Man, myth, legend

What do General George S. Patton, Pankrác prison, the CIA, Jayne Mansfield, the TV series M*A*S*H and the 17th-century "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Báthory have in common?

The answer: Václav "Vance" Kabourek.

An unassuming man with suave silver hair, he spoke to us while sipping on an unassuming beer, a Branik 10°. Kabourek's life story from Bohemia to Hollywood is so amazing it could be mistaken for fiction, but then there are the pictures to prove it all.

Born in 1937 in Staňkov, west Bohemia, Kabourek spent five of his early years as an altar boy. In 1945, the town was liberated by Patton's U.S. Third Army, and a young Kabourek saw "Old Blood and Guts" Patton give a victory speech in Plzeň. Stankov awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of rumbling U.S. tanks as remaining members of the SS rushed to surrender to the Americans rather than the Soviet Red Army approaching from the east.  

"Everybody went nuts," Kabourek says.

On his way to pick up a pitcher of beer for his father at the local pub, Kabourek gave beer to American soldiers; they gave him chocolate in return. The tradeoff seemed a good one for the 7-year-old, so he did it again, and again and again.

"My father had to pay for the beers," Kabourek says.

Patton reluctantly pulled his troops back, and the Red Army moved in; by 1948, the communists led the Czechoslovak government. A few years went by, and Kabourek began work in a deep coal mine. But, as the government became more and more repressive in the 1950s, some youthful rebellion was afoot.

"I just didn't like communism," Kabourek says. "In my hometown, there was this anti-communist group; I joined."

He was eventually arrested in 1955, and four months of interrogation at the former Gestapo headquarters in Plzeň followed.

"I was young, but, within a few days, I almost had a breakdown. I was finished," Kabourek says.

He was sentenced to a year at Prague's Pankrác prison. After his term expired, he was forced to work the 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. shift as a toolmaker in a bus factory. The year was 1956, and he and a friend were at work plotting their escape to the West.

"We are going to go through Hungary," the friend told Kabourek. But the Soviets had just invaded the country to put down a growing civil rebellion, making it the worst place through which to move.

"I said, 'You idiot, they are going to shoot us,' " Kabourek says.

One night at Prague's Hlavní nádraží, an alternative plan emerged when Kabourek came across a poster urging people to work for the state-owned railway company. He managed to get himself fired from the bus factory (by sleeping on the job and talking his way out of arrest), and found employment with the rail service, acquiring a uniform and eventually learning that a lumber train heading for West Germany stopped nightly in Plzeň.

A plan emerged where Kabourek and his compatriot would jump the train as it departed the station, then make their way to one of the open-topped freight cars full of wood and burrow below the surface.

They would bring with them tools to construct a simple shelter allowing them to hide underneath the wood piles, and a Slovak co-worker would then recover the wood pile with a white powder that authorities used to monitor whether wood had been moved after the train left the station. The Slovak assistant would then jump off the train before the next station.

The plan seemed flawless, but, two days before it was to be put in action, Kabourek, who had just been called up for military service, had to report for a physical. The doctor, after learning Kabourek had Hepatitis as a child, wanted to keep him in the hospital for the weekend. Kabourek refused, risking arrest. Two nights later, the StB came for him, but he had already slipped out the back door.

At the station, the train was late. "I said, 'We're screwed,' " Kabourek says. He and his friend stowed away in an abandoned conductor's booth at the train's rear, and, once it pulled away, made their way across the top of the moving train cars, jumping from one to the next.

"We had to jump against the wind, and we had luggage," Kabourek says. "Schwarzenegger or Stallone have nothing on this. If we had been caught, I would have been hanged as an army deserter."

The Slovak train worker who helped was later arrested and jailed for two years.

After some tense moments at the border, they made their way into West Germany and were housed in a refugee camp. But Kabourek's work experience with Czechoslovak trains made him an attractive informant for the CIA, not to mention British and French intelligence.  

"The CIA picked me up from the refugee camp," he says.

