How the famous actor convincingly "took off" the hard accent of the Dalmatian Zagora.

Speaking about the filming of the series "Beggars and Sons", Fabijan Šovagović told how he best learned the hard speech of the Imotski Krajina from Stjepan Puljić, a native of Imoćina, who, as a boy, played the character of Kikaš's grandson Matan.

Fabijan used to remember how he would always listen attentively to Stjepan to hear how each word was pronounced and then - imitate him.

Thus, in a short time, Fabijan managed to faithfully shape and act out the character of the old man Kikaš, a beggar who traditionally continued the begging profession of his family by visiting villages and performing scams. Fabijan's role as Kikaš is an anthology role in the series, which is considered one of the best television productions from this region.

A convincing beggar

Fabijan

Mirogoj

- I once said that my father left me his hands and that's where it all started. – wrote this good-natured Slavonian.

Fabijan Šovagović is one of the greatest actors of Croatian theater. In the multitude of roles he played, a few of them became anthological. Kikaš from "Beggars and Sons", Mile Vrbica from "Where the Wild Pigs Go", Matija Gubec or "Šima" from "Sokol" and "Đuka Begović" are just some of the roles that shaped Croatian film and theater.

Fabijan was born in the village of Ladimirevci near Valpovo. In the place that, some fifty years later, would become the stage for his own literary work, drama and film "Sokol didn't love him".

- My father and mother had four of us. Two brothers and two sisters. My uncle had a daughter and a son. We all lived in one house. We had a big room made of alleys where there was a stove and where we - all the children - slept. Grandma had her own little room near the kitchen. There were two bedrooms where our parents and uncle's married couple, aunt and uncle slept. - said Fabijan in his "Acting Records".

When Fabijan was only seven years old, he lost his father. Three years later, his mother also died. She wanted to give him "to pops" because he was the youngest, but also intelligent. After the death of their mother, the uncle took his brother's children "under his wing", for which Fabijan was forever grateful. He also sent him to school.

- In addition to all the poverty during the war, he fulfilled my mother's and father's wish to send me to school, and there is also the logic that as the youngest, I was weak for the field, because there were older people who were a little stronger for agricultural work, both during the war and after the war. Even then, my uncle's son could lift a sack of fifty kilograms of grain on his back, but where would I do that? - wrote Fabijan.

Fabijan soon enrolled in the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Osijek, but he did not do well there. Since he was a child, he was troubled by mathematics, so he had a -2 in statics! Instead of computer operations, Fabijan was interested in acting.

– I read the magazine "Film" for mathematics, a broad magazine, so they moved me to the first desk from the last. By punishment, which I passed on to a kind of youthful love. I already read a lot about my current profession, so later I just expanded that knowledge. Construction is my hobby today, just as theater and film were my hobbies in the past. –

Namely, Fabijan acted as an amateur in his native Ladimirevci, and while studying in Osijek, he continued with his hobby. Then, in 1953, he ambitiously enrolled in acting studies at the Academy of Theater Arts in Zagreb.

- The funeral of Dujšin and Nazor, I read at the time, stretched from the theater to Mirogoj. Osijek had its triumphal arches, flags in the dust of which I slept on the floor, in the Youth Committee, watched, looked better at the plays, was late for the unheated winter steam trains, which always left earlier than the plays ended. Reprimands at school, awards in amateur acting, the decision to move to the big city, where poets are buried with dignity. –

And that's how it all started. Over the years, Fabijan was a member of the theater "Gavella", the national theater in Zagreb, he participated in the work of "Guest Theater", and he also worked as a freelance artist and performed at all our biggest festivals. –

Fabijan most often played psychologically complex characters. He was equally good in the roles of dark peasants and cynical intellectuals. He believed that the source of his acting personality was his father, who died prematurely.

