Source: with the permission of Barrandov Film Studio
fate
When it is said Long live the spirits, the first thing that comes to mind is the little girl from Leontyne, who won the hearts of many viewers. Although she had a happy ending in the popular fairy tale, as is often the case, in real life it was the opposite. The representative of Leontýnka, Dana Vávrová, had a very sad fate. Her life ended prematurely due to an insidious disease, as Blesk reported.
The fairy tale Long live the spirits had perhaps all the trump cards. Great actors, catchy songs and humorous skits – and above all, a character that almost every viewer loved. She was a little girl from Leontín who, together with her father, the knight Brtník, haunted the ruins of the Brtník castle, but in the end she found friends, love and saw a happy ending. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about her representative, Dana Vávrová.
During the filming of the legendary fairy tale, the young actress fell head over heels in love with the protagonist Dlouhy Janek, then thirteen-year-old Jiří Procházka. He was her first great love. The tax was only nine years old.
Two years later, she expressed her affection to him, but did not marry. “Danuska was a pretty girl, but too young for me at the time. She was eleven and I was already looking at girls with growing breasts. She was a bit angry with me for that…” Procházka confided to the newspaper Aha! after more than thirty years.
Although her first love did not turn out the way Vávrová had imagined, she did not resent the man and at the age of nineteen she married the German cameraman Joseph Vilsmaier, to whom she bore three children. Although they tried to start a joint film business, they did not succeed as expected, and Vávrová ended up staying at her hoof. As an actress, she was very successful not only here, but also in neighboring Germany. Among other things, she played in the movie Amadeus and in the TV series We all have to go to school or Arabela.
Vávrová did not want to leave, the illness was beyond her strength
Although she eventually achieved everything she wanted in her career and in life, her health failed her. She was only 41 years old when she breathed her last in 2009. Cancer, which gradually spread to her stomach, liver and lungs, became fatal for her.
“She went through all the hardships and sufferings, she didn’t want to leave. In the end it was really terrible, but she still fought, tried everything. Even alternative treatment and also one completely new drug that has good results for some forms of the disease. Dana has always been tenacious in life. Unfortunately, her illness was the same,” the website quoted Dana’s sister Hana Heřmánková as saying CNN Prima News.
“I loved her very much and I am very sorry. I had no idea she was seriously ill. I only remember her at the best. I got to know her when we made a documentary about her from the Fates of the Stars series. She fascinated me with how excited she was about everything, that she was going to direct, that she was going to act,” director Vladimír Drha told the website at the time Folks.