After a stint working with the CIA and Radio Free Europe, a U.S. official came to him in 1957 and said, "Pack up. You are leaving for New York."

"The StB wanted to kill me," Kabourek says.

He was off to New York, where he lived for six months before making his way to Hollywood, where he scored jobs working as a grip for 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. and Paramount. In 1959, he joined the U.S. Army and was stationed at Arctic headquarters in Newfoundland, working as a photographer.

"They used to call me Flash," he says.

Kabourek began learning how to fly airplanes and helicopters, and met many a military and political big-wig on planes stopping at the base to refuel before flying across the Atlantic. During a fateful visit to the base by Bob Hope, who was on a U.S.O. tour, Kabourek met the blond bombshell Jayne Mansfield, who was touring with Hope.

"She liked me very much, gave me her number and said 'Give me a call,' " Kabourek says.

After he got out of the military, he made his way back to Los Angeles.

"I didn't call her right away," Kabourek says of Mansfield. "Finally, I decided to call her up; it was a Friday. She told me to come over to her house for a party. By Sunday, I had moved in."

Kabourek would live with Mansfield for a year in a 40-room Beverly Hills mansion, dubbed the Pink Palace, with a yard that included a fountain spouting pink champagne.

One night, Mansfield had another party. Among the guests were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who wanted to see Mansfield's pet leopard, which was kept in a backyard cage. Kabourek volunteered to retrieve the animal, with which he was well acquainted from days touring together in the car, the leopard occasionally shredding Kabourek's shirts.

"I had had a few drinks already," he says. "I had to catch him and put on the leash."

The leopard slipped out of the cage between Kabourek's legs. Kabourek then proceeded to chase it around the yard as partygoers looked on in horror from behind the mansion windows. A wrestling match ensued.

"We got into a fight; I got him on the leash and took him in the house," Kabourek says.

After a year in the Pink Palace, it was time to move on.

"I fell in love with another woman. Unfortunately, she was married at the time, but I just wanted to be free," Kabourek says.

In the following years, Kabourek continued working on his piloting skills. His previous work in Hollywood would prove valuable as he transitioned into flying helicopters and planes for television and the movies. He most notably worked as a chopper pilot on  M*A*S*H, and on The Six Million Dollar Man (on the set of which he claims to have outdueled star Lee Majors for a young lady), ABC's Wide World of Sports and the movie MacArthur starring Gregory Peck.

In between, he would fly celebrities on vacations to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico.

"I used to take off and say, 'You fly,' " Kabourek says.  

Today, Kabourek works as an importer-exporter and says he imported massive amounts of Czech crystal to Las Vegas that was utilized in the commemorative champagne glasses given away by hotels for the Millennium New Year.

Three years ago, he married a Czech woman, Ludmila, and Kabourek now splits his time between Prague and Hollywood.  

"It's the first time I have been married, though I have many times been involved with the ladies," he says.

In 2007, Kabourek looked to buy Čachtice Castle, outside the western Slovak city of Trenčín. The castle is the former home of Elizabeth Báthory, who was eventually convicted of killing 80 people, with some estimates of the carnage surpassing 600 victims. Báthory was said to bathe in the blood of virgins in an attempt to keep herself young. She was imprisoned in 1610 and died in 1614.  

"The monument is falling apart, so I hoped to fix it up," Kabourek says.  

But bureaucratic wrangling followed, and Kabourek says the Slovaks would not sell the landmark to a Czech. The eventual result?

"I walked away. I don't need this horseshit," he says.

Kabourek writes the occasional article in the Czech press and says he has a few screenplays stowed away. He imports and exports goods back and forth between the United States and the Czech Republic and says he may write a book about his life.   

At the end of our conversation, Kabourek wants to note that he isn't bragging or trying to portray himself as "some big shot." These are just stories he has collected, and if people find them interesting he is happy to share.

"I am just Vance," he says.

It would be impossible to mistake him for anybody else.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com