Czech actor Jiří Lír became famous thanks to supporting roles. However, there were so many of them – more than two hundred – and in such great films that they ensured him a popularity comparable to the protagonists of big roles.
His hypochondriac innkeeper from the comedy Vesničko má středisková, or the untalented actor Gugenheim from the film Sir, you are a widow! were engraved in the viewers’ memories and their representative in their hearts. In the 1970s, however, his career was interrupted by a serious car accident, states .
The car he was traveling in went in the opposite direction and crashed into an oncoming vehicle. After flying through the windshield, he slid on his face for another 30 meters on the wet road. He had a cracked skull bone with an impact on the brain center. “My friend Vladimír Menšík used to visit me. It’s a shame that his visits couldn’t be for everyone with a doctor’s prescription. Many people would certainly get better in less time,” he stated in his memoirs.
Jiří Lír was born on June 19, 1923 in the Czech town of Pelhřimov. The son of a renowned painter chose his destiny already by sitting in the school desk with the future actor Lubomír Lipský as a schoolboy. Another actor Otomar Krejča was also his classmate. Already in grammar school, they were intensively involved in volunteer theater.
When the Nazis closed the school in 1941, Jiří Lír tried his luck in several theater companies in Prague and outside of it. However, the wartime conditions weighed more and more heavily on the cultural scene. When Lubomír Lipský and his brother – budding director Oldřich – founded the Theater of Satire, Jiří Lír could not be absent from it. Here he met Miloš Kopecky, Stella Zázvorková, Karel Effa and other acting colleagues, with whom he later met in popular films and comedies.
Lír alternated between several theaters, among them, for example, Rokoko, Theater Na zábradlí, but also the scene in České Budějovice. He spent most of his years (1969 to 1991) in the acting ensemble of the Barrandov Film Studio. While he took on big roles in the theater, he acted as a representative of small figures in the film, who, however, complemented the plot brilliantly. He played for the first time in the film The Messenger of Dawn directed by Václav Krška. A bigger opportunity was the teacher Václav Havránek in the film Ice Men.
Jindřich Polák also offered him the main role in the musical comedy The Terrible Woman. In 1964, the film was released Lemonade Joe or the Director’s Horse Opera Oldřich Lipský, where Lír played a bartender. He appeared in a legendary film A corpse incinerator directed by Juraj Herz, or as a salesman in a tailor shop in a popular comedy Saintswhich was shot in 1969 by Zdeněk Podskalský. He played alongside Jan Werich in the series Pan Tau.
The artist played in the comedies Four murders are enough, dear, Sir, you are a widow!, The girl on the broomstick, Marečka, hand me the pen!, How about some spinach, whether I will be good, grandfather, where he portrayed a theater inspector with a speech impediment of his own.
The character of the deceived guest in the film Vrchní, prchni!, was equally prominent the role of the innkeeper in the comedy Vesničko má středisková, which, by the way, he liked the most. While his movie innkeeper was a hypochondriac, in real life Jiří Lír struggled with a serious illness. He died of bone cancer on August 20, 1995 at the age of 72.
The actor also had artistic talent. His originality was that he instituted a permanent update of his paintings. For example, when he painted the wedding of his friend’s daughter and she later divorced, he repainted the groom for a dog she had bought for free. He was a member of the Herci maluji association and his paintings are sold for high sums.