– I once said that my father left his hands to me and it all started from there. He also left some dirt under the nails of that hand, some of his primitivism and rawness, which I don't want to erase. –

Slavonic blood

When my grandmother accompanied me to school, she would wrap fatty bread, made from pork fat, in newspaper, and then she would use the fat from the fatty bread on notebooks and books.

After the death of Fabijan's father and mother, his uncle took care of him and his siblings as his own children. Living in Slavonia, wounded by the Second World War, was difficult, but with hard work and effort it was somehow possible. He managed to send the youngest, Fabijan, to school.

"In addition to all the poverty during the war, my uncle fulfilled the wish of my mother and father to send me to school, and there is also the logic that as the youngest, I was weak for the field, because there were older ones who were a little stronger for agricultural work - war and post-war. Even then, my uncle's son could lift a sack of fifty kilograms of grain on his back, but where would I do that? So I looked after the pigs until noon, if school was in the afternoon. If the school was the other way around, then instead of pigs I went after cows, I had Šara, Milka and two heifers on average, because my brother Franja went after the ones I left for school.

When my grandmother would accompany me to school, she would wrap fatty bread, made from pork fat, in a newspaper (Hrvatski list in Osijek, or Glas Slavonije pošelje), and then she would push the fat from the fatty bread through the newspaper onto notebooks and books. A mathematics professor who once did not even want to look at his homework so as not to get dirty, even though I was hauling a bucket of seven liters of milk to Osijek for his children. He also had four children, so I am still a bad mathematician.

My brother envied me even though he knew it wasn't easy because Gutman's trains left at five in the morning and he sometimes had to get up at three at such a young age to mow the meadow and grain in Otok. It is the most beautiful meadow in Ladimirevci. We have already started courting our cows there. That same brother of the forty-fourth year, at a little over fifteen years old, was recruited as Pavelić's last regular recruitment, although that country was not regular, we found that out later," wrote the actor.

Why did Fabijan never like mathematics?

There were many anecdotes from the filming of the "Beggars and Sons" series, but Fabijan remembered one forever.

Fabijan Šovagović played the old man Kikaš in the famous Croatian series "Beggars and Sons". The period of filming this series was particularly difficult for Fabijan. Namely, he lived and performed in Zagreb at the time, so he would have to come to Imotski for filming every week.

Fabijan often flew to Split by mail plane at night in order to arrive at the filming the next day. He said that he flew so often that he remembered the faces of the flight attendants who accompanied him for the rest of his life. It was about eighty kilometers from Split to the filming location. At that time, he slept very little because he had to learn a long and demanding text in dialect, and he had to be on the set at five o'clock in the morning for the make-up artists to make his mask.

Namely, Fabijan was forty years old at the time of filming, and Kikaš, who he played, was an eighty-year-old man. That's why Fabijan had to wear an actor's mask in the hot Imot sun. Later, he recalled how he hated both the mask and the process of putting it on, which would sometimes take up to three hours. And what bothered him the most was that the mask covered everything, except for his neck! Fabijan would hate every time the camera filmed the back of his neck! Namely, his young and healthy neck would reveal Fabijan's disguise, but also his age!

There were many anecdotes from the filming, but Fabijan remembered one forever. Namely, a curious observer from the surrounding villages would sometimes find himself on the rugged set. So a man from Imo came to Fabijan dressed in the mask of old man Kikaš and asked him: - When are you going to retire, my old man? I thought you had been retired for a long, long, long time. - To which Fabijan replied: - Soon my son, only forty more years of work, and here - pension! –

About a healthy neck and retirement

Shova about the creation of the cult film: - That cousin of ours was hiding in the attic again from the Swabians, the Ustasha, and his uncle did not give him to the partisans... -

Fabijan Šovagović played the role of an officer in the Croatian Home Guard in the TV drama "Chickens" from 1968.

