When the Czech Rooster Crowed at Communism: The Story of Jara Kohout

Visitors to the famed Vysehrad cemetery in Prague might see a gravestone with a tragic comic face and the engraved words:

JARA KOHOUT

*9.XII.1904  +23.X.1994

HEREC

HEREC is the Czech word for actor. Who was Jara Kohout? The life of Jara Kohout and the role he played in the Cold War will be examined briefly below.

Early Life

Jara (Jaroslav) Kohout was born on December 19, 1904 in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family was well to do and as a child, Kohout studied violin and dancing. He made his first stage appearance, when he was eight years old. Jara Kohout had red hair and his name, coincidently, translates into English as “rooster”, which became his nickname throughout his long entertainment career.

When Kohout was seventeen, he co-founded a student cabaret group called “Sketch,” and his stage career was set in stone.  He eventually had his own movie theater, a wine bar and a film studio. He appeared in his first film, a silent movie, in 1922. By the time WW II broke out, he had appeared in over 60 films in Czechoslovakia and was very popular for his comic portrayals of ordinary people.

During the German occupation of Prague in World War II, Kohout was arrested and interrogated in Pancik prison. Reportedly, a German SS officer, who had admired his films, arranged for him to be released. Kohout then worked on the local radio station in Prague performing non-offensive, nonpolitical sketches. After the war ended, Kohout drove around Czechoslovakia performing in local theaters.

In 1948, the Communist controlled Ministry of Information tried to get him to support the regime; he refused. Kohout was accused of “obstructing the Communist program of re-educating Czech youth,” and his theater was closed down. One of Kohout’s daughters had a boyfriend named Willi Schick, who was to play a major role in Kohout’s life.  But first, who was Willi Schick?

William (Willi) Schick

William (Willi) Schick was born in 1920 to a Jewish family in Prague.  At the outbreak of World War II, his father Leopold Schick, who was Hungarian, attempted to get immigration papers from the Hungarian Embassy in Prague for the family.  Reportedly, when police confronted him he ran, was shot in the back and died.

Schick, his brother and mother were sent to the Teresin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp in Czechoslovakia in 1941, his mother followed in 1942.  His brother joined them in 1943.  In December 1943, he and his brother were then sent to the concentration Camp B2B, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Poland, where his mother was later sent. They had a one-day reunion before being again separated. Only after the end of World War II did he learn that she died later during the typhus epidemic in Auschwitz.

Schick twice escaped the gas chamber: the first time was when he was scheduled to march to the death chamber, but the gas system did not work. The second time was when he was in a group of prisoners that was displaced in line by the arrival of 10,000 Hungarian Jews, who died within 72 hours. Schick and his brother afterwards stood before Joseph Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor nicknamed the “Angel of Death.” Mengele decided Schick and his brother were still healthy enough to work and were not gassed.  

In 1944, he and about 500 other Czechoslovak Jews were sent to a slave labor camp near Dresden, Germany.  In April 1945, he and his brother and the others went on a ”death march“ to Mauthausen concentration camp 900 miles away in Austria.  The war ended before they reached the infamous camp.

After World War Two, Willi Schick and his brother returned to Prague, where they were given an apartment by the new democratic government, which survived only until 1948, when the Communists took over. Schick, who was fluent in English and other languages, found a job with Czechoslovak airlines but because he refused to join the Communist party in 1948, he lost both his job and apartment. 

Schick and Kohout decided to escape Czechoslovakia to the West. It was a time of the completion of Soviet domination of East Europe, the Berlin airlift, the Marshall Plan, and the Iron Curtain. Eastern, Central, and Western Europe were physically divided by barbed wire, armed patrols, land mines and guard towers. Leaving Czechoslovakia was practically impossible.

In a Prague cafe, Schick met a man from the Czech “underground,” who told him he could arrange for their escape to the American Zone in West Germany for $400 per person. Kohout paid for their escape.

