Václav Neckář

* 1943

  • "On August 21, 1968, I was in the Caucasus Mountains with Juozas Budraitis, a Lithuanian who played a double role. Pepíček said: 'Dude, they haven't left us since 1941 and now they're in Czechoslovakia, they'll never leave.' That's what we said and cried in the tent. And we, there were about seventeen to twenty Czechs on the staff, and Pepík Budraitis, an actor from the National Theatre in Vilnius, had a transistor, and we were listening in Russian, and they were saying how they liberated us. So, we went on strike and said we were going to Prague. So, we went from the mountains to Sukhumi, to a hotel, and we stayed there for five days. That was on the evening of August 21, when we went by truck to Sukhumi, and on the morning of August 22, the producer calls me from Moscow: 'You have a phone call, Prague.' On the morning of 22 August 1968, when it was impossible to call from Pankrác to Barrandov, my mother received a phone call to Sukhumi. So, I was crying into the phone and my mother said they were shooting at the Museum. And now I was screaming at those telephone girls, what a shitty thing they were doing. So, it was a terrible situation."

  • "The problem in 1970 with the Golden Kids, when Marta... it was on February 3, 1970, when comrade director František Hrabal invited me to his office. I wasn't the boss of the Golden Kids, but the girls didn't want to sign contracts, so I always signed them. And of course the gentleman, because I was signed everywhere, took me to his office. It was before the World Ski Championships in the Tatra Mountains, we were supposed to do eleven concerts there. And on the 3rd of February he invited me, on the 11th of February we were supposed to play our first concert there, and he put three porn photos on my desk and said I had to identify Mrs. Kubišová that I couldn't work with such a singer. And I said: 'Well, Mr. Director, I've never seen her in such a situation, ask her husband Honza Němec.' So, for five hours he gave me a hard time and forced me to play there with Helena only, so I said, it's impossible, it's just impossible."

  • "In 1948, February came and the National Committee had a disagreement with dad, or rather dad had a disagreement. Because he was given the choice of either mines or agriculture, because he wasn't allowed to go to the theatre. And he had a friend who had a farm in Kamenná Street below Špičák in front of the railway crossing, there was a farm where dad used to drive a hay wagon until the farm had to be given to the JZD [agriculture cooperative - trans.]. So then dad drove the RM truck, and I remember that dad sometimes brought us carps from South Bohemia, and he always brought us carps at Christmas."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 12.08.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:53:01
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 02.09.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 47:07
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 3

    Praha, 06.01.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:00:05
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

I was shooting a film in Sukhumi when my mother called to say the Russians were shooting in Prague

Václav Neckář, graduation photo, 1962
Václav Neckář, graduation photo, 1962
photo: Archiv pamětníka

Václav Neckář was born on 23 October 1943 in Prague. His father Václav Dubský worked as an actor and singer in the theatre in Ústí nad Labem. After 1948 he was fired and had to work as a coachman and a labourer. His mother worked at the theatre as an economist, but in 1958, after a false accusation of embezzlement, she had to leave. She sued for many years and only in the late 1960s did she obtain full rehabilitation. Václav Neckář tried four times to get into DAMU (The Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague), but due to his parents’ problems he never succeeded. In the 1960s he became famous as an actor and singer. He starred in several award-winning films, including the Oscar-winning Closely Watched Trains. He played and sang at the Rokoko Theatre in Prague, where he formed the Golden Kids trio with Marta Kubišová and Helena Vondráčková. After huge success at home and abroad, the band came to an early end when the regime shut down Marta Kubišová with the help of faked porn photos. He then founded the band Bacily with his brother Jan, which stayed in the limelight for decades. In the seventies, he was often summoned to Bartolomějská Street for many hours of interrogation, the State Security were concerned about trips abroad and the manager Hanuš Bunzel. In 1978 he became a so-called State Security confidant. In 1986, his file was filed in the archives, the reason being that the information given was worthless. At the time of the Velvet Revolution, he and his brother attended demonstrations and together they went to meetings and discussions in the regions to spread information about events in Prague. The Bacily group’s equipment helped to sound Wenceslas Square and Letná. In the 1990s, Václav Neckář and his band took an artistic break. A new rise was brought by the film Pelíšky with its newly popularised song Tu kytaru jsem koupil kvůli tobě (I Bought That Guitar For You). In 2002 he had a stroke and it seemed that he would never sing again, but he was on stage already the following year. The next chance came in the form of the song Půlnoční (Midnight), which became the theme tune of the film Alois Nebel and brought Václav Neckář back to the top of the popularity chart. In 2023 he was living in Prague.