HE WAS ONE OF THE MOST BELOVED FACES OF DOMESTIC CINEMATOGRAPHY: His Dream of a Hollywood Career Was Cut Short by Tragedy! (PHOTO)

Actor Jovan Janićijević Burduš gained great popularity during the 1960s and 1970s of the last century and was one of the most beloved faces of domestic cinematography.

Jovan Janićijević was born on May 8, 1932, as one of five children of the teacher Janičije and the homemaker Vera. He had three older sisters and a twin brother, Andrija. The family moved throughout Serbia until 1934, when they found their home in Belgrade.

He had a very difficult childhood, lived through the bombing of 1941, and at that time his family was left with nothing, going days without anything to eat.

During the occupation, firewood was very hard to obtain. Even when a family managed to get some, they had to follow the loaded carts so that theft would not occur. Like many other kids, wartime poverty forced Burduš to become skilled at stealing on the run.

“We would run, snatch a log and bolt. And once they caught me, probably because I ‘lifted’ a heavier piece, so I couldn’t run fast. They took me to the commissariat near the railway station, beat me properly and forced me to wash the stairs of the building across the street—from the sixth floor to the ground floor,” he once recounted.

After a bomb fell on their shelter, the actor was sent to Paraćin to stay with his relative, where he also lived to see liberation.

“We almost all perished on my birthday in 1944. We were all in a German shelter that could hold about 500 people. A bomb fell through the elevator shaft opening directly to us, but fortunately it did not explode. However, from the air pressure we thought we would suffocate. Then another bomb hit our apartment and again we were left with nothing. My parents sent me to Paraćin to my relative, who had just returned from captivity. There I saw liberation,” the actor recalled.

A Hollywood career was within reach

As he said in an interview for TV Revija in the 1970s, at the height of his great popularity in Yugoslavia, he was approached by a certain Dušan Protić, who presented himself as a successful producer and in the West went by the name Denny Marshall. He invited him to Los Angeles with the promise that he would make him a great world star. Burduš went to America with his wife, but shortly after visiting several castings, meeting some world stars and speaking with real Hollywood producers, he realized that Marshall was not a person he could rely on, that is, that there was a crisis throughout Hollywood as well as in the entire world.

Nevertheless, at those castings, as he recounted in the interview, he was initially promised that he would play the lead role in the film The Godfather, but that the script kept changing, because the mafia controlled everything and had threatened to sabotage the filming if everything did not suit them. Also, Burduš had to know English, which was a major obstacle for him at that moment. Realizing that Marshall was deceiving him and that the production was complicated, he resolved the entire problem by the principle—Everywhere you go, return home—and went back to Yugoslavia.

Only after that did the production decide that The Godfather would be directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who would change the script and, from a primarily mafia story, turn it into a saga about America and the American dream, bring Marlon Brando to the role intended for Burduš, and also cast many other younger actors who would explode after this film, such as Al Pacino.

A harsh twist of fate

His life was marked by a severe tragedy. Namely, he caused a traffic accident in which his passenger was killed.

Janićijević was sentenced to prison, which he served in the Zabela prison in Požarevac.

“My father had a five-year contract with the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio. When everything had already been agreed in 1972, he came to get my mother and me. However, a fatal accident occurred in which one of his friends was killed. Drama followed, a trial, and instead of going to Hollywood, my father went for a year to the ‘Zabela’ prison,” actress Ksenija Đokić, the daughter of Jovan Janićijević—known to the wider public as part of the BB Show team—once recounted.

After the traffic accident and serving his prison sentence, he continued to appear in films such as “And God Created the Tavern Singer,” “Walter Defends Sarajevo,” as well as in hit series “Citizens of the Village of Lug,” “The Masters,” “Theatre at Home,” and others.

At the end of the 1970s, Janaćko appeared in miniatures such as Goran Marković’s “Special Education” and Žika Pavlović’s war drama “The Hunt.” He took on comedic roles in the 1980s, appearing in comedies such as “The Moth,” “No Problem,” “Sekula and His Wives,” “Crazy Years,” and others.

Janićijević passed away on February 26, 1992.