How close were you and Helena?
“I feel like Helena is actually my life. I’ve known her for a long time. She was the first famous person I interviewed as a journalist in 1978, and we haven’t seen each other since. She said I was the little sister she never had. I was looking at the photos in the family album and there is also Helena Růžičková from our Christmas. She was part of our life.”
It is said of Elena that she was very welcoming to people and that she always had her front door open for visitors and strangers, to whom she could, for example, prophesy.
“It’s true. As they say that everyone is replaceable, in this too she was irreplaceable. When she lived in the ground floor apartment on Volyňská Street in Vršovice in Prague, she always had a complete living room. She sat on the sofa, people were always preparing coffee or tea, she told fortunes with tea leaves or coffee grounds, the husband next door made sandwiches… Helena never collected money from anyone, she liked it.”
Was she the general as we know her from many films?
“He and Jirka Růžička Sr. had a beautiful marriage. I must say that when Helena got sick with cancer, he was so worried that he died before her. He got tired of it. He loved her deeply and she loved him. They had a relationship really nice, but so open, they didn’t blame each other and they didn’t limit themselves. It never happened to me that they had a crisis, that Helena thought about leaving Jirka. And mind you, she had a lot of love offers!’
From who?
“Maybe the naive actor and painter Josef Hlinomaz. He also had some of her paintings at home: he too painted her, so beautiful half naked… But not just him. Helena also filmed in Germany, where she met Dean Reed ( American singer and actor who “emigrated” to East Germany, ed.) thanks to the film Sing, Cowboys. He fell in love with her and wrote her wonderful letters, some of which I also read. There he wrote that one word is enough and she will only be his .’
Today we will probably be able to find out whether Helena has 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 true.’ But to be unfaithful to your husband? Never!” She didn’t make a science out of it, no confessions, no phone calls, nothing to disturb the other. She took physical love as part of life.
20 years since the death of Helena Růžičková: On acting as a dental assistant
Were her lovers fans, or rather colleagues?
“From other actors and partners, but I won’t name names because some are still alive. But they were all beautiful! And after circumstances changed in 1990, when new entrepreneurs swarmed, many offered her mountains and mines. It was an experience reading their letters. She gave them to me because I helped her answer some of them. When computers and emails 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 wear them. She looked beautiful when she stripped down to her bathing suit. All summer she walked around the garden in a bathing suit, so she had a chocolate tan , his body was firm. The lyricist Zdeněk Borovec once told me that he goes to the Yellow Baths only because of Helena, because there she jumped from a board into the Vltava and he always waited for her to emerge and pearls of water glitter on it her beautifully tanned body. It was an extraordinarily stimulating experience for him.”
25 years since the death of Jiří Růžička (†43): mother Elena survived him only a few years
How did you perceive her relationship with her son Jiří, who was said to be the so-called monkey love, for which she paid for her marriage.
“I never had this feeling. Jirka Růžička jr. destroyed all marriages himself. How fickle he was. Helena called him playful. He was also successful with women. The first two marriages ended through his fault, the third was ruined from his unfaithful wife. But with Helena it wasn’t monkey love, they were partners on stage and the way they called each other by name, to people it seemed like a sibling relationship. The fact is that Jirko’s death destroyed Helena. He didn’t realize fully aware that her son was gone. Whenever there was a meal at their house, the table was set for him and she spoke to him.”
You can find the entire interview in the printed version of the daily Aha! (January 20, 2024)
2024-01-21 13:40:16
#Růžičkovás #friend #SEX #MACHINE