2024-08-31 10:55:26
In the 70s and 80s of the last century, Karel Heřmánek was written about as one of the greatest actors of the upcoming generation. However, the native of Prague, who tragically died last Saturday at the age of 76, did not need the attention of the media. He guarded his privacy, rarely giving interviews. He preferred to do the work rather than talk about it.
Perhaps that is also why he did not become the same star and sex symbol as, for example, his long-time colleague and friend Jiří Bartoška. At the same time, even in his later life, Karel Heřmánek did not spoil his reputation by, for example, some controversial statements addressing the changing world. For the audience, he remained the caring father from The Death of Beautiful Fawns, the ruler of hell from the fairy tale S čerty nejle žerty or the Žižkov dude Hubert.
The role in the retro comedy Handsome Hubert from 1984 was one of his most popular. He was born in Žižkov, Prague, on October 17, 1947. He later recalled that he was not an exemplary student. As soon as he came home from school, he threw his briefcase in the corner and ran off to play with the neighborhood boys.
His father, a train driver, hoped that the boy would learn to be an electrician. Young Heřmánek eventually enrolled in a construction industry college with the vision that one day he could devote himself to architecture. This was achieved only in the films Where, gentlemen, where are you going? and Good Light.
Heřmánek started working as a bricklayer, but at the same time he had the ambition to be creative and create something of his own. And so he applied for directing at FAMU in Prague. They didn’t take him. That’s why he tried DAMU, he said he always dreamed of having his own theater. However, due to the large number of applicants, he could not even go there. However, they sent him to take additional exams at JAMU in Brno, where he was already accepted. Right after graduating in 1972, he joined the Na provázku Theater with classmate Jiří Bartoška, whose troupe was just becoming professional – and Karel Heřmánek started playing there regularly.
Behind Schorm
After one season, JAMU students accepted the invitation of dramaturg Ota Roubínek and went to the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem. Their third companion was another recent graduate of the Brno school, Pavel Zedníček. At first, the audience did not flock to the unknown district theater. Many performances were canceled due to low interest. But then the Drama Studio became the refuge of director Evald Schorm. A prominent figure of the Czech new wave could not shoot at Barrandová or perform on the big Prague stages after the normalization personnel purges.
Karel Heřmánek and Jiří Bartoška in the production Jakub and his master. | Photo: Theater Without Railings
In January 1974, the play Diogenes the Cynic had its premiere at the Drama Studio, which was staged by Schorm with young blood from JAMU. There was a turning point. It was a cultural event that transcended the borders of the district. People from all over the country started coming to Ústí. Empty halls were replaced by the announcement “sold out”.
A year after Diogenes, Milan Kundera’s play Jacob and his master became a triumph. Bartoška portrayed Jakub, Lord’s Chamomile. Both described their roles as vital. The melancholic comedy about the paradoxes of freedom and progress remained in the repertoire for 14 years, saw 220 reruns – and more followed on other stages where the actors moved the production.
Karel Heřmánek called Evald Schorm his spiritual father and one of the most inspiring personalities he met. Thanks to him, he honed his speech and at the same time learned from it how to sensitively lead the actors to be co-authors coming up with their own ideas. Later, when Heřmánek started directing himself, he was based on Schorm’s principles. However, he admitted that he misses his mentor’s kindness and patience.
Since the early 1970s, Karel Heřmánek has become known to an increasing number of viewers thanks to his television and film roles. He got his first minor parts in the TV adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play In the middle of granny’s summer, a train honked in the steppe and in the construction environment film Hřiště. In it, he played the rival of the protagonist, an architect played by Jiří Bartoška.
Heřmánk’s next stop was Prague’s Divadlo Na zábradlí, where he created some of his most distinctive characters between 1976 and 1990. The actor, who had been working in the region for a long time, began to conquer the metropolis as well. Under Schorm’s guidance, he acted here in, for example, The Brothers Karamazov or Marathon, a play by the French playwright Claude Confortés.
In the film, however, he still had to work his way up to similarly rewarding roles, which highlighted the expressive positions of his speech, which, according to critics, he mastered best.
Karel Heřmánek as Dimitri in the production of The Brothers Karamazov. | Photo: Divadlo na Zábradlí
The most famous characters
After many secondary roles, he shone in the early 1980s as the smuggler Krakonoš in the children’s film Krakonoš and skiers by Věra Plívová-Šimková. Also, the character of the young flutist in the drama Hadí jed directed by František Vláčil suited his nature.
