When speaking the name Zdeňko Srstka, many people think of, for example, the legendary line “Hliník se odšígál do Humpolka!” from the now iconic film “Marečka, hand me a pen!” (1976) in his unforgettable performance. Zdeněk Srstka played more than two hundred small film and television roles, was an athlete, a stuntman and a supporter of abandoned animals. In private, he lived a bohemian life for many years, which was full of exuberant parties and beautiful women. His engaging life story would surely be the subject of a book, so let’s recall at least some moments from it.
As a child, he wanted to be an Eskimo
Zdeněk Srstka was born as the first-born son of the Srstkas on September 26, 1935 in Prague. His father František came from the small village of Rovečná in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, from where he went to work in Prague. Here he opened Srstko’s butcher shop and married the love of his life, Maria, who sold in the shop.
Little Zdeněk grew up in a harmonious family environment together with his younger brother František, who was born in 1941. As a child, he often imagined that when he grew up, he would become an Eskimo, an Indian or a Robinson. Zdenek’s parents led him not only to sports, but also to music from an early age. In Sokol, he did gymnastics and as a teenager he played football for Slavia. In addition, the musically gifted Zdeněk learned to play the piano, guitar and violin.
As the son of a tradesman, he was not allowed to study
When the war ended, the Srstka family fell on hard times. The communists seized their business and imprisoned Zdenek’s father for a year. This closed the path to a better education for young Zdenek. It was out of the question for him to study, for example, at a gymnasium or graduate from school with a high school diploma. So he decided to train as an electromechanic at ČKD. After two years, the company proposed him as a candidate for evening industrial studies, where he eventually successfully graduated in the field of power engineering.
From 1968, he worked for the next 33 years as the chief administrator of CTU university dormitories and spent the next 33 years in this capacity. After that, he also tried running a business for a while, and in addition to his other activities, he also ran a restaurant in Strahov. In addition, he also earned his living as a casual actor, stuntman and later a presenter. But Zdenek never saw these activities as work, he always considered them more like his interesting hobbies.
He started weightlifting because of bullying
Sport accompanied Zdenek practically his whole life. However, he got to the career of a top athlete by a bit of a detour. At school, he sometimes faced bullying from his classmates, who mocked him because of his appearance. And that’s when he decided he wasn’t going to be a “hardcore” anymore. He first started weightlifting and soon joined the wrestlers as well. At that time, his first sporting successes appeared, which he collected both here and abroad. Zdeněk later devoted himself to boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling.
Thanks to his tenacity and great performances, he made it to the national team as a professional weightlifter. As a multiple champion of the republic in weightlifting, he won a bronze medal for his country at the European Championships in Katowice in 1957, and in 1960 he represented Czechoslovakia at the XVII. summer Olympic Games in Rome, where he finished in ninth place out of twenty participating weightlifters.
He was able to entertain the audience
Although Zdeněk Srstka did not stand out with great oratorical skills, his acting performance was nevertheless unforgettable. Let’s recall, for example, his portrayal of the janitor Bedříšk in the film Dissolved and Discharged (1984), who keeps uttering the single word “ducks” with a stony face during a tour of the duck farm. His conception of the song Chau, lásko, which he “sang” together with the actress Jaroslava Hanušová in a unique way, in the program Maybe even a magician will come, is certainly worth mentioning. In short, Zdeněk was able to entertain people and enjoyed great popularity thanks to this.
The list of his film and television roles would be really long, but the audience could only rarely see him on the boards that mean the world. In total, he played in the theater only about four times, and once he was also cast in the role of the soldier Švejk. Zdeněk used to have problems with memorizing the text, which he was well aware of, which is why he preferred to avoid performing in the theater.
Protector of abandoned animals
Since the mid-1990s, viewers could see Zdeňko Srstka, who was a great animal lover, for many years in a program dedicated to helping abandoned dogs and cats. During its moderation, the actor alternated with the singer Marta Kubišová. Together they then tried to find a new home for the animals from the shelters. Although Zdenek’s speech became the target of many jokes, this does not change the fact that he did a huge amount of good and meritorious work in this show.
About his love for animals he spoke in one of the interviews, his son Jiří, a trained lawyer, university teacher, long-time director of the National Theater and then director of the theater and literary agency Dilia.
He still claimed his village roots and had qualms about being a city person. So he compensated by raising animals. First the pigs he raised in Břevnov, later he moved everything to Klánovice on a plot of land between millionaire villas, where it also smelled nice. The neighbors weren’t too happy about it. He kept some animals for food, they were then killed, which he did not like. In his prime, he had two pigs, twenty hens, fifteen rabbits, broilers, a goat, dogs, cats, and pigeons in Klánovice.
prof. JUDr. Jiří Srstka, son of Zdenek Srstka
A tough guy with a good heart
From acting, the shapely athlete was only a step away from becoming a stuntman. He first became one in the 1962 films The Death of Tarzan and The Fool from Xeenemünde, for which assistant director Tomáš Svoboda was looking for a group of tough brawlers. Then in 1964 it was his turn to perform in the famous musical western parody called Lemonade Joe or Horse Opera, which attracted many other athletes to the ranks of stuntmen.
Zdeněk was able to earn a decent amount of money with his stunts, but as his son Jiří revealed: “He earned a lot and wasted a lot anyway, but he enjoyed himself and certainly didn’t worry about it.” He also had a good heart and contributed not only to animals in need, but also to single mothers , hosted friends and loaned people money. Zdeněk dedicated himself to stunts for a respectable thirty years, and for the next sixteen years he worked in this field as a successful trainer.
He led a bohemian life
Zdeněk was married twice and took a forty-year break between the two marriages. His first wife was Jana Martínková, whom he met during his studies at night school. They got married at the beginning of 1958, and in December the married couple had a son Jiří. However, Zdenek’s frequent separation from his family due to training and representation abroad took its toll.
Jane ran out of patience with her husband and the marriage broke up after three years. Zdeněk then lived the life of a bachelor for forty years and enjoyed freedom to the fullest. He participated in exuberant parties after the end of filming and could not even complain about the lack of interest of beautiful women. On the contrary, many ladies at that time had a great weakness for the well-built stuntman with a good nature and succumbed to his seductions.
His second wife was Alena Dvořáková, a sixteen-year-old former laboratory assistant, whom Zdeněk married after seven years of dating. The couple lived a happy life in a cottage with a garden in Klánovice on the outskirts of Prague until Zdenek’s death on July 29, 2019, when he died after a long illness at the age of 83.
On July 29 this year, we commemorate a sad anniversary, five years since the death of Zdeňek Srstka, a kind person and good-natured “hump”, who always tried to put a smile on people’s faces.
CHOCHOLA, Ludek. Eight lives of Zdenek Srstka. Prague: Format, 1999. ISBN 80-86155-39-0.