Jan Werich
Jan Werich ( born February 6, 1905 in Prague, † 31 October 1980 ) was a Czech actor, playwright and writer.
Life
After the high school education Werich studied from 1924 to 1927 Law at the Charles University in Prague. However, the studies he soon gave up to start with his friend Jiří Voskovec a small theater. Later, the composer and conductor Jaroslav Jezek was added as a music director. On April 19, 1927, the Osvobozené Divadlo ( Liberated Theatre) in Umělecká opened beseda on the Lesser Town with the Vest Pocket Revue. Later, the theater moved into the palace "U Nováků " in a side street to Wenceslas Square to where it resided until his death in 1938. Inspired by Dada, Surrealism, ancient tragedy and joy of the absurd was the OD a clearly left-wing voice in the first Czechoslovak Republic. 1931, Werich his debut as a film actor and screenwriter of PUDR a petrol directed by Jindřich Honzl.
With the German invasion in 1938 Werich Voskovec and Jezek were forced into exile in New York. Unlike Voskovec Werich returned after the war in Czechoslovakia, where he found very quickly changing conditions in Klement Gottwald Stalinist state. He began a collaboration with Miroslav Horníček, led again to old OD - pieces and realized with the puppets and animation artist Jiri Trnka modern fairy tale. He starred in numerous films and fairy tale series and also continued to perform at the theater. In 1963 he received the Best Actor Award of the Television Festival in Monte Carlo for his role in the TV movie Medvěd. In 1968, he fled to the Soviet invasion to Vienna, but soon returned again.
He won several national award. In recent years he suffered from limited opportunities to perform, although he was very popular among the public. Drawn by the throat cancer he died in 1980 in Prague.