Exhibition concept: Vesna Leiner, Maja Šojat-Bikić, MSc
Multimedia: Maja Šojat-Bikić, MSc
Curator: Boris Mašić
Exhibition design: Ante Serdar, Miljenko Gregl
Poster design: Miljenko Gregl
Viki Glovacki’s activities in the music/light entertainment scene marked the whole of one period in the history of Zagreb. It was only when we had really got into the material for this exhibition, meeting Viki’s contemporaries, that we were able to see how much of a trace his charismatic individuality had left on the memories of these people. Zagreb City Museum, thirty years after his death in 1976, with the exhibition You’re heartily welcome, my friend / Dobro mi došel prijatel has endeavoured to conjure up the time and the spirit in which he worked.
From his earliest days, on the stage of the St Francis Home at Sv. Duh, Viki gladdened the hearts of the public. It was there he acquired his first thespian experience and wrote his first drama. These talents were probably the main reason why during World War II he did not end up in the war zone. As a member, rather, of the Education Battalion, with his appearances on the stage and the radio, he was able to palliate for the audiences and listeners some of the horrors of the war.
His parodies, done during the war, are a continuation of the tradition of the inter-war Zagreb cabaret scene. And it was for this work that he later found himself in the jail of Stara Gradiška, where, once again, it was his talent that enabled him to survive and live through the torture of imprisonment somewhat more easily.
Soon after his return to Zagreb, in 1951, he got a job in the Varieté. At that time, in the fifties and sixties, the city was taking rapid strides towards the West. Many of the internationally famed names from the world of art and entertainment arrived in Zagreb and also in Varieté. Irrespective of them, with his idiosyncratic appearances, Viki won over the Zagreb audience, which incessantly filled up the halls in which he opened. At the time when there was still no television, he was someone who with his frankness, unpredictability, laughter – acting out in countless skits persons from everyday life – could take the public out of themselves. He wrote parodies to popular hits of the time that drew salvoes of laughter from the auditorium. At the end of the fifties he started creating the first musical reviews and launched the music event called First Applause that provided the launching pad for many stars in the popular music world.
Everyone who knew him said that he loved his town immensely. So there is no wonder that he wrote the words for several of the wonderful old sentimental songs about Zagreb – Old Candelabra, Maksimir Bench, Our Funicular and several others – that he himself performed with a great deal of ardour and love.
His interpretation of the song The Last Fiacre, performed for the first time at the festival Zagreb 63, was unrepeatable and unforgettable.
The glory and boom days of Varieté of the fifties started to wane in the early sixties. Along came new generations, and with them new and different requirements. The city had got rapidly larger with the influx of people from rural areas, the war was to an extent forgotten, industry took rapid strides ahead, loans were there to make life better, the links with the West were becoming ever stronger, which had a considerable effect on the cultural and artistic life of the time. Thus in 1962 Viki cut his contractual links with Varieté, although he continued to have guest appearances in it until it went out of business in 1971. At the time, as a freelancer, he appeared in many of the newly opened theatres in the town. Most often, he took part in the Zagreb Summer Evenings on the stage of Šalata, founded to provide the citizens and tourists with more ample cultural fare in the summer season, which was otherwise rather dead.
Viki was also the moving force behind the Youth Humour Festival called Kerempuh, aimed at letting young talents make their name.
He was truly an all-round artist. He acted, sang, wrote skits, parodies, music reviews and other things, but always expressed himself most originally and authentically in Kaikavian. Hence there is no wonder in Dance, dance (1968) and You’re heartily welcome, my friend (1970), from the Kaikavian Song Festival in Krapina being still in the ears of all of us, although only a few of the better informed know who wrote them. His Kaikavian also led him to the Zagorje Evenings in Marija Bistrica.
As a great patriot, Viki at last managed to get permission to perform for Croatian ex-pats, and he was among the very first of Croatian musicians and entertainers to put on shows for the émigré population. He was the one who in the 1970s blazed the trail for the later linkage between the expatriates and those who stayed at home.
A man of a generous heart and a jolly temper, he was always ready to help friends, for whom he would for example fix the purchase of a gramophone in the shop on easy payments (though he had already paid the whole amount), as well as the little, the sick and the infirm, either by organising charity performances or by his own personal commitment. He won a certificate of the Fund for the advancement of the protection and rehabilitation of children and young people suffering from cerebral paralysis (1972), launched the foundation of the Association of friends of the Clinic for neurology, psychiatry, alcoholism and other addictions at the then Dr Mladen Stojanović Clinical Hospital, today Hospital of the Sisters of Mercy, in 1974. He was the first president of this association. He was awarded a Certificate of Thanks – for multiple voluntary blood donations, for marked nobility, humanity and love for mankind – from the Croatian Red Cross – Trnje Commune Committee (1975) as well as a plaque from the Mladost Water Polo Club for the organisation of a campaign to build a winter pool (1971).
While he was planning his appearances in various events and festivals, revelling, as an impassioned hiker, in building his second home on Palačnik, among the hills of Samobor, Viki was unexpectedly overtaken by death. He died after his sixth heart attack in the Rebro Clinical Hospital Centre on January 14, 1976, in his 57th year. He was interred in Mirogoj, where his family, friends, fellow actors and musicians, people from public life and thousands of admirers came to say farewell.
As is often the way in life, recognition for his contribution to the cultural life of Croatia and Zagreb came only after his death. Thus he was posthumously awarded the prize of the Federation of Workers of the Entertainment Arts of Yugoslavia for major results achieved in a creative, social and organisational work on disseminating and improving the entertainment arts in Yugoslavia (1977). The Federation of Organisations of Musical and Entertainment Activity in the S. R. of Croatia (1987) gave him a Recognition for Extraordinary Contributions to the Development and Advancement of the Music and Entertainment Activity in S. R. Croatia (1987) and then President of the Republic, Dr Franjo Tuđman, posthumously decorated Viki Glovacki with the Order of the Croatian Day Star with the effigy of Marko Marulić for special services to culture (1996).
Viki had actually spent more than a half of his life under the surveillance of the secret police of the state of the time, and he needed connections to obtain his permission to appear before the expatriate audiences, and yet in spite of that, in 1974, he was woken up late at night and hauled off – to entertain the then president of the country, Josip Broz Tito and his entourage in the Zagreb restaurant Okrugljak.
His engagements, from appearing in front of the president, then at music events, at celebrations of various occasions and anniversaries, at diverse conferences and on the radio, at graduation dinners for medical students, show, all of them, something of the quality and expressiveness of his appearances, as well as the multi-facetedness of a person who with talent and individuality was able to capture the attention of everyone present. And through work on this exhibition, in encounters with his contemporaries, we were able to see how much of a mark his charismatic personality had left in the memories of the people of Zagreb.
Exhibition catalogue
Leiner, Vesna; Maja Šojat-Bikić; Boris Mašić; Pero Zlatar; Stjepan Mihaljinec. You're heartily welcome, my friend : Viki Glovacki.
Zagreb : Zagreb City Museum, 2006
