Lída Baarová's villa looks like a ship. But it did not become a real home for her

Despite her youth, she was already considered a real star in Czechoslovakia. Seventeen-year-old Ludmila Babková was kicked out of the conservatory in 1931 because of prohibited filming, but Lída Baarová, as she changed her name for the silver screen, then the roles kept pouring in. She managed to shoot six films a year and appeared in blockbusters alongside Oldřich Nový and the king of comedians Vlasta Burian.

The beauty with captivating eyes drove many colleagues crazy. It is said that Vlasta Burian wanted to divorce because of her, while the charming suitor Hugo Haas encountered resistance from Mrs. Babková.

When an offer came from Germany in 1935, the young actress did not think twice. After all, it was a step towards a career on a European scale, for a much larger audience.

Lída gained popularity with her first film, the romantic film Barkarola. She especially caught the eye of the representative of the main male role, Gustav Fröhlich. At that time, he was already divorced from the singer Gitta Alpárová, whose Jewish origin hindered his career in the atmosphere of Germany at the time.

A house with two apartments

When Lída's parents - father Karel worked as an official in the Prague municipality and mother Ludmila sang in the opera choir of the National Theater - looked for a charming plot of land in a well-known residential area of ​​Prague, she had their daughter even on the verge of joining the Hollywood company MGM.

Lída Baarová refused the contract, she did not want to build a career overseas from the very beginning. Many years later, she called this decision her biggest mistake in life. In Germany, however, in addition to her star career, another love affair kept her going. Reich Minister of Popular Education and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels fell in love with the charming actress.

Lída saw her parents' efforts for the first time only after her forced return to Prague. However, in 1937, when Babko received a building permit, this was still a long way off. The documents prove that the actress participated in the financing of the construction, for which she took a loan of one hundred thousand crowns from the Municipal Savings Bank of Prague. The soul of the family house project, which included one apartment for the parents and another for the famous daughter, was Mrs. Ludmila.

It was she who approached the architect Ladislav Žák, who built a functionalist villa for the director Martin Frič in Prague's Hodkovičky. Mrs. Babková liked the construction so much that she canceled the already agreed project, even at the price of an unpleasant farewell to the architect Čestmír Šlapeta. She certainly did not regret her decision. Architect Žák gave the four-story family house with two apartments the shape of an ocean liner.

The clear heights of the rooms are low, a little over two and a half meters at most, giving the interior a pleasant atmosphere typical of ship cabins. This is further emphasized by the round windows on the north side, the rounded wall "on the bow" and the mansard roof, which became the captain's bridge. The sun terrace on the roof had access from the apartment of the actress, who reportedly liked to sunbathe on it. Construction was completed in less than a year.

Destruction through beauty

In the summer of 1938, Lída had to leave Germany, she was desperate and thought about suicide. On the orders of Reich Chancellor and leader of the Nazi NSDAP, Adolf Hitler, the doors of film studios were closed to her. Goebbels allegedly had to give the leader his word of honor that he would immediately end the racially inappropriate affair and never meet the actress again.

The fact is that the Gestapo had been monitoring Baar's phone for some time and had a perfect overview of the frequent calls to the minister in love, who called her Lidushenko and was thinking about divorcing his wife Magda. Goebbels kept the promise he made to Hitler until his death in 1945.

It is difficult to judge with the lapse of years how the young actress perceived the situation around her and the methods of the Nazis. Above all, she wanted to make films, but not only she, but her entire family, paid for the romantic adventure with the Nazi minister until the end of her life. "Against my will, I got involved in history. And she paid cruelly for it," she defended herself years later.

After returning to Prague, Lída started making Czech films again, and not bad ones at all. She won the National Award in 1940 for the comedy The Girl in Blue. Director Otakar Vávra gave her a role in the psychological film Turbina. And she finally moved into her apartment in the villa on Hanspaulka. She had a bedroom on the ground floor and a living room on the upper floor so that she could enjoy the wonderful view of Hradčany.

However, a beautiful house does not mean a happy coexistence. The Babkys' marriage was far from idyllic, quarrels were the order of the day. Mrs. Ludmila took her lost career as an opera singer hard, she even tried to commit suicide several times.

Because Lída escaped from the suffocating environment in time, her mother transferred her frustrations to her sister Zorka. She was seven years younger than Lída, and she too entered the film world very soon under the name Zorka Janů. Already at the age of nineteen, for example, she starred in the then-famous films Doctor Hegel's Patient and Jana Kosinová's Past.

During the occupation, she became a member of the troupe of the Theater in Vinohrady. However, the constant comparison with the older Lída and the nervously unstable mother behind her back did not help her to build a healthy self-esteem. Uncertain Zorka struggled with diets, suffered from migraines and unhappy loves.

Goodbye in Venice

Lída's domestic film career was interrupted in 1943 by a ban on acting in films shot in the then protectorate, which came from the German administration. The enterprising actress found new employment in Italy, she even starred alongside the future famous director Vittorio De Sica. In Venice, at the premiere of the film Annelie, she saw Goebbels for the last time. It is said that their eyes met only briefly, Lída recalled years later.

