A film history intermezzo

In the summer of 1912, Denmark's first cinema director, Constantin Philipsen (1859-1925), as previously referred to as the large platform hall in Copenhagen at the time, rented the second central station and had it converted into Europe's largest cinema theatre with room for 3,000 people. The cinema was given the pompous name PALACE THEATRE. The inauguration took place on October 17, 1912, and the premiere film was the German "Children of the General", which, however, was directed by the Danish film director Urban Gad (1879-1947) and with Danish Asta Nielsen, who was then married to the film's director, in the female lead. Among other things, a French play and a French farce were also shown, as well as a so-called Weekly Journal. On the same occasion, a so-called Orchestral Concerto was held under the direction of Conductor Fr. Schnedler-Petersen, whose 30-piece orchestra also accompanied the films shown, which were actually silent films, as a workable tone film system had not yet been invented. Edison's Phonograph was too cumbersome to synchronize with the film, which often risked breaking, which is why the damaged piece of film was cut away, but in doing so the original synchronicity between sound and image was broken, and therefore for the time being abandoned the use of this system. As well as this film as the later films that were on the program in the Palace Theatre became a huge success and the money flowed in to its originator, who invested in the creation of an entire cinema chain across the country. But the cinema had to cease in February 1916, when the demolition of the old railway station began. However, Philipsen sold the name "Palads Teatret" to a group that wanted to build a brand new and more modern, but also huge cinema building on an area close to the demolished makeshift former cinema. Philipsen, in turn, put money into the construction of a large cinema, which was built on the corner of Gl. Kongevej and Værnedamsvej, and which was inaugurated in September 1918. The new grand cinema was named Kino Palæet, as previously mentioned here in my autobiography.

Left: Advertisement for the Palace Theatre's opening performance.

Right: Poster for palads Teatret, Europe's largest theatre for moving images. A 30-piece orchestra provided the musical accompaniment of the silent films. © The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

Constantin Philipsen was an early move in the Danish cinema industry, as he already in 1902 established his first cinema, Odeon Teatret, on Frederiksberg Allé. The name "Odeon" probably originated from Frederiksberg Morskabsteater's past as the music and beer hall "Odeon". Philipsen later used the name for his cinema on Fælledvej in Nørrebro, which many, many years later would become one of the cinemas where my cousin, my comrades and I regularly came. However, the audience failed Copenhagen's probably first suburban cinema, which therefore had to close after six months. However, this did not knock Philipsen out, as in 1904 he established Copenhagen's first permanent cinema, Kosmorama, at Østergade 26, and in the following years he opened similar cinemas under the same name in virtually all major Danish cities, just as he also established several cinemas under other names in the capital. The films were, as was the case abroad, accompanied by piano music and in some cases also by various sound effects, performed by the pianist and his eventual assistant.

The first "talking movies"

However, the cinema magnate aimed higher, and in 1906 he was able to present in Kosmorama a "talking film" according to Edison's principle, having bought in Berlin "The Merry Widow" with accompanying gramophone waltzes. It was a bit of a Copenhagen event that received praise in the newspaper. In 1908, however, Philipsen sold Kosmorama to Hjalmar Davidsen (1879-1958), who partly became director of the cinema and partly set up a production company, Kosmorama, with the aim of producing films himself. In 1910, the company produced its first feature film, "The Abyss", written and directed by Urban Gad and starring Asta Nielsen and Povl Reumert in the two leading roles. Philipsen, meanwhile, had been granted permission to open several new cinemas in the capital, "Royal Biografen", established in 1906 at Vesterbrogade 34, and "Standard Biograf", established in 1908 at Falkonér Allé 73. The latter existed for many years, and existed both during and after World War II and even further ahead. It was one of the Copenhagen cinemas, where I regularly came as a big boy and young man.

