Anna Letenská

Anna Čalounová-Letenská (née Anna Svobodová) (29 August 1904 – 24 October 1942) was a Czech theatre and film actress. During the 1930s and 40s, she appeared in twenty-five films. She was murdered in the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen.

Biography

Early career From 1939 to 1942, Letenská worked at the Vinohrady Theatre, Prague.

Anna Letenská was born in Nýřany, Plzeň Region, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. She was brought up in a theatrical environment - both of her parents, Marie Svobodová (1871–1960) and Oldřich Svoboda (died 1939), and her sister, Růžena Nováková (1899–1984), were actors. She made her first appearance on stage at an early age.

Letenská began her professional stage career in 1919 as a member of the Suková-Kramulová theatre company and went on to work with theatre companies in České Budějovice (1920–29), Olomouc (1930–31), Bratislava (1931–35), and Kladno (1935–36). While working with the theatre company of Otto Alfredi she met and befriended the operetta actor Ludvík Hrdlička, who performed under the stage name "Letenský". They wed in January 1925 and the following year had a son, Jiří (who later himself worked as an actor and radio speaker ). However, the marriage was not a happy one and they divorced in 1940. They had previously moved to Prague in 1936 where after a series of short-term engagements Letenská found employment with the Vinohrady Theatre (1939–42). She performed in Czech and world theatre repertoire and was known for her comic performances in the role of down-to-earth, energetic women characters. One of the assassins, Kubiš, had been wounded in the face by a fragment of the bomb thrown at Heydrich's car. He escaped and was helped by MUDr. Břetislav Lyčka, who lived in the Karlín district of Prague. After Karel Čurda's betrayal of his Resistance colleagues and friends, Lyčka and his wife Františka Lyčková were forced to split up and find separate places to hide.

At the time Letenská was working on the film , directed by Otakar Vávra. In 1941, she had married the architect Vladislav Čaloun. Prior to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, Čaloun had been involved in helping people persecuted by Hlinka's Slovak People's Party. His activities came to the notice of the party's extremist supporters and he was expelled from Slovakia in 1939. However, according to the subsequent account given by the Czech actor Svatopluk Beneš, Letenská told him a different version of the story. She had gone to a wine bar with her second husband where they met a man who introduced himself as a friend of Čaloun's brother and asked if they could give him a bed for one night. According to Beneš, the man was apparently Doctor Lyčka.

Despite being helped by Letenská and her husband, Lyčková was soon arrested by the Gestapo. After being tortured, she revealed the secret identity and whereabouts of her husband. Lyčka committed suicide in a cellar in Ouběnice, shortly before his arrest. Surprisingly, only her husband was arrested and Letenská was allowed to remain at large, purportedly because she was one of the stars of the still unfinished movie . Miloš Havel (uncle of the former Czech President Václav Havel), an influential producer at the Barrandov Studios, is said to have intervened to prevent her arrest so that the film could be completed.

Letenská remained under Gestapo surveillance while filming continued. According to Otakar Vávra, the film's director, "throughout this time Anna Letenská would sit with her head held between her hands although she appeared as cheerful as could be in front of the camera. We understood that she was preparing herself to die."

Imprisonment and death

Once production of the film had been completed, Letenská was arrested and imprisoned. Accounts of her last days in Prague differ. Her colleague, the actor Antonín Strnad, said that Letenská was arrested and then shortly after that she was released very briefly, only so that she could terminate her contract of employment at the Vinohrady Theatre. Strnad met her in the theatre, in tears. Another actor, František Filipovský, claimed that he was probably the last person who talked to her. He met her in a tram at Wenceslas Square and asked: "Where are you going, Anka?" She replied: "Ah, they summoned me to an interrogation at Gestapo, again. What could they ask me?" Then she got out of the tram and vanished into the crowd. "I never saw her again", Filipovský said.

The novel (The Hangman Won't Wait, 1958) by Norbert Frýd was inspired by Anna Letenská's life story. A film adaptation of the novel was made in 1971 starring Jiřina Bohdalová. A street in the Vinohrady district of Prague is named after Anna Letenská.

Selected theatre roles 1937 - Guest performance in the play Těžká Barbora, Osvobozené divadlo (V+W), directed by Jindřich Honzl 1939 - Heinrich von Kleist: The Broken Jug, Frau Marthe, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by František Salzer 1939 - William Shakespeare: The Merry Wives of Windsor, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by Bohuš Stejskal 1939 - A. Pacovská: , Marie, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by Jiří Plachý 1940 - Josef Kajetán Tyl: , Kordula, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by Gabriel Hart 1940 - K. R. Krpata: , Katovka-Rosina, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by František Salzer 1940 - Gerhart Hauptmann: The Beaver Coat, Mother Wolff, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by František Salzer 1941 - Alexander Ostrovsky: The Storm, Varvara, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by František Salzer 1941 - A. Pacovská: , Pelikánová, Vinohradské divadlo, Vinohrady Theatre, directed by Jiří Plachý 1941 - Lila Bubelová: , Marie Poustecká, Chamber Theater, directed by Antonín Kandert 1941 - Aristophanes: Ecclesiazusae, Praxagora, Theatre Na poříčí, directed by Jiří Plachý

Films 2009 - Fred Breinersdorfer: Andula, Besuch in einem anderen Leben', documentary, movie, 2009, director: Fred Breinersdorfer, with Hannah Herzsprung, WDR, RBB, arte 2009 - Fred Breinersdorfer Spiel ums Leben, TV-documentary, 2009, WDR, RBB, arte

Selected film roles 1937 - , housemaid, directed by Miloslav Jareš 1938 - , directed by Miroslav Cikán, Karel Lamač 1938 - 1939 - , directed by Václav Kubásek 1939 - 1940 - , directed by František Čáp 1940 - , directed by Jan Alfréd Holman 1940 - , directed by Vladimír Borský 1941 - , directed by Karel Špelina 1941 - , directed by Miroslav Cikán 1942 - , directed by Martin Frič 1942 - , directed by Vladimír Slavínský 1942 - , directed by Václav Binovec 1942 - , directed by Otakar Vávra