He seemed to join his lieutenant Kalina. They both both died the same day. Secrets of celebrities
04/18/2022
Photo: Courtesy of TV Barrandov
Description: Miloš Willig as Colonel Kalina in the series Thirty Cases of Major Zeman
PHOTO While he shone on stage in all genres, film and television have always given him a single form. A serious, reliable gentleman in a suit, on whose appearance, character and devotion to the party you will not find a speck. And Colonel Vaclav Kalina in the series Thirty Cases of Major Zeman. Do you remember him?
Kalina became his most famous television character and seemed to be tailor-made for him. The actor himself never hid that he felt like a fish in water. “He is a man who went through the Spanish Civil War, a man who was later in a concentration camp, a man who is completely committed to the socialist establishment. I was not in Spain, but I spent nine months in Jan Hus’s guerrilla group. I’m a convinced communist, too. In other words – Colonel Kalina, my figure, as they say, fits me, “he said. However, theater was much more important in his career. Miloš Willig’s mottoes were sobriety, balanced gestures, a display of inner feelings and cultivated expression. And the scope of his theatrical roles was huge, from the drama of Czech and world classics to the modern repertoire.
With Libuše Havelková in the television drama from 1967 The Strange End of Summer; photo courtesy of Czech Television – Přiba Mrázová
He didn’t care about tradition
He was born on January 21, 1921 in the romantic village of Velké Svatoňovice on the eastern edge of the Krkonoše foothills as his life was connected from the beginning. His father was Arnošt Willig, who played for years at the Horácký Theater in Jihlava, and even after retiring he did not do without his ‘sanctuary’, so he at least worked as a usher and porter. Miloš’s two-year-old sister Lubomíra also lived on the same stage for decades, and her sister Dagmar also worked there as a prop. Miloš became the most famous of the family, but he originally went to a completely different area and started in a textile factory as a draftsman. During World War II, however, he ended up at the theater and went through several nomadic companies. He also received his first film offer, but refused to play in a German film.
Escape to the guerrillas
In 1943, he finally became a member of the ensemble of the Horácký Theater in Třebíč and played in eleven productions in the first season. After the Nazis closed the Czech theaters, however, he did not escape total commitment and had to work on building underground petrol tanks. In time, he managed to escape in the last nine months of the war in the guerrilla brigade Master Jan Hus. The group operated mainly in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and on its basis became a twelve-member paratrooper under the command of Red Army Captain Alexander Vasilyevich Fomin, who jumped to our territory on October 26, 1944. After liberation, Milos returned to the Highlands and worked for three seasons at the Horack Theater. moved to Jihlava. There he was also faced with a major life decision in 1947.
With Jiří Holý in the television crime show Měsíc s dýmkou, based on a short story by Hana Prošková; photo courtesy of Czech Television – Přiba Mrázová
Life decisions
“I should have decided whether I would continue to be an actor or whether I would become a member of the State Security,” he admitted in an interview that had dusted the Blesk newspaper some time ago. “It simply came to our notice then. I said to myself: you’ve been doing this theater for many years and maybe quite decently. If something goes wrong, you write about you that you played it wrong, if you mess something up in the movie, it has to be filmed again and it’s good again, but if you do something wrong as a member of the State Security, I won’t let anything delete it . So I said: boys, I’d rather prefer to play the theater. When they got married, she was only nineteen and soon their daughter Kateřina was born.
By year and by day
In 1948, Miloš moved with parts of the theater ensemble to Prague, where he co-founded the SK Neumann Theater (today’s Pod Palmovkou Theater) in Liben. Although the young wife and child followed him, she felt abandoned in Prague, even though Miloš allegedly did his best to make up for it. In the end, she fell in love with a mutual friend, then still medic Josef Moučka. And so as soon as Miloš became a father, he lost his family and allegedly took the divorce very hard. Kamila herself openly admitted over time that she had sinned against him. “I was naive and stupid. “I’m so sorry I hurt him,” she said.
Lawyer Mayer in Otakar Vávra’s famous historical drama The Hammer on the Witch; photo courtesy of Barrandov Film Studio
Agitek hero
Shortly after arriving in Prague, Willig finally made his film camera debut – director Martin Frič chose him as the young designer’s representative in the construction film Pětistovka. In it, the conscious workers’ team undertakes to put into production a revolutionary motorcycle, but its efforts are accompanied by a number of oversights and misfortunes. The naive and build-like film ranks critics among one of Frič’s weakest projects. In the 1950s, Willig’s roles from this ‘box’ did not deviate, he exceptionally appeared in a more valuable project. His career is accompanied by the characters of principled and prudent men, who did not allow the character to despise the actors’ personalities. At the turn of the fifties and sixties, he began playing doctors, party officials or senior officers, but most often appeared in front of the camera as a police investigator or a member of the UK.
Beloved colonel
Some swear, others find a lot of truth in it, so far a large number of television viewers are willing to watch Major Zeman over and over again. After 1989, it seemed that one of the most expensive projects of Czechoslovak Television (costing more than twenty million – editor’s note) would probably never run in paintings again. Then a commercial company was found that bravely brought the extensive project of director Jiří Sequens to the light of God, and it almost became a new bestseller. At the beginning, young Zeman, Dr. Veselý and lawyer Kalina return from the concentration camp together, unaware of how their destinies will intersect in the future. Milos Willig found himself in his Kalin. It was he who brought Zeman into collaboration with criminologists, and Zeman took him as his second father. In later works, Kalina was already in a high position at the Ministry of the Interior and, in addition to cases with a special international plot.
The chairman of the Communist Party in the television standardization drama Run Away, Don’t Run Away; photo courtesy of Barrandov Film Studio – Miroslav Mirvald
Destiny’s Hamr
“Zeman” was a demanding engagement for Willig for the entire five-year period, so when he was added to his permanent work in the theater, he didn’t have much time left for anything else. Nevertheless, he managed to star in several films. And in another successful series by screenwriter Jaroslav Dietl and especially director Evžen Sokolovský, The Youngest of the Hamr Family, in which he played Blažek. During the filming, however, he suffered a heart attack, which was probably due to his high workload. Then he was constantly struggling with heart problems, and this was reflected in his appearance, so when filming the third series of ‘Zeman’, not even the masks had to do too hard to add to him optically that year. Although he finished filming, he did not see the premiere. He died on August 23, 1979, as did his series Kalina. On heart failure, at the age of fifty-eight and alone.
(sources: Wikipedia, Czech film, CSFD, Blesk, FDB, Jihlava Horace Theater, Czech Television, Czech Radio, National Theater, Svetlana Witowska: Head against the wall)
Entered by: Adina Janovská