The figure of the blasé imperial officer in the forgotten historical drama Mad Kankán was also important for the development of Heřmánek’s film career. It is likely that he captured a man of noble origin who adopted an aristocratic demeanor and became a successful businessman after the war.
In 1984, two characters appeared in which Heřmánek probably stuck with the audience the most. In Fešák Hubert, returning to the pre-Munich period, Ivo Novák offered him the grateful role of a henchman with Švejk features, who, in accordance with the requirements of the dramaturgy of the time, must finally mature over the amoral bourgeoisie. With similar gusto, Heřmánek took on the role of “his darkest darkness” Lucifer XIV. in Hynk Bočan’s successful fairy tale, there are no jokes with devils.
Heřmánek also demonstrated his ability to alternate between different expressions in the second half of the 1980s, when he appeared in three consecutive films by Karel Kachyna. In the psychological drama Good Light, it was in the unusually civil position of a small-town architect who causes an uproar when he returns to a hobby from his youth – photographing nudes.
He also had to suppress his natural temperament in the tragicomedy Where, gentlemen, where are you going?, whose protagonist is again an architect. But after years of self-denial, he no longer wants to compromise and gives way to the accumulated anger.
Roles based on the inconsistency between external godliness or robustness and internal hesitation suited Heřmánek best. In the third film produced with Kachyňa, The Death of Beautiful Fawns based on the autobiographical stories of Ota Pavle, he brilliantly played a seasoned, tenacious, but ultimately desperate, humiliated, betrayed by everyone representative of a company producing vacuum cleaners, who risks his life under the protectorate for his two sons.
Kachyňa described Heřmánek as a very erudite actor with comic invention and a wide register. Apparently, they also understood each other in their approach to work. Both became famous for their professionalism and extraordinary work commitment. They did not get too distracted by what was going on in society or politics.
Karel Heřmánek as Leo Popper’s father in the film Death of Beautiful Deer. | Photo: Film studio Barrandov
The period before the November revolution, when he was rehearsing Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Na Zábradlí Theatre, Heřmánek summed up in one interview with the words “then, for God’s sake, the strikes and nonsense in the squares ended and we wanted to start working again”.
However, the connection to normalization activities did not go smoothly. Heřmánek left together with other actors in 1990 in protest against the appointment of a new director of the Prague scene. Some took hold in the National Theatre, he himself finally fulfilled a long-standing dream and founded his own theater, one of the first private ones in Czechoslovakia at the time. He named it Without Rails, a bit of a prank. In order to further develop the legacy of Evald Schorm, who did not live to see the coup, he bought back some of his productions, including sets from the Na Zabradlí Theatre. Also under the banner of Theater Without Rails, the audience could see Maratón or Jakub and his master. The scene first operated in Vysočany’s cultural house Gong, before moving to the renovated Adria Palace in February 1998.
He didn’t stop playing
Karel Heřmánek appeared sporadically in films after November 1989. He explained this by saying that he does not receive high-quality scripts and is generally dissatisfied with the level of Czech cinematography. He regretted that Pavel Hanuš, the author of the screenplay for Fešák Hubert, did not have time to add a sequel to the popular comedy, which was supposed to take place during the occupation.
Petr Zelenka offered Heřmánek one of the few more memorable film roles in the new millennium. In Tales of Ordinary Madness, he played the protagonist’s boss, who decides to live with a mannequin from a shop window.
Heřmánek described the newer series as quickly made “advertisement hangers”. Therefore, he became known to the younger generation of TV viewers as a voice actor. He lent his voice to the character of Doyle in the British series The Professionals, voiced the Americans Nicolas Cage, Robert De Niro or Al Pacino. He also met his second wife Hana in the dubbing studio, with whom he had three sons. Together with two daughters from a previous relationship, he raised a total of five children.
Although in recent years the focus of Heřmánek’s work was the management of the theater, which he literally helped build with his own hands during the reconstruction, he did not stop playing, nor did he think about it. He claimed that he gets the most rest on stage. For him, acting – despite his great determination and purposefulness, which his son and successor of the family tradition, Karel Heřmánek Jr., admired – was not only a profession in which he excelled, but a lifelong passion.
Video: Karel Heřmánek last appeared in the series Mozaika
The last time viewers could see Karel Heřmánek was in the TV series Mozaika. | Video: Voyo