had paintings by him at home – he also painted her, such a beautiful semi-nude… But not only him. Helena also filmed in Germany, where she met Dean Reed (an American singer and actor who “emigrated” to East Germany, editor’s note) thanks to the film Sing, Cowboys. He fell in love with her and wrote her wonderful letters, some of which I even read. He wrote there how one word is enough and it will be hers alone.’
Today it can probably be revealed whether Helena heard any of these love offers?
“I don’t want it to sound bad, but she listened. She had the following saying: “To get along, that’s right.” But being unfaithful to your husband? Never!” She didn’t make a science out of it, no confessions, no phone calls, nothing to bother the other. She took physical love as a part of life.”
20 years since the death of Helena Růžičková: On acting from a dental assistant
Were her lovers fans, or rather colleagues?
“From fellow actors and partners, but I won’t name names because some are still alive. But they were all handsome! And after the change of circumstances in 1990, when the new entrepreneurs swarmed, many offered her mountains and mines. It was an experience to read the letters from them. She gave them to me because I helped her answer some of them. When computers and e-mails came along, she didn’t really understand them, so I handled a lot of things for her.”
What attracted men to her?
“Helena was terribly attractive. Even though she was overweight, she could carry them. She looked great when she stripped down to her bathing suit. All summer she walked in the garden in a bathing suit, so she had a chocolate tan, her body was firm. The lyricist Zdeněk Borovec once told me that he only goes to the Yellow Spa for Helena, because there she used to jump from a board into the Vltava and he was always waiting for her to emerge and pearls of water would sparkle on her beautifully tanned body. It was an amazingly inspiring experience for him.”
25 years since the death of Jiří Růžička (†43): Mama Helena survived him by only a few years
How did you perceive her relationship with her son Jiří, who was said to be a so-called monkey love, for which she paid for his marriage.
“I’ve never had this feeling. Jirka Růžička Jr. destroyed all marriages himself. How fickle he was. Helena called it playful. He also had success with women. The first two marriages ended due to his fault, the third was ruined by his unfaithful wife. But with Helena it was no monkey love, they were partners on stage and the way they called each other by their first names, it seemed like a sibling relationship to people. The fact is that Jirko’s death crushed Helena. She didn’t fully realize that her son had left. Whenever there was a meal at their place, the table was laid out for him and she talked to him.”
You can find the entire interview in the printed form of the newspaper Aha! (January 20, 2024)
2024-01-21 07:40:13
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