She was the undisputed star of pre-war Polish cinema – an audience favourite and, in contemporary reviewers’ minds “the actress with the most beautiful smile”. It is with her that Eugeniusz Bodo “had an appointment at nine” in the film “Piętro wyżej” (“Upstairs”), and in “Pawel i Gaweł” it was she whom he and Adolf Dymsza tried to send off to sleep with that most famous lullaby, “Ach, śpij kochanie” (“Sleep, sleep, my darling”), which is still sung to this day. But that is not the end. Toruń-born Helena Grossówna was preparing to follow in the footsteps of Pola Negri – also from our region – and conquer Hollywood. She had already bought a ticket on a cruise ship to America when war broke out. For the next six years Helena Grossówna played the greatest role of her life, though it is one that went largely unrecognised. Officially, she was a waitress in a Warsaw cafe. Secretly, she was a lieutenant in the Home Army, the commander of a female unit in the Warsaw Uprising, and after the surrender, a prisoner in a German camp. Her Home Army past meant that Polish cinema abandoned its greatest star after 1945. In post-war films she had only a few minor roles. Fortunately, the TV broadcast “W starym kinie” (“In the old cinema”) brought her pre-war roles to younger viewers. Today in Toruń, in the place where Helena Grossówna’s family home once stood, there is now a roundabout bearing her name. This great Pole – an actress and a patriot – deserves to live on in the memory of future generations. Hence the idea for a comic book, a quintessentially pop culture medium, just like cinema of which she was such a star.
Piotr Całbecki Marshal of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship
ISBN 978-83-953483-2-7
story
Maciej Jasiński art
Jacek Michalski