After the Allied troops landed in Italy, they had to return to Prague before the end of the war in 1944. However, relations in the family villa were already so tense at that time that the actress preferred to move to the Esplanade Hotel. In addition, the apartment could not be properly heated due to limited supplies of coal.

The pampered diva had to swallow a bitter pill, the first of many, while filming the detective film The Sign of the Cat. It was said that it was already clear to everyone that filming would extend into peacetime and that at that time the star Baarová would not be desirable because of her connections with the Nazis. According to the testimony of some actors, the scenes with Lída were postponed and ended up being shot on an empty camera.

After the end of the war, the experienced Martin Frič took over the direction, all the scenes with Lída, who was replaced by the novice Dana Medřická, were reshot, and the film was called the Thirteenth Precinct. But we're getting a little ahead of it.

Events took a dramatic turn with the imminent arrival of the Red Army. Lída fled to Germany, where she was interned by the American occupation authorities and handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities in September 1945. Arrests and investigations into alleged collaboration followed. The actress spent about a year and a half in prison. Years later, she remembered how she had to wash the clothes of hanged fellow prisoners.

A family tragedy

On Christmas Day 1946, Lída was released following the decision of the People's Court. Among other things, she was helped by the testimony of one of the investigated Gestapo officers, who identified her as a person from the list of politically unreliable people.

It was a sad return to the family villa. Ms. Babková, Lída's mother, died of a heart attack during one of the interrogations in Bartolomejska. Sister Zorka could not bear the unfair judgments of those around her and her colleagues when she had to leave the Vinohradské Theater because of her "collaborator sister". Since then, she did not eat, did not talk to anyone, and withdrew into herself.

She ended her life at the age of just twenty-four by jumping from the window of the family villa in March 1946. Lída's father struggled with serious health problems, which resulted in the amputation of his leg. When Lída returned to Hanspaulka after her release, the two of them remained in the house alone.

In 1947, Lída married puppeteer Jan Kopecky. When they learned that a new investigation of Lída was being planned after the February coup, they fled to Austria. The union with the volatile Jan was far from harmonious. Therefore, their paths soon parted, he headed to Argentina, she decided to try her luck again in Italian film studios. And she succeeded again. She played, for example, in the award-winning film Darmošlapová directed by Federico Fellini. She also appeared in several Spanish films.

She ended her film career at the end of the 1950s, but continued to work in the theater in Austria. She found her soulmate in doctor Kurt Lundwall, with whom she spent more than twenty happy years. After his death, she decided to stay in Salzburg, but she did not lose contact with her homeland, mainly thanks to her stepmother and close friend Marcela Babková.

Painful memories

Marie Nepovímová, only four years younger, was Lída's great admirer. Like Lída, she wanted to embark on an acting career and joined the Regional Theater in Kutná Hora as Marcela Nepovímová. When Baar was arrested, a kind-hearted fan came to visit her in prison. The actress then asked her for help for her father, who was left alone on crutches in the villa after his leg was amputated. Marcela took care of the sick Mr. Babka.

She was taken aback by a marriage proposal from a man who was thirty-three years her senior, but eventually accepted it. When Lída emigrated, Marcela was the only person who stood by him. They stayed in the villa, Lída's apartment was taken over by the national administration in 1948. Four years later, however, the Babks also had to move out.

An almost 70-year-old disabled pensioner was given a frozen cottage in the border area, which had been empty for years. The self-sacrificing Marcela worked in the Jablonec jewelry store and took care of her husband until his death in 1965. In the meantime, the army took up residence in their Prague villa, the Ministry of the National Army created three military apartments there.

In 1958, the villa came under the management of OPBH. There is no need to describe the state of the interior after unprofessional and unapproved modifications. After her husband's death, Mrs. Marcela Babková became the owner of half of the villa, the rest was confiscated. When Prague mayor Ludvík Černý showed interest in the building, they agreed on a sale at an estimated price. The mayor provided Ms. Babk with a studio apartment and a job in Prague.

At the end of the 1960s, Ludvík Černý took ownership of the entire house and lived in the villa with his family as recently as 2003. At that time, it was already a listed building in a very neglected state. During the renovation, the new owner Tibor Nemeš teamed up with architect Ladislav Lábus, who returned the villa to its First Republic shine and nobility.

Until her death in 2000, Lída Baarová never visited the villa on Hanspaulka again. After 1989, she was not even interested in returning it. Too many painful memories were associated with her.

White steamer in Hodkovičky The villa that inspired Lída Baarová's mother and which was built by architect Ladislav Žák for director Martin Frič is located in Prague's Hodkovičky. It resembles a white ship firmly anchored on a slope above the Vltava River and is rightly considered one of the finest functionalist houses in Prague. Ladislav Žák is also signed by three functionalist houses Na Babě. Frič's villa is the most similar non-traditional villa in Vysočany, which he designed for the aircraft designer and co-owner of the Avia factory Miroslav Hajn. It is not difficult to guess that the inspiration for both buildings, as in the case of Lída Baarová's villa, was the shape of ocean liners. They also have elegant captain's bridges. The villa that Žák built on Hanspaulka for Baarová and her father Karel Babka was his last realized project. After the war, for ideological reasons and because of disagreements with builders, he devoted himself to furniture design and landscape design.