Career
He performed in the theatre, where he displayed a talent for comedy, especially in plays by Branislav Nušić, his favourite author However, it was the new medium of television that made him famous. From 1959 until the 1980s, he appeared in many television comedy shows: Servisna stanica, Dežurna ulica, Spavajte mirno, Sačulatac, Crni sneg, Ljudi i papagaji, Ljubav na seoski način (in which Silvana Armenulić guest starred), Kamiondžije and Vruć vetar.
Čkalja retired in the late 1980s and spent his last years peacefully.
His last public appearance was during the DOS election campaign in 2000 in the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević. In 2005, a statue of Čkalja was placed in front of his birth house in Kruševac.
In 2006, a street in the Zvezdara neighborhood in Belgrade was named after him.