Fate did not play with them. In popular fairy tales, brave princes stood up to evil, won the hand of their beloved, and lived happily ever after with her. In reality, however, it was not that easy.
Petr Štěpánek in the fairy tale Goldilocks.
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Reprofoto/Goldilocks
Czech stage, film and television actor and voice actor played the character Jiřík in the Czech fairy tale Goldilocks from 1973. He also played in the series Hospital on the outskirts of the city after twenty years or Doctor’s Office in the Rose Garden. Love flared up between Štěpánek and the fairy tale director Vlasta Janečková († 77).
The couple even rang wedding bells, it was the second wedding for the actor. Although the marriage seemed idyllic, it did not last. During the filming of the series, the actor fell in love with his colleague Zlata Adamovská, with whom he played a married couple. According to the diary, Janečková took her husband’s adventure very hard and was supposed to threaten him with suicide.
She should have tried to fulfill the threats while drunk, but suicide did not work out for her. The unhappy director looked for solace at the bottom of the glass. She was treated for addiction for a long time in a sanatorium. Janečková breathed her last in 2012. In the last months of her life, she was bedridden due to her deteriorating health.
Singer Václav Neckář.
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Reprofoto/Crazy sad princess
An unexpected life event cut through the career and life of naughty Prince Václav from the fairy tale The Crazy Sad Princess. In 2002, Neckář collapsed on the stage of the Litoměřice Theater and was taken to the hospital. The Czech actor and singer overcame a stroke. After the stroke, he had significant speech problems. He even sought the help of an expert. With the support of his brother, he returned to singing, and nine years after health complications, he started giving concerts again.
Slovak actor Ivan Palúch as Prince Bajaja.
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repro photo/ movie Princ Bajaja
In the 1960s, Ivan Palúch was among the leading actors not only in the former Czechoslovakia, but also beyond its borders. He made more than 160 films. The audience remembers the actor as the representative of Adam Šangala or the legendary prince Bajaj. At the International Film Festival in Cannes, they screened three films in which he acted – he was the only Slovak actor to experience such success. In 1969, however, the hard blow of normalization came and the communists gave “red” to his developing star career.
Open expression of opinions, rejection of the entry of Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, friendship with several dissidents of the time, including Václav Havel, and departure of his wife and daughter to Austria did not leave the communists without a response. Gradually, bans began to be applied, relegating Palúch to secondary roles. “Because I got banned, the communists knew about it and it spread around the theaters, I think since 1974,” the actor recalled of those times.
After November ’89, Ivan Palúch failed to follow up on his former film successes. Among his most recent roles were the role of Grandpa in the drama Love Me or Leave (2012) and the role of Gust, the old sea wolf in the series Stormy Wine (2013). The actor died in 2015 in Martin.
The main characters of the fairy tale The Proud Princess were played by Alena Vránová as Princess Krasomila and Vladimír Ráž as King Miroslav.
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reprophoto/ film The Proud Princess
Vladimír Ráž is known to the public mainly as a successful fairy-tale actor. He played the popular king Miroslav from the fairy tale The Proud Princess. The love between Ráž and actress Alena Vránová, who played Princess Krasomila, outgrew the screen and the couple got married. Both were engaged at the time. The actor’s marriage did not work for a long time, while Vránová formed a couple with the writer Pavlo Kohout.
Kút took his wife’s betrayal hard, and he even wrote the play Good Song about the villain who took the wife of an exemplary communist. In the end, the actors’ marriage did not withstand the test represented by Ráž’s weakness for the fairer sex. The actor was married three times and had a son and two daughters from three marriages. He died in Prague on July 4, 2000, only three days after his 77th birthday.
Petr Svojtka in the fairy tale The Little Mermaid.
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Reprofoto/The Little Mermaid
The prince from the fairy tale The Little Mermaid lived wildly and also briefly. A dangerous pastime, which he loved to indulge in, became fatal for his relative. In May 1982, he was said to have been drinking in a theater club and on the way home decided to seduce the drawbar that connects the tram set. But there was a great misfortune.
The body in the railway station was noticed by a taxi driver who happened to be passing by. The corpse was in such bad condition that the identification took place only on the basis of the documents found. The tram on which the actor was riding was only discovered two hours later. The driver had no idea about the tragedy. The young widow – actress Jana Boušková and their son Ján experienced the greatest pain.