After filming the drama, he and director Ivo Štivčić sat down at Gavell's buffet. Fabijan began to say that he was particularly impressed by the scene in which the character of Šubić says: - I lost one son in the partisans, they sent me a thank-you note, I lost another son in the Ustashas, ​​they sent me a thank-you note, one was killed in the retreat with the Home Guards, and I won't give the fourth! –

Fabijan said that it is a true drama of a Slavonian family. He told how it was the drama of his uncle, cousin, neighbor and the whole of Slavonia. Then the idea was born in him to tell the life story of his family. Ten years later, he wrote the script for the play "Sokol didn't love him", which became a theater hit in the eighties.

- I wrote Sokol by remembering the German-Croatian situation. My uncle's journey to Dravograd and back inspired me to create my own face. To transfer my uncle's path to one of my faces. And I was lucky enough to play that face on stage 230 times! - Fabijan said twenty years later during a conversation with the great Štivčić.

Together with director Branko Schmidt, the film of the same name was shot in Fabijan's native Ladimirevci, a village not far from Valpovo. There, as a small boy, Fabijan witnessed the stories of his neighbors about the war that was raging at the time.

- It happened that the same house had several uniforms, and several times these uniforms met at the same table, and it was always more peaceful and beautiful in our house than when, by chance, those same people and those same uniforms met on the battlefield, especially at night. - wrote Fabijan in his "Acting Notes".

Fabijan also found inspiration for the grumpy horse Sokol in his own boyhood home. - He had, we had when we were young, a horse called Sokol. We all admired him, but my brother loved him the most. And uncle's son Ignja loved Sokol very much. - he explained.

Fabijan played the title role of the Slavonian peasant and father of Šima, while Fabijan gave the role of his son Benoš to his son Filip. The inspiration for the character of Benoš came from the life story of his cousin.

- That cousin of ours was hiding in the attic again from the Swabians, the Ustasha, and the uncle did not give him to the partisans, because he would have perished since the fathers of the young men who joined the partisans were arrested as hostages and taken to concentration camps. There were six of us weak, so then the uncle brought his son from the army and hid him in the attic for about five months. My grandmother kept telling me not to tell anyone about it, because we will all end up in a camp or under military court. Wherever Ignja went, we were supposed to be killed and I knew what that meant, so I kept quiet. –

Fabijan's cousin ended up in the partisans, where he died tragically. In his old age, Fabijan said that his cousin's death and his uncle's grief were his worst childhood memories.

Remembering the family tragedy, the talented actor created a script for a popular play, and later the film "Sokol didn't love him". Although the film was criticized at the time of its release due to the controversial scenes that appear in it, today it is considered one of the anthology films of Croatian production, if not its best achievement.

Sokol didn't like him

First, Fabijan laid the roof tiles on the cottage, and then he was able to marry his daughter Anja.

Excerpts from the autobiographical book "Spremište Trešnjevka" in which Tomislav Šovagović, Fabijan Šovagović's nephew, talks about his uncle:

"And you, groom, have found the day when you will get married, three meadows", uncle Fabijan slapped future son-in-law Dragan on the back, on the latifundia line.

"What to do, when the tile arrives a little before the fateful YES", the younger actor returned a sleepy look to the older one, knowing that the construction initiation does not ask for a place and time and cannot be announced from the altar as a sacrament of marriage.

"We will reach Gornji grad by evening, don't worry, pregnant women," Father Josip joined in the story. Wedding in the church of St. Marko probably could have waited, but the arrival of the blankets for the holiday home in Turopolje - it didn't.

So the actors, some with diplomas, some without, spent the wedding morning in preparatory work, and later in unloading tiles and placing them on the roof of the country house.

"We came down from the roof, looked back, looking at our victory", exclaimed Fabijan, looking forward to the latifundia residence as much as to the marriage of his daughter Anja, urging the workers to finish tidying up the tools as soon as possible, so that the groom, his brother-in-law and other relatives around could have a bath and change clothes for the ceremony of exchanging marriage vows.

I participated without lines in said comedy, ready to step in only if the main actors failed.

