– I’ve played with the greatest. With Wysocka, Osterwa, Jaracz, Junosi-Stępowski, Węgrzyn, Brydziński, Solski, Adwentowicz, Zelwerowicz. Everyone was different, but all unique and great – in an interview with “Rzeczpospolita” in 1993, a year before his death. Tadeusz Kondrat was born on April 8, 1908, so in 2023 he would have turned 115 years old. He was a theater actor, but also a film, radio and television actor. His older brother Józef made his debut in front of the camera in 1933 in “Twelve Chairs” (they had nine other siblings), and his son Marek performed on stage since he was a child. In 2007 in “Playboy” that Tadeusz was the eleventh child in an inn family, and he did not meet them all. He also mentioned that at the end of his life, the “Sanatorium pod hourglass” actor had difficulty remembering all the names of his siblings.
“Father was first a busy actor, then an actor injured in a car accident”
Marek Kondrat recalled that his parents did not hug him too often, if anything, his mother distinguished him as a child, his father less so. In 2003, Bielas told Katarzyna that “first, my father was a busy actor, and then an actor injured in a car accident, relieving his misfortune outside the home”. – Mom liked to emphasize that we are different, unique – he told in an interview published in “Gazeta Wyborcza” and explained:
[MAMA – red.] For example, she used to tell someone we just met that “our dad is an actor.” The phrase gave me a rash, and a cold sweat ran down my back. Because what did it mean? whose dad? Her dad, my dad? The fact that my father was an actor meant nothing special to me. For me, he was a lame actor. As a child, I could not understand, receive his merits from the past, which my mother knew about, that he was liked, carried in my arms, that he would go out of the window on the third floor of the theater in Krakow to the delight of others, that their lives went on during night wanderings , among Krakow’s bohemians. It was some kind of Young Poland, for which I was not ready at all.
Before the accident, he played in Leonard Buczkowski’s Przygoda na Mariensztat In 1955 Tadeusz Kondrat’s career was abruptly interrupted by a tragic accident. As Marek Kondrat recalled, as usual, after each performance at the Polish Theatre, where he acted in Kruczkowski’s play, when he went to Łódź to film Antoni Bohdziewicz’s Revenge, he set off on his way. – That day he traveled with Woszczowicz and Opaliński. The driver was falling asleep, so he asked his father to move to the front and entertain him. He entertained him so much that they loaded onto an unlit truck standing on the road – said the actor known, among others, from Marek Koterski’s Day of the Wacko. As a result of the accident, his father suffered a skull fracture, trepanation had to be performed, and instead of working as Papkin on “Zemsta”, Tadeusz Kondrat had to spend the next few months in a hospital in Łódź. When he returned home after such a long time, as his son recalls, “he had a hole in his head, in the place where a piece of pabieda or warszawa made of sheet metal, from which ships were once made, had stuck into him”.
An accident during the filming of “Revenge” prevented the development of a career
Until the end of his life, the actor was paralyzed on the left side of his body and had trouble speaking, which meant that he never fully returned to the stage or in front of the camera. – My father was completely changed, he aged several decades, his left side was paralyzed for the rest of his life, he walked with a cane, he spent a lot of time in bed. He returned to the profession in a very limited form, played until the end of his life in his native Polish Theatre, made several films, attended SPATiF, drank vodka. Mother was always afraid of how she would get home. Her fear was contagious, we didn’t sleep all night. I thought that it was my father’s profession that brought us all this misfortune – Marek Kondrat told Katarzyna Bielas.
That accident also had an impact on the relationship with the then young Beata Tyszkiewicz, who debuted in the role of Klara in “Revenge”. She was still a high school student at the time, but – as years later – they “liked” Tadeusz, then 47 years old. When asked by “Super Express”, the actress in 2014 denied that there was anything more between them. – Those were decent times – commented Tyszkiewicz. Matek Kondrat jokingly referred to the matter, saying that it was good that it ended there, because it would be very difficult for him to call the actress with whom he is today by name “mom”.
The actor died on June 19, 1994 at the Veteran Actor’s Home in Skolimów near Warsaw. A few years later, receiving an award at the Gdynia festival for his role in “Dzień świra”, Marek Kondrat mentioned his father, wishing his sons to see him in Marek Koterski’s film as he once saw his father in “Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą” from 1973. – In this film, I saw a human part in it, not an actor’s part, feelings, human, fatherly sensitivity. What I missed – he said, adding that during that session he was shivering.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
