Vladimír Ráž - The Story of the First Lover

Vladimír Ráž – say this name and the response will be unanimous: King Miroslav from Bořivoj Zeman's immortal fairy tale, The Proud Princess. However, it would be somewhat unfair to place this actor solely in the cinematic pigeonhole labelled “Handsome and Brave Princes”. Vladimír Ráž was one of the few who managed to transition from dashing, romantic leads to character roles that come with middle and older age.

With this book, we would like to pay a certain debt – although more than ten years have passed since his sudden death, his admirers have not yet had the chance to read a book charting his life and artistic career. We have tried to present Vladimír Ráž not only as an actor, but also as a person. You will read about his relationship with his mother, his boyhood mischief, his first loves, and his fondness for travel, motoring, and women – the latter of which accompanied him throughout his life. After a short marriage to actress Alexandra Myšková, King Miroslav fell in love with Princess Krasomila not just on the silver screen, and this summer romance, which grew into a fateful relationship, left no one around them indifferent, especially not Alena Kohoutová's (later Vránová) then-husband, Pavel Kohout. The passages dedicated to the clash of two cocks (or Kohouts?) over the beautiful Alena are among the most interesting in the entire book. No less captivating, however, is the depiction of Vladimír Ráž's last relationship, his difficult decisions about roles in politically-influenced films of the era, the circumstances behind the creation of the great roles with which he forever enriched our theatre and our cinema… There are also reminiscences from public figures, contemporary reviews, as well as a register of his film, theatre, radio, and dubbing roles.

We hope that this book will be a small, but not insignificant, piece of the mosaic that the great actor and unforgettable man, Vladimír Ráž, assembled in our hearts.