The couple in love decided to get married after only four days of love, and the house of the old man had been waiting for a roof tile for years.

"Well, my Mostar, you won't have a good time with the Slavonians," encouraged the father of the soon-to-be groom, expressing a specific family welcome.

Celebrating the overall victory, they left the latifundia and in the evening, in the same composition, with the obligations prescribed by the church protocol, met at the church with the Croatian checkerboard and the coat of arms of the city of Zagreb. Dragan's parents met Anji an hour or two before leaving up the hill from Mesnička Street, in amazement that muscle inflammation is a prerequisite for a good entry into marriage.

Strikan, deftly as when laying tiles, handed over his daughter and actor's heir to her chosen one, whom he had seen in high school while Dragan played Romeo in a poisonous drama at the Dubrovnik Summer Games.

The guests showered the new acting family, after the first kisses from the upper town, with songs and gastronomy in the Society of University Professors, a baroque apartment unusual for collective celebrations, during which the wedding guests eat and drink separately, each in their own room, and from time to time they go out into the corridor to sing with a musical group. the stars of the evening, no more and no less than the "Dirty Theatre".

Inspired by the success of the album "Zlatne godine", relying on the faster things of the punk past, avoiding the first wedding night ballad "Ma kog me Boga za tebe pitaju", Jasenko Houra, Mladen Bodalec and company cheered up the spouses, roof helpers and the Herzegovinian-Slavonian-Dalmatian mixture dialects and customs.

The national charge of the roof evening with the Croatian flag and the "Fairy of Velebit" suddenly chased a well-loved actor home, which did not disturb the good atmosphere in the least. After Tito's death, people spoke and sang a little more freely, no matter how carefully they kept quiet about it.

"A daughter doesn't get married and doesn't lay tiles every day," Josip's nephew patted his uncle, confirming the material of the expert committee that made joint decisions in a coordinated manner.

Sister Eva also encouraged herself, as the evening progressed, to sing with "Prljavci" as a backing vocalist, even though she was not seventeen, but only six years old, and even though it was not ice cream time, but a Hungarian woman with eight crusts, wafers and "cat's eyes". .

The bride, sure of the correctness of her hasty decision, called to the dove's song, until the traditional midnight gift-giving began, dancing with the first lady, to the rhythm of the shepherd's scent and the inevitability of the fajrunt.

The trio from the first roof line held their own with Riesling and wedding plum wine, but it was time for the children to go to rest, because they had already seen and heard too much.

The only problem, it seemed, was the loss of his father's driver's keys.

"Uncle Vanja will take you," Fabijan offered to his mother.

"Who is Vanja, uncle, what are you talking about?", Jadranka was confused.

"I see that Josip is out of the machine, and my year is ready to wait," he pointed to his acting companion, and only then did we realize that we should be taken to Jarun - Comrade Pooh from "Inspector Vink".

A native of Slavonia, a companion in the radio, television and theater buzz, he readily accepted the assumed duty, and, no matter how hard it was to say goodbye to Jaja and sister Eva, as well as the rest of the motley wedding party, we soon left the wedding party, looking for "uncle's" car.

"I left him there somewhere, his mother, he must be in this row", in the same style, the actor asked my father for a white octane friend, while the mother refrained from hiding her nervous puffing in front of the other Pooh, because she could wait until the old man found it keys, lost indefinitely.

"Now Uncle Vanja is going to take you to Nanati," said the friend of Strikan in a kind, albeit pointed voice, and I no longer knew whether it was a play, a hidden camera, a larger-than-life role, because with actors you could never tell the truth from a lie, yet from the invasion of the "Balkan Spy" ensemble on Šibenik's birthday, with costumes from the play and a wedding mood.

Driving with Vanja Drach was like that, unpredictable, winding, no less risky than Fabijan, who never looks in front of him, but rather to the right or to the left, depending on which object catches his eye, always more important than traffic lights and more decisive than "traffic signs , of our heroes".