Escape Through the Iron Curtain

As the story goes, a friend and theatrical agent had arranged for a 3rd October 1948 guest appearance by Kohout for customs officials in the town As, where then West Germany, East Germany and Czechoslovakia came together. In October 1948, they all took a train to the town. Schick was listed on the program as the piano player in the cabaret show.

Kohout performed in the play “That’s Our Backyard,” before three hundred customs officers and their wives. Kohout was dressed in a rooster’s costume for his role. At the intermission, Kohout run away from the makeshift theater, still dressed in costume as a rooster, into the forest to the border, where he met an underground member. He remained dressed in costume, in case that if he were caught, he would pretend to be “crazy.  He made his way through the border with the help of an underground guide and finally succeeded in joining his family.  

Schick had become separated from the Kohouts, but after crossing into Germany by himself, he rejoined them a few days later.

In Germany Kohout and his family were sent to the refugee camp in Ludwigsburg. To support them, Kohout traveled to other 2displaced persons” camps entertaining Czech refugees to earn a little money. Schick played the straight man to Kohout’s comedy.

Radio Diffusion Francaise in Paris, which was then broadcasting to Czechoslovakia, offered Jara Kohout a job and the family moved to Paris. He continued his stage career and performed in cabaret clubs, while broadcasting satirical and anti-Communist programs. In 1951, Pavel Tigrid sent him an invitation to join Radio Free Europe’s “Voice of Free Czechoslovakia,” which he accepted. The family then moved to Munich, Germany.

Willi Schick went to Munich in 1948 and worked three years as a translator for the U.S. Army, before emigrating to the United States in March 1951.

Radio Free Europe and Camp Valka

Two of Kohout’s Radio Free Europe programs in Munich were programs “Cafe de l’Europe” and “Camp Valka.” In October 1951, the largest refugee camp in Bavaria was Camp Valka in Nuremberg-Langwasser, with over a thousand persons from 28 countries.  Latvian and Estonian “displaced persons,” who had lived at the camp until 1949 named it Valka after a town that divided into two parts on the Latvian-Estonian border -- a symbol of friendship. 

The March 10, 1952, issue of Life magazine contained a photo-essay about Kohout, his daughter Alena and other actors entertaining at Camp Valka: “Life Goes to a Radio Party for Refugees: Czechs put on show to heckle the Reds.”  One of his jokes was: “Why is the Red Army called 'Red?'  Because it is blushing in shame for its founder Trotsky was a capitalist.”

The microphone and pennant with the initials RFE were visible in three of the Life magazine photographs. The article went on:

Kohout’s daughter Alena joined him for the Camp Valka performances and one photo in Life shows them demonstrating, “How Communists dance is burlesques ... to a boogie-woogie number, Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” A poster on the wall at Camp Valka contained the message: “As you at home have been grateful for all news, so today people in Czechoslovakia wait for words of hope.”

Kohout’s daughter Alena joined him for the Camp Valka performances and one photo in Life shows them demonstrating, “How Communists dance is burlesques ... to a boogie-woogie number, Chattanooga Choo-Choo.” A poster on the wall at Camp Valka contained the message: “As you at home have been grateful for all news, so today people in Czechoslovakia wait for words of hope.”


His show was recorded every second Monday and broadcast to Czechoslovakia over Radio Free Europe. Kohout and his daughter are seen here in the Munich studies of RFE before a live audience:

Exile Life in the USA

In 1952, Kohout and his family emigrated to the Untied States and Kohout joined Radio Free Europe in New York.  The November 1952 issue of entertainment magazine Billboard contained this reference to his arrival: “Jara Kohout, Czech comic and Iron Curtain refugee, is in the U.S. to make radio and TV appearances on behalf of Radio Free Europe.”

The March 1953 issue of Changing Times magazine had this to say about Kohout and Radio Free Europe:

How to get the messages through? Well, here’s one way. You get hold of Jara Kohout, who before he escaped from the communist cops, used to be a sort of Bob Hope in his native Prague. You stand Jara in front of a radio microphone in Munich, in free Germany, and you say to him, ‘its all yours. Go ahead and perform.’ So Jara performs. He tells jokes, sings songs, and rips the arrogant communist leaders with satire. 