Cinematographer Peter Elfelt's first cinema was located at Frederiksberggade 27 on the first floor. However, it was given a short lifespan due to failing audience interest. After half a year from 1901 to 1902, the cinema had to close with a large deficit. However, Elfelt did not give up, as four years later he opened KINOGRAFEN in the property next door, namely Frederiksberggade 25. In 1939, Kinografen closed, but after a rebuilding it was reopened under the name BRISTOL. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

Philipsen's Odeon Cinema in Vesterbro was not, however, the first cinema in Copenhagen, as court photographer Peter Elfelt (1866-1931) had already opened the Kinografen on the first floor of Frederiksberggade 27 in 1901, but after half a year of deficit it had to close in 1902. However, this did not make Elfelt, who was the first in Denmark to film himself, lose his courage, as in 1906 he became co-owner of a new Kinografen, which was housed in the property next to his first cinema, namely in Frederiksberggade 25. This cinema was lucky, and it existed for many years, and was, as previously mentioned, one of two cinemas in the capital, which both in the spring and around Christmas time showed a program consisting of six of Disney's short cartoons with the well-known characters, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and others. In 1939, the Kinograph changed its name to the Bristol Theatre, and as such the cinema existed until competition from the new mass medium, television, became too fierce and it had to close. It happened in 1966.

Above are the famous American inventor Edison's two devices for sound and image from 1905, respectively called the phonograph – the precursor of the gramophone – and the kinetoscope. The latter was at that time hand-operated, and by a special device Edison had succeeded in synchronizing the two apparatuses so that image and sound were performed simultaneously (synchronously). However, the system had several decisive drawbacks, and therefore was soon abandoned in practice. This meant that the film remained mute until a more reliable and secure sound-picture system took hold in the late 1920s. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

Probably inspired by what he had seen of films in Pacht's Panorama & Panoptikon, Elfelt began producing and shooting films himself as early as the autumn of 1896, films that he gave the titles "Asphaltlayers", "The Fire Brigade Moves Out" and "The Swans in Sortedams Lake". Already in January 1897, these films were included in Pacht's performances at the Town Hall Square. Elfelt also shot ballet films and was the first in Denmark to make an actual feature film, "The Execution", 1903, with Francesca Nathansen in the female lead. Thanks to royal court photographer Elfelt, today we have vivid images of King Christian IX and Queen Louise and their children, in-laws and grandchildren. Among the children Frederick, the later King Frederick VIII, who married the Swedish Princess Louise, Alexandra, married to the English Queen Victoria's eldest son, Prince Albert Edward, the later King Edward VII, Dagmar, married to the Russian Grand Prince Alexander Alexandrovitsch, the later Tsar Alexander III. Alice of Hesse, and their four daughters, Olga, Tatjana, Maria, Anastasia and only son, Nicolai, in 1918 brutally murdered on the orders of the leader of Russia's new revolutionary rulers, Lenin.

This sketch of Storm P. in the theatre magazine Masken, is supposed to represent the early beginnings of the Danish film company, which later became world famous under the name Nordisk Film. However, the drawing should probably be perceived humorously, because the plot on Mosedalvej in Valby that Ole Olsen acquired in 1906 was somewhat larger than the drawing shows. The area was soon expanded by the purchase of adcumbent plots, so that Nordisk Film already around the beginning of World War I consisted of a total of four scenes, namely scenes 1, 2, 3 and 4. In 1915 the company's largest studio, called stage 5, was built, and this, unlike the previous ones, was furnished for recordings both in daylight and artificial light. - The Danish Film Museum's Image Archive.

Ole Olsen's Film Factory

The year after Philipsen had opened Kosmorama on Østergade, the film magnate Ole Olsen (1863-1943) opened the capital's second permanent cinema, Biograf-Theatret, in Vimmelskaftet 47 in 1905. He was, like his competitor, Constantin Philipsen, an enterprising, inventive and skilled merchant, whose methods were authoritarian and could border on the brutal and ruthless when something went against him. But he had unmistakably "nose" for the possibilities of the new medium, which he had come to know during his time as a traveling market entertainer. He was, in short, a man who had the ability to organize and make money, big money even.