More talkative than the old man, "uncle" recalled Sławomir Mrożek's "Emigrants", performed in the Ladimireva cinema on Valentine's Day in 1976, when Fabijan, after countless "cubicles" of brandy at his brother Šamuka's, later also at Đura Ivanović's Bircuz, connected to the venue of the play , took the stage with that famous opening line:

"You don't say došo, but came", replied the intellectual Drach to the illiterate guest worker Šova.

The driver talked about home-made ham and sausages, pretzels and jam, one long-ago winter evening in a Slavonian village while both of them were traveling by train and shoe, rescuing pedestrians from their driver's wanderings, soulfully investing in each subsequent character, chronicling the announced accident.

The sister, although under the impression of the concert with "Prljavci", managed to fall asleep, the mother pretended to listen, and I absorbed the huge glasses and the broad smile of a man borrowed for half an hour, on Saturday night, October 11, 1986, and who would normally believe that the morning of the actor's wedding started with the tile, continued with the wedding, and ended in emigration with "Uncle Vanja".

Miraculously, we arrived under the roofs of Jarun without a traffic accident."

Tile and wedding

One evening, none other than Gibonni knocked on the door of Anja and Šova, asking the duo to help him dig out a car stuck in the snow.

Fabijan's daughter Anja Šovagović Despot recalled an anecdote with her father:

"I was totally pregnant with my stomach up to my teeth. Shovo was cutting bacon and onions in the kitchen. I was sitting in the living room and watching TV. It was a blizzard outside. Rings. I can't move, my spine hurts. The old man goes to open the door. He is holding a big, huge knife in his hand. It opens. Enter Gibbon. That the snow was falling on his car, buried the whole vehicle and he couldn't dig it out. So he would need some help.
And he looks at me and then at Shova.
Shovo is standing in his pajamas and can't believe his ears. What will this father do? And he's holding that huge knife that cuts bacon and onions. Where are you from? - he asked rudely to the rude cry for help. Gibonni replies in disbelief that he is from Split, naturally. - From Split? So what are you doing in Zagreb after a storm like this? Fuck him, you shitty Dalmatian, are you trying to fuck me?
I'm sitting, I'm silent, I'm pregnant. And the Dalmatian stood stunned with a shovel in his hand. He doesn't seem to understand the question. Does not reply.
- Shall I help you? Or this pregnant one? Shovo cried desperately. And he waves that huge knife, writing a question mark in the invisible air. - When I have bruh - quietly replicated the singer-songwriter. - What do you have? Bruh do you have? - now the actor was already on the verge of crying. - Well, you've been hit in the gut, my father! And do you know that I'm wounded in the brain, you silly me! And now you're making me, a second-hand brain, dig out your exhaust with a wounded puss! Now, how will the two of us, thrust into the key positions of your life, get that car of yours ready? What is it, Dalmatian? What are you watching? Are you a Marxist? What are you? – and waves the knife like a madman. Vice. Scream. You could say that he is pulling out the hair on his head. Terribly upset, shaken by the man's belly and his impotence, angry at the unpredictable nature and the even more unpredictable southerner in the mainland region, furious at the unnatural appearances of the Dalmatians among the Zagorjes, furious at human migrations in general, at himself who damaged his brain by waging war in his Slavonia, maddened by one with a stupid means of transport that can't start, and our whole nation can't start and the snow has fallen on it and 'who will dig us all out and 'who will heal our brains and awaken our sex...'

Source: Instagram profile "anjasovagovic".

A convincing beggar

How the famous actor convincingly "took off" the hard accent of the Dalmatian Zagora.

Tributes Wall

Share this Memorial

Share Memories

Memory Guardian

Remind me

Read more stories

Slavonic blood

Why did Fabijan never like mathematics?

About a healthy neck and retirement

Sokol didn't like him

Tile and wedding

"Car in the Snow"