A few hundred miles to the east, his listeners huddle around dozen of softly playing radio sets, and they listen. When he is through, they smile, and they know that beyond the Curtain there are people who believe with them that the day of freedom will come. 

His Radio Free Europe radio program in New York was “Fun Time,” broadcast four times a week. Also, on Sunday afternoons, “Kohout’s Cabaret” was “a must” in Czechoslovakia for those who risked their jobs and freedom by listening to RFE. The radio programs were taped in RFE studios in New York and flown to Munich for transmission over the Iron Curtain. Here are examples of his humor that appealed to his listeners behind the Iron Curtain:

Have you heard about the shortage of doctors in Czechoslovakia. It’s awful. They’re so short of doctors that a thousand workmen were lined up along the tracks at a certain railway station the other day and commanded by the local radio, “Everybody strip to the waist and put your tongue.” All was ready, an express train zipped by. Looking out at the men from one of the train windows was the Czech minister of health. After the train had passed, the local radio announced, “You have just passed the health checkup. Everybody has been found fit for hard labor.”

Dentists have a hard time in Czechoslovakia now because everyone keeps his mouth shut.

The love of the Czech people hold for the Soviet Union is illustrated by the following story. It seems that there was an old tree growing in the middle of a busy road, was an obstacle to traffic—but nobody had the heart to chop it down. Then one night somebody fastened a sign on it reading, “This tree is the Property of the Soviet Union.”  In the morning there was not a chip of the tree left in sight.

The secret police frequently go into the churches behind the Iron Curtain with microphones to find out whom the people are praying for.

I don’t know that Boy Scout trick of finding directions with a watch, but if I slowly swing around with my watch extended like this, some Communist is bound to sneak up and make off with it.  That will be the East, we’ll go the opposite way.

The Communist press in Czechoslovakia warned readers not to tune in “this capitalist clown.”

In December 1953, the Crusade for Freedom released a press photograph of Kohout standing before the RFE microphone and holding a guitar.  The caption read, in part: "RADIO FREE EUROPE SATIRE ... One of his specialities is to listen to Red newscasts and then compose satirical songs about Communist news items which he broadcasts back to his homeland an hour or so later."

Attention Comrades

In 1954, Viking Press published a satirical book with the extraordinary long title: Attention Comrades! The Party will hold an educational meeting tonight.  Attendance is purely voluntary.  The Party will record the names of those absent for future reference. American journalist Morton Sontheimer wrote the text, and the book contained photographs of Jara Kohout making “funny faces” to go along with the text. The November 1954 issue of Free Europe Press’ journal News from Behind the Iron Curtain contained this reference to the book: “A picture story with photographs of Jara Kohout, the famous Czechoslovak comedian, who has been working with Radio Free Europe in Munich since his escape from his native land.  Mr. Kohout provides facial reactions to “typical lines from Communist propaganda in the satellites states.”

Jara Kohout wrote this message in the book: “There are many scarcities behind the Iron Curtain, but two of the most important are truth and humor. ... Free Europe through Crusade for Freedom. They hope — and I hope — that you will keep it strong.“  One newspaper account of the book wrote that Kohout brought with him when he escaped

1.   a desire to keep entertaining his Czech fans, which he does via Radio Free Europe,

2.   a contempt for Red political meetings, some of whose favorite slogans he satirizes – the way other Czechs would if they dared.

During one on his visits to Cleveland, Ohio, he received the ceremonial Golden Key to the City.  Jara Kohout was also a member of the Czechoslovak Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Acting Career in USA

Stage

In New York, May 8, 1960, Kohout was one of the performers of “The Actor’s Co-op,” with Barbra Streisand in the off-Broadway adaptation of  Czech Capek brother’s play The Insect Comedy (The World We Live in). Barbara Streisand, then 18 years old played the part of a butterfly, a messenger and a “Second Moth” in her acting debut. The play was not successful and closed after only 3 performances. Radio Free Europe reportedly broadcast a radio version of the play a few weeks later.

In 1967, Kohout performed in the Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass’ off-Broadway play The Wicked Cooks (Die boesen Koeche) in which he played the senior cook.  Czechoslovakian-born Vasek Simek directed the play. The play was performed only 16 times between January 23, 1967, and February 5, 1967 at the Orpheum Theater.

Kohout was in another unsuccessful off-Broadway play A Phantasmoria Historie of D. Johan Fausten Magister, which saw only one performance at the Truck and Warehouse Theater on April 23, 1973. Vasek Simek wrote and directed this play. One of his co-actors was Danny DeVito, whom we will meet again below.

The Vancouver, Canada, Association of British Columbia was starting a local Czech theater group in 1976.  Kohout offered to go there and perform in his famous musical comedy from the 1930s, On the Green Meadow.  But the local group had to cast and rehearse the play before he would go there. That was done, and Kohout performed on November 4, 1977, before a packed house of 400 Czechs and Slovaks in the Metro Theater.  The audience “gave great ovations and multiple curtain calls not only to the histrionics of the aging Kohout, but mainly to friends and neighbors appearing on stage.”

Movies

Kohout had support roles in four Hollywood films: What’s So Bad About Feeling Good in 1968, Taking Off in 1971 and The Comeback Trail in 1982. He had a role as a “Soviet delegate” in the 1968 Hollywood comedy, What’s So Bad About Feeling Good. 

In the 1971 cult film The Projectionist, he played the Candy Man and Mad Scientist.  In this film, he actually recounts the story of how he escaped from Communist controlled Czechoslovakia.

Kohout also had a small part in the 1971 film Taking Off—the first Hollywood film directed by Czech émigré director Milos Forman, who left Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion in August 1968..  Forman also wanted Kohout to be in the 1975 classic film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  But, reportedly, Radio Free Europe would not release Kohout to do it and the role was given to fellow actor Danny DeVito, who had the performed the role in the 1971 off-Broadway stage version of the Ken Kesey novel. In the 1982 comedy film, The Comeback Trail, he played a German film producer.

Television

In January 1962, Kohout appeared in the Armstrong Circle Theater television docu-drama about the daily workings of Radio Free Europe: "Window on the West." The host of the television show, Ron Cochran, also discussed the impact of Radio Free Europe with exiles from five East European countries.

Return to Prague

After the Velvet Revolution and collapse of Communism in Czechoslovakia in November 1989, Kohout returned to Prague on April 3, 1990, after 30 years in exile.

In 1991, he was interviewed on Czech television about his life in the theater, cabaret, films, USA and he sang some songs.

His first wife died in the USA in 1979, after 53 years of marriage.  In 1992, Kohout married for a second time to a journalist. They collaborated on a book of interviews The Little Big Comedian that appeared in the Czech language posthumously in 1994.

Jara Kohout appeared on television, radio, went on lecture tours, published books, and appeared in two Czech films, before he died of prostate cancer at age 89 on October 23, 1994 in Prague.

In February 2010 Kohout’s daughter Alena received an award a silver commemorative medal from the Senate of the Czech Republic for assisting her father as an actor and for “actively participating in compatriot life (in the USA), in which she remains today.”

For more information:

In addition to the movie, The Projectionist, excerpts from many of his early films in Czechoslovakia can be view at www.youtube.com e.g. this extract from 1937:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sS_HyAH6_4

27 recordings of Kohout's RFE programs "From My Notebooks" are in the RFE/RL Collection, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California.  Two of the recordings have been digitalized for the Czechoslovak Service collection: 

Side A label reads:
RFE
FROM MY NOTEBOOK No. 54
LEV A MEDVED [The Lion and the Bear]
14'38"

Side B label reads:
RFE
FROM MY NOTEBOOK No. 55
LIDOVY SLABIKAR [People's Primer]
14'37"