Božena Němcová: Grandma

While most actors get to the leading roles sooner or later and then tend to gradually decline, Jarmila Kurandová got to her life and last role at the age of eighty, in the theatre and in front of the camera and in a radio production. In 1971, she embodied the theatrical form of Božena Němcová's Grandmother at the Mahen Theatre. In the same year she was cast in this role by film director Antonín Moskalyk. Even though the reception of his film was not clearly favourable, for Jarmila Kurandová, Grandma was a huge success and became as indelibly etched in the memory of the audience as Terezie Brzková had been all those years ago. Radio adaptation of a theatre production by the National Theatre Brno from 1972. "Our communication about the radio version of the character began at the soup with foxes and continued after her return to Brno with an amazing two weeks of meetings in the studio, where not only the radio production team, but all the actors who collaborated on the production were repeatedly subjected to her human charm and extremely professional preparation day after day. Even though our next upcoming collaboration never happened, because Jarmila Kurandová died shortly afterwards, I still carry a picture of a neat old lady with me to this day, waiting outside the studio for a while, when we start filming, I come out of my study on the third floor and Mrs Jarmila smiles at me and says "Little Johnny, we need to get on with it, we have so much work to do today! "I see that face and hear that voice and just reaffirm to myself after all these years that such encounters leave us with a feeling of happiness for the rest of our lives. " (from the memories of the director of the radio production Jan Tůma)