After seeing films at Pacht in the Town Hall Square and in Germany, he himself began to travel around as early as 1901 and with varying degrees of luck showcasing films, both at home and in Sweden. However, he did not give up, but ended up opening the "Copenhagen Cinema Theatre", later simply called "Biograf Theatre". Ole Olsen's big problem, however, was to get enough and good films for screening in his cinema, especially since Constantin Philipsen had already secured some of the best deliveries from France, England and America.

However, Ole Olsen and his people must probably have been inspired by Elfelt's attempts as a film producer, and Ole Olsen therefore already in 1905 hired a professional photographer to help him, and then they started shooting films themselves, first and foremost for the newly opened cinema. In 1906, the new film producer saw the chance to acquire a spectacular and highly topical reportage when King Christian IX, who died on 29 January of that year, was to be buried. Ole Olsen managed to secure the exclusive right to film the outdoor part of the event when the king was buried in Roskilde Cathedral. It was then not possible to film indoors due to the lighting conditions. In addition, he and his people shot the reportage film "Frederik the 8th's Proclamation", and the two films naturally became run-ins in the cinema in Vimmelskaftet, which is why the money from the ticket revenue almost poured in.

After this successful and successful start-up, Ole Olsen very much wanted to continue as a film producer, but as such you had to have a production company and a name, and it was initially "Ole Olsen's Film Industry" or "Ole Olsen's Film Factory", whose address was the same as Biograf Theatre's, namely Vimmelskaftet 47. In addition, it was important to have a trademark that could identify and protect the company's films from confusion with other companies' films, especially on the world market, and which could ensure that the audience recognized and had confidence in the company behind it. It was the company's then office lady, Ms. Gundestrup, who suggested that the trademark could be a polar bear standing on a globe. In the following period, this mark was not only used on the film's pretexts and intertexts, as these could risk being damaged during the screening and consequently cut away, so therefore the trademark was also placed in many places in the film itself. The trademark was painted on a large cardboard sign, and it was placed in the film's decorations or wherever there was room for it. The trademark with the polar bear on the earth ball was used from 1906, but it was not registered until 1909. In September 1906, the company changed its name to the then famous Nordisk Films Kompagni, but the company's official birthday is November 6, 1906, as the citizen letter from the Copenhagen Magistrate was first drawn up on this date, and it is therefore considered the company's founding day.

The Danish commercial film pioneer Ole Olsen's cinema in Vimmelskaftet 47. It was opened under the name Biograf Theatret as Copenhagen's second permanent cinema on 23 April 1905. But already the following year, Ole Olsen handed over the management of the cinema to one of his employees, Niels le Tort, who from 1907 onwards also took over full ownership of the cinema. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

A diligent film producer

In the following time, Ole Olsen, together with his employees, produced a number of small films of current events, nature films and small dramatic and comic episodes. However, Ole Olsen was not only an enterprising and diligent producer, but also a good merchant who knew how to devote his films, partly to Danish and partly to foreign cinemas, mainly in Germany.

As mentioned, Ole Olsen first and foremost understood how to do business, and already in the autumn of 1806 he left the operation of the Cinema Theatre to his co-director, Niels le Tort (1855-1924), who from 1 January 1907 became the owner of the cinema. Ole Olsen had so far withdrawn from cinema operations and concentrated on his great ambitions as a film producer. According to Storm P., who for some years from 1906-08 was involved both as a cartoonist, writer and actor in the film mogul's enterprise, Ole Olsen bought an allotment area on Mosedalvej in Valby in the summer of 1906, and here they intended to record the company's indoor scenes.

Indoor scenes are so much said, though, because because of the film negative's demand for relatively bright light to be exposed, you couldn't film indoors back then. There were not yet electric floodlights that provided enough light to illuminate a room sufficiently for decorations and actors to be clearly visible on the film strip. Decorations were therefore painted on heavy paper or canvas and placed in the open air, preferably in the hope of sunlight and in constant fear of strong winds or rain. This is one of the reasons why on some silent films you can often see that the wind or wind makes itself undesirable, for example by the tablecloth on the living room dining table hanging and fluttering, or by the newspaper lying on the table flipping by itself.

In this scene photo from the film I Bondefanger claws (1910), it is clearly seen that the decoration is built up on a wooden floor. When it came to utilizing daylight, there was neither a wall nor a ceiling on the decoration. - © 1977 Marguerite Engberg: Danish Silent Film I, pp. 107-08. Rhodes Publishing House, Copenhagen 1977.

Nordisk Film's scene 1, as it looked in the silent film era. In order to make the most of the sun and daylight, the studio itself is located with its glass walls facing north and side walls to the east and west, respectively. The wooden building behind is located on the south side of the studio. At the back of the picture is taken by a couple of the private residential houses, which for many years were located on Mosedalvej. - © 1977 Marguerite Engberg: Danish Silent Film I, p. 111. Rhodes Publishing House, Copenhagen 1977.

However, an aim was soon to improve the shooting conditions, especially by erecting a wooden shed and, in direct connection to this, a studio with glass walls and a glass roof, so that the sunlight could still be exploited. But the bothersome wind and rain were avoided. At the same time as filming using sunlight alone, artificial light was also tried, but it did not succeed very well at first. This studio was and still is to this day referred to as Scene 1, as the building, which is probably the world's oldest existing film studio, is still preserved, and which after a number of years of being used for magazines has once again been used as a studio, mainly for recording intimate TV programs.

In 1909 a new and larger studio was built on Mosedalvej, and it was consequently designated as Scene 2. But as production increased, this studio was not sufficient to meet the demands, and a new and even larger studio, Scene 3, was built in 1911. The building is on two floors, of which the brick lower floor was furnished for magazines and wardrobes for the actors, while the stage space itself is located at the height of the first floor. During the spring of 1912, an open open open-air stage was also set up, where the many circus films the company produced at the time were shot.

A view of Nordisk Film seen from the northwest. This is what the studios looked like shortly before the outbreak of World War I. In the foreground are still the remains of the allotment area on which the studios were built. It is scene 1 that is seen on the far left, while the slightly larger stage 2 is seen in the middle of the picture, and the big scene 3 is seen on the right. In front of the latter, scene 4 is under construction. - © 1977 Marguerite Engberg: Danish Silent Film I, p. 109. Rhodes Publishing House, Copenhagen 1977.

Scene 4 was added in 1914, and it was actually a completed studio, which was originally built for O. E. Nathansohn's film company, Lille Strandvej in Hellerup. But when Nathansohn's company collapsed during the autumn of 1913, Nordisk Films Kompagni bought the studio and had it transported to Mosedalvej, where it was erected. Finally, the last and largest studio, called Scene 5, came into being in 1915, and it was, unlike scenes 1-4, partly intended for artificial light shots. This studio was built on some newly acquired allotment plots that were neighbouring plots to those previously acquired. Here was also built a wooden barrack, which quickly got the name "Poet's Workshop" because it was used by the so-called dramaturger, i.e. people who processed and rewrote submitted manuscripts or synopses, novels and short stories into the so-called screenplays, which were used as the basis for "turning" the films, which were then performed by hand, both during the filming and during the screening.

In the mentioned "poet's workshop" worked for a while the later so famous film director Carl Th. Dreyer (1889-1968). He was trained as a journalist and as such had been employed at Berlingske Tidende 1909-10, at the daily newspaper Riget in 1912, and in the same period he regularly delivered articles to the weekly magazine Illustreret Tidende. On 1 July 1912 he was employed at Ekstrabladet, and here, under the pseudonym "Tommen", he also began to write about many other subjects than aviatics, including films, which would soon become a prominent area of interest with him. This interest led, among other things, to the fact that in June 1913 he was employed as a dramaturg at Nordisk Films Kompagni on Mosedalvej, where, as mentioned, he came to work in the "Poet Workshop", where a number of other more or less excellent playwrights were also employed, partly at the same time as Dreyer and partly later.

"Down with the weapons"

It is probably characteristic of Dreyer that one of the novels he strongly wanted Nordisk to film was "Down with the Weapons", which in 1905 obtained his authoress, Bertha von Suttner (1843-1914), the Nobel Peace Prize 1905. The novel's highly pacifist tendency was prevalent in cultivated circles both in militant Germany and the rest of Europe, and not least in Denmark, which did not want a repeat of the defeat of 1864. Pacifism had again become prevalent in some circles in 1913, when looming war clouds again pulled up over Europe and ended with the outbreak of World War I, which began September 3, 1914. Dreyer adapted the novel into feature films, and as a director Holger-Madsen (1878-1943) was chosen, who in the years 1913-20 was associated with Nordisk Film as a writer, director and actor.

Above is a view of Nordisk Film's area and buildings in 1918 with the then four studios. The picture was taken from south to north. In the foreground is the main entrance with the administration building to the right in the foreground. Immediately behind his right end is scene 1, and in front of this scene 2, then scene 3 and – perpendicular to this – the somewhat larger stage 4. Like the other scenes, it was built as a solid wooden skeleton clad in glass, but its foundation consisted of a foundation brick building that stretched the entire length of the studio, which can be seen in the following picture on page 112. As can be seen from the many people in the photo, the place was a busy workplace. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

However, the film was so current and realistic in its battle scenes that the film censorship postponed its premiere in Europe, but it was shown with great success in the United States in the late summer of 1914. Here its pacifist message came at an opportune time, as large circles of American society wanted to keep the country out of the fighting. However, the film was granted permission to be screening in Denmark, but upon the censorship on 31 July 1914, the film was banned for children. It premiered in Danish cinemas on 18 September 1915, and then the war raged between the Central Powers Austria-Hungary, Germany and Turkey, and the Allies: Serbia, Russia, Belgium, France and Great Britain with dominions and colonies, Montenegro, Japan, Italy, and after 1915 even more countries joined. The economically and militarily relatively strong United States entered the war on the side of the Allies in April 1917, and this marked a decisive turning point for the course of the war.

In this photo from 1913, a number of actors or extras are seen in front of their wardrobes at Nordisk Film. From a personal knowledge of the conditions on the site, it must as far as I can estimate have been on top of this wardrobe building that stage 4 was erected in the spring of 1914. What the tree scaffolding at the top of the picture should serve for, I have not succeeded in ascertaining. But if it is the wardrobes under scene 4 that are in question, then many famous Danish actors have had their regular time on the site since the silent film era and right up to the 1980s. – The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

For Nordisk Film, "Down with the Weapons" meant an audience and box office success, which inspired the company to produce more war films, and in all haste scripts and screenplays were made for a total of four films in this genre, striving to make especially the battle scenes as realistic and impactful as possible. These four war films were: The Spy, Pro Patria, The Robbed Cannon Drawings, and War and Love. The former film premiered in Germany in February 1915, while the other three did not premiere in America until the early summer of 1915. The films did not get very good reviews and none of them became an audience success either. This was perhaps not least due to the fact that in the meantime a landmark film historical premiere had taken place in American cinemas, namely The Birth of a Nation by the master director David Wark Griffith (1875-1948), which premiered on February 8, 1915. This film, which was about the American Civil War of 1861-65, contained, among other things, some realistic battle scenes and eerie Ku-Kuks-Klan scenes, which, like the rest of the film, were staged and cut with such a mastery that the Danish war films had to seem dull, tame and boring in comparison.

But in this sketchy presentation of Nordisk Film's history, which of course has only an indirect and peripheral connection to my grandmother's life, but a little more to my own story, we have not yet reached the outbreak of the First World War. So far, we have only arrived at the year 1906, i.e. about a few years before my mother was born. So the Danish film and cinema business was very well underway already at this early stage of the century