“There are several nice moments in human life: the first children’s steps, overcoming the fear of Polednice, entering Pionýr, expulsion from Pionýr and regular parties from the age of fourteen. Where the collective strengthens and puberty ideas take concrete forms. I have not escaped a similar cycle… “
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Jiří Grossmann’s brilliant lyrics belong to the jewel of our theatrical, song and short story work. He wrote hundreds of them and they all had a smirk and wit (for all of them, at least the famous Onehdy, I turned the cable car in the morning) and he still managed to give them a special interpretive charm. His “elois elois” is unforgettable.
Short time
Modest, gentlemanly, shy, primus class. At school number one from top to bottom. That’s how friends and classmates remember him. Already at school he was very interested in music, led the school orchestra and moderated his performances. Jiří Grossmann’s affection for theater and obvious comedic talent had their roots in the family – his parents rode with a nomadic company.
“I cried when he played an etude with a dying teddy bear,” says Grossmann’s niece in the documentary My Dear Jiří Grossmann.
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His couch in the study was occupied by stuffed animals even in adulthood, but their owner was not. Witnesses confirm that, unlike other young men, Jiří was already an adult male in his twenties. “As if he knew he only had a short time. But he lived it to the fullest, “summed up one of his partners, film historian and publicist Milica Pechánková.
Ideas in Slavia
Jesova Jirka, as Šimek called him in one of their performances, was a joker every inch of it. And even in life. When he got married, he didn’t tell his mother for sure. He was afraid she would disapprove of his bride. And so he was out of favor for a while. Although the marriage lasted only four years, Jiří was not in need of girls. “Everyone, of all ages, flew at it,” his ex-wife Jana Bonhardová summed up.
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Source: Youtube
The first performances with Miloslav Šimek were born in the 1960s in the Olympik club, which they founded together and which worked on the site of today’s Ypsilonka. Witnesses recall that crowds crowded the grate and a strong man had to direct the entrance. They transferred their funny numbers with songs (for which Grossmann wrote disarming lyrics) and later also read short stories at the invitation of Jiří Suchý to Semafor. They invented them in Slavia, Jiří then transcribed them into two copies at home on a typewriter.
They gave a common, sometimes absurd, sometimes satirical context to common things, they looked at them with a distinctive lens. Whether it was the first hat, graduation party, school military training, educational concert, tram ride or bigbeat. Jiří was also a co-founder and singer of the famous Country Beat Jiří Brabec and “threw his benjo away” for a number of evenings.
Live richly
The singers still acknowledge how he managed to empathize with their singing floor and interior setting. He often wrote for Naďa Urbánková (My Dear, The Wedding Parade) or Pavel Bobek (Oh, Ruby, Don’t Let Me Take Love, My Girl N), but also for Milan Drobný or Eva Olmerová (Wait Quietly). However, he wrote the strongest and most beautiful text in the song Závidím opěvující život. Everyone understood the sad context only after the fate of its author came true.
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He left prematurely, at just thirty years old. He fought Hodgin’s disease secretly, with humor and work. He no longer had the strength to come to the thank you note for his last performance, where an ambulance from the hospital had taken him at his request. “Neither of us wanted to admit that the end would come. Until the last moment, I believed in a miracle, “said Miloslav Šimek many years later.
However, Grossmann’s lyrics, acting etudes, self-irony and nobility remain. Thanks to books, CD sets and television recordings, they are an eternal joy and role model for us. Including the motto he had on the door of the Smíchov apartment: “I’d rather live richly than die rich.”
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