Jan Klos: seized credits?

As most readers of this blog have figured out by now, I love identifying animators and comparing their work on different Pat & Mat episodes. Each and every one of them brought their own interpretation of how the characters should move and act, sometimes probably unconsciously. In my previous post, I mentioned how Jan Klos is probably the best animator of them all when it comes to scenes where the character and personality is most important.

Jan Klos working in 1976 (photo: Ivan Vít)

This post, however, deals with strange animation credits on ... a je to! episodes from 1984 and 1985. Pat & Mat series usually had two animators handling most of the episodes; in the aiF era, those two were František Váša and Alfons Mensdorff-Pouilly. In 1979, the two animators were Karel Chocholín and Xenie Vavrečková. In 1981-1983, it was Karel Chocholín again and Jan Klos. However, an unusal discrepancy in the credits happened in 1984 and 1985. Instead of Jan Klos, Ján Keks was credited for animation on Korčule and Hrnčiari, while Karel Klos was credited for Porucha. Interestingly, the Jan Klos credit was replaced with Ján Keks very noticeably ― you can literally see the smudges left by someone erasing L and O and replacing them with E and K.

1982

1984

1984

1985

Here also is the animation credit for Porucha, this time redone completely:

 

This is something that I always found strange. I've seen these episodes so many times and in the end arrived to the following conclusion: I believe that Keks and Karel Klos are in fact the same person - Jan Klos. Of course, my intuition is not enough to sell that statement. Here then are some other arguments for my case: 
1. These names do not appear in animation credits outside the series. 

Credits are known for most of the shorts the Jiří Trnka Studio produced in the 1980s; they can be found on site like csfd.cz or fdb.cz, where complete filmographies exist for all available films. Ján Keks and Karel Klos don't appear in any of them. Of course, there's always a possibility that there are films out there which haven't been listed yet, but these two names were listed as animators, not assistants or a similar less important position. In contrast, Jan Klos continues to appear in credits all the way up to 2000s and - crucially - working at the same Jiří Trnka Studio even in the 1990s.

2. The two unknown names are almost identical to Jan Klos.

What are the chances that two animators would have almost the same name? As you have seen previously in this post, one of these was Karel, one Alfons with a double-barrelled surname, two were women. Ján Keks is very similar to Jan Klos, while Karel Klos obviously uses the same surname. Could it have been Jan's brother? You would say possibly, but point 1 excludes it. I also considered the possibility that Porucha, where Karel Klos popped up, could have been animated by both Karel Chocholín and Jan Klos, but it wasn't. The episode is definitely the work of one animator only.

3. Lubomír Beneš worked with Jan Klos before, during and after the episodes in question were made.

Jan Klos was credited as the only animator on two theatrical shorts made by Beneš at that time: Muzikant a Smrt (The Musician and Death, 1984) and Rohy (Horns, 1987), the second 17 minutes long. Also, Beneš directed thirteen episodes of Jája a Pája in 1986 and 1987. The three animators credited on all of the episodes from that series were Jan Klos, Karel Chocholín and David Filcík, all well known names from ... a je to!

4. All "three" animators used the same Pat and Mat puppets.

One of the easiest ways to spot different animators doing work in the same episode is to spot a puppet with different eyes or faces. The puppets typically used by Jan Klos and Karel Chocholín differed in 1982-1984. The former's had thinner mouth and eyes, while the latter's had rounder eyes. See for yourself.

Chocholín

Klos

The puppets used by all three names are, in fact, the same. Of course, the puppets are not easy to make and are reused a lot. Karel Chocholín used the same puppets over and over so much that by Hrnčiari in 1985 they had become worn out, with their faces having significantly whiter "complexion" from the second pair of puppets used in that episode. However, the puppets used by Mensdorff-Pouilly in his sole outing on the series had significantly different faces to the rest of the series' puppets.

5. Ján is a Slovak name.

This is something I learned while doing research for this post. While Jan is the typical spelling of that name in Czech, the spelling differs in Slovakia, where it is Ján. So, my Czech and Slovak readers correct me if this isn't true, a Ján is automatically assumed to be Slovak. A Slovak animator working at a studio in Prague at that time would be unlikely.

6. Stylistically, there are no differences in the animation of the three episodes compared to Klos' work.

This is, of course, the hardest thing to prove, which is why I've placed it last. Simply, I believe the animator for all of the three episodes is the same person and that same person also did the previous episodes. I've tried to find some earmarks of Jan Klos' animation and I think I have found something that only applies to his animation. Jan Klos did a lot of work with the two handymen's caps. Specifically, he always moved the caps up when the characters were surprised and shocked, while he usually moved them down when they were thinking deeply. Take a look at this sequence from Skokani: Mat goes from deep thinking to surprise while in the same position.

Here's the same shock expression appearing in different episodes with a Jan Klos credit, even in the first of them:

Now take a look at screenshots from the three problematic episodes. The same exact expression.

Let's make a small comparison. Tell me this doesn't look like the work of the same person. That's what the credits will have you believe.

If I were you, a logical question following this would go: Sure, yes, the expressions are the same, but wasn't that the case in all of the episodes, regardless of animators? I would say: no. Karel Chocholín spent considerably less time on the caps. I even think that the action of the cap flying from Pat or Mat's head into the air when they get an idea appears only in episodes by Klos, but I haven't checked that. However, I did look for the same expression in Chocholín's episodes and didn't find it. Here's a scene: a shocked and scared Pat is frantically searching for water to splash on Mat's head, who is lying half-dead on the floor. As this is a Chocholin episode, Pat's cap, however, doesn't move.

Conversely, in Korčule, animated by Keks, Pat is thinking so deeply that his cap almost covers his eyes completely.

The cap also goes down in Porucha, albeit less.

All of this makes me believe that all of the listed episodes are the work of the same person.

Obviously, I can't prove it, but let's assume I could. The question remaining then is: why? Why change Klos' credit to something nonsensical? Was it a practical joke? Keks, in Czech, just like in Croatian, means cookie. Was it a random mistake by someone doing the credits? Was it some kind of Communist blacklist that prevented the name Jan Klos appearing in credits? Does janklos or any of the variants of the name mean something dirty in Slovak? "I don't know, but I sure hope someone in the comments can provide some explanation."

That is what I originally had written down for one of the ending sentences of this post only yesterday. However, a random Google search for "Jan Klos" turned up quite a few results. It seems that his family suffered a lot in Communist times. In 1951, the family lost practically everything and Jan's father was imprisoned. Jan Klos tells his story as part of the Memory of Nations project, which you can find at this link: https://www.memoryofnations.eu/en/klos-jan-1941. Here's how his life story went before he joined the studio in 1973:

young Jan Klos (photo: memorfyonations.eu)

Jan Klos was born on 26 February 1941. He spent his youth in Mělník-Mlazice. His half-grandfather, Václav Kryml, ran a road transport business in Mělník. His father, Josef Klos, founded the company Dadák and Klos in 1930s. He was engaged in the production of baskets, furniture, toys, interior equipment and exhibition spaces. In 1942 his business partner was executed during the persecutions associated with the assassination of Heydrich. Josef Klos eventually escaped probably due to family acquaintances and money. The company was renamed to Muse - Mělnik Art Works. In 1951, the family lost everything because of nationalization, and Jan Klos laughs to say that only since then he had a dad, who until then was still working and had little time left for the family. They moved to the last thing left by the communists - four-room unfinished outbuildings of the old farm. His mother, Běla, née Štípková, gave birth prematurely due to the trauma of nationalization and emigration and suffered psychological consequences for the rest of her life. Two families of the former grandfather’s employees, Jan, two siblings and parents, the mother’s grandparents, and the mother’s three-member family had settled in the four rooms and the improvised room on the attic. After completing his eighth grade, Jan was given a placement at a vocational school, where he was to be trained as a carpenter. Thanks to his father and his former colleague, Viktor Fixl, however, he applied for exams at the Secondary School of Housing Design in Prague. He successfully passed the tests and studied in the department of toys and small art industry. The school participated in the realization of the Czechoslovak exhibition at Expo 58. Jan worked according to the designs of Jiří Trnka, he earned a decent income and he actually enjoyed the work. After school he could not get a job because of his cadre assessment. Finally, thanks to the intervention of Viktor Fixl, he got a job in the development department of sports and technical equipment, from which he later joined the military service. He was assigned to the auxiliary technical troops (PTP) that were soon reorganized. In 1963-1973 he worked as a puppet master at the Spejbl and Hurvínek Theater and then worked as an animator. He married the sculptor, Helena Samohelová.

Fellow Pat & Mat fanatics will recognize Viktor Fixl's name, as it appears on several of the episodes. Taking all of this into account, the story about the credits being changed makes more sense. It is now not that strange to imagine somebody having a problem with the name Jan Klos appearing on a successful TV series. It would seems his name was intentionally removed as he was not in good standing politically. That would be very bizarre, but, remember, this was not the first time the series encountered political problems, the changing of Mat's shirt from red to grey being a primary example. It's really a shame that Jan Klos in all likelihood had his name removed from these episodes. The first of them, Korčule, contains maybe technically the most complicated sequence in the series, of Pat demonstrating his ice skating prowess, which was executed beautifully.

Update, March 14: For some more information about Klos' animation style, please check out the comments below this post.
Update, April 25: For more of Klos' story, head here to the man himself: https://ajetology.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-few-words-from-jan-klos.html


Jan Klos is still with us and, hopefully, somebody will ask him about this peculiarity someday, as there is probably more to this story. Despite all of his troubles, it seems Jan was pretty content with his life in animation. The interview posted on the Memory of Nations contains a nice summation, a perfect one to end this story:

"One day my neighbour says, 'Look, Mr. Klos, you said you've been doing these animated movies all your life?' And I said, 'Well, that's over, it's finished, let's not talk about it.' "Well, I'm telling you, Mr. Klos, when they're on TV, I shut it down." He topped it a week later with what's the greatest reward for me. He said: 'Yeah, so you're the animator. Look, what about the lady, what about the lady? ‘And I say, 'Well, the lady has talent and graduated as a sculptor.' - 'Sculptor? Like Lenin´s statue and all that? ‘- 'Not Lenin, she has a small furnace, and she does things like that.' He said: 'Well, Mr. Klos, an animator and a sculptor. Well yeah, you have lived your lives as completely useless people. ‘That's a credo! It is so perfectly formulated that I am happy to have been able to live it.”