Jerzy Cnota, who gained popularity thanks to the role of the robber Gąsior in the TV series “Janosik”, said that he could not imagine life without beautiful women, strong vodka and good fun. The parties he organized in a rented studio apartment in Saska Kępa were widely discussed in the salons of the capital years ago. It was said that those who did not participate in Virtue’s parties did not count in the company…
Jerzy Cnota and Marzena Kipiel-Sztuka /MWMedia
Jerzy Cnota, who died in 2016, said that he grew up “among bums, chachars and alcoholics”, but he turned out to be people. It is true that he failed to become a lawyer, which he dreamed of in his youth, but he fulfilled himself as an actor and cabaret artist.
“I didn’t want to be an actor at all. A friend who played in a play at the student Theater 38 asked me to replace him. He had to go to a funeral. He knew I could do it. He was right. I liked acting,” he recalled years later in an interview with Angora.
At the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, Jerzy Cnota was one of the most popular artists in Kraków. He performed, among others in Piwnica pod Baranami alongside Ewa Demarczyk and Wiesław Dymny, with whom he was friends. It was Dymny who recommended him to Kazimierz Kutz when he was assembling the cast for the film Salt of the Black Earth.
“I didn’t even have test shots. The contract and the set! Dymny arranged it for me” – he said, recalling his film debut.
Jerzy Cnota in the film “The most important day of life” /Film archive /FORUM agency
Jerzy Cnota: There was a non-stop party going on in the studio apartment he was renting
Jerzy Cnota was already a well-known and respected actor when he got an offer to become the manager of the Warsaw Students’ Club “Hybrydy”, and because he just wanted to change something in his life, he accepted the offer and moved to the capital.
He held the position of head of “Hybryd” for only a year and a half, but he stayed with Warsaw for over two decades.
“There was a lot going on then, because those were great times. I rented a studio apartment in Saska Kępa, wandered around the city and drove moonshine. Somehow a man had to cope” – he confessed to Tomasz Gawiński from “Angora” just before his death.
The door in Jerzy Cnota’s apartment in the attic of a huge villa at 30 Niekłańska Street in Saska Kępa they almost never closed.
Bogusz Bilewski, Witold Pyrkosz and Jerzy Cnota in “Janosik” (1974) /press materials
“The attic was open twenty-four hours a day, excluding public holidays. Those who did not visit Virtue did not count in the company,” wrote Janusz Atlas in “Social Atlas”.
The most important piece of furniture in the actor’s apartment was monstrous table called “Hilton”whose “charm” was that it was always pledged.
“It happened that the host did not clean the dishes on it for weeks, as well as the bottles, and in the morning you had to rummage through the glass to quench your thirst with something liquid” – recalled Atlas in his book.
“This table was not an ordinary piece of furniture, because someone invariably slept under it,” claimed the author of “Social Atlas”.
Jerzy Cnota: Under the table in the actor’s apartment … well-known stars were lying side by side!
“Hilton” was the most famous piece of furniture in Warsaw in the 1970s. There were legends in the capital about who slept under it, who danced on it and who feasted with it.
It was an open secret that – as Janusz Atlas wrote years later – “under the table at Virtue, actresses known from cinema screens often lay side by side”but also “electricians at the Documentary Film Studio, auxiliary kitchen staff from respected catering establishments, various brothers-in-law from Silesia, and even schoolgirls from Mińsk Mazowiecki or Tłuszcz, who came to the capital to play truant by the electric train”.
Frame from “Janosik” /INPLUS /East News
The parties drunk with home brew at Jerzy Virtue’s were so successfulthat the apartment at Niekłańska 30 became one of the most important “centres” of social life of the Warsaw bohemians. There were plenty of attractions waiting for the crowds visiting the attic rented by the actor…
“The greatest pleasure of the new arrivals was peeking at who was staying at the Hilton.”
George Virtue his the Warsaw “open house” was closed only when Poland was undergoing political changes.
“The new wave in the 1990s began to destroy culture. So I had to find another job. I briefly worked on a construction site in Łódź, and in 1996 I decided to return to Silesia,” the actor told Angora in an interview.
Today, no one remembers what happened to the famous “Hilton”, where, half a century ago, the entire social capital of the capital used to party.
Jerzy Cnota: He had to earn extra money until he retired, otherwise he would have starved to death!
In Chorzów, where he settled after retiring, Jerzy Cnota spent the last two decades of his life.
George Virtue /Daniel Dimitriev /FORUM agency
“I have to earn extra money for my pension, otherwise I would starve to death,” he complained to Tomasz Gawiński a year before his death.
“I regret that I became an actor. But it was better to be a lawyer or a teacher. There is a name, satisfaction, but financial profits are doubtful. Although I played some good roles, I didn’t make coconuts on it. It’s a pity that it all turned out a bit wrong, as it should,” he confessed to “Angora”.
Jerzy Cnota never asked anyone for help. He said he didn’t have the courage… to beg for alms. He was very grateful to the creators of “The World According to the Kiepskis” that they remember him and invite him to the set from time to time. In the Polsat sitcom, the actor played Tadeusz Kopciński for several years …
“It’s not easy, but you have to manage somehow. You have to live” – he said in a recent interview.
Those who remember Jerzy Cnota from the years when he lived in Saska Kępa and organized legendary parties in his attic, remember the actor as a man who above all loved people and life.
He passed away on November 10, 2016 after a long and serious illness. He was 74 years old
See also:
Jerzy Cnota: A bachelor of strong impressions
Jerzy Cnota, Bogdan Kalus and Sylwester Maciejewski /MWMedia
Jerzy Cnota and Witold Pyrkosz /Adrian Slazok/REPORTER /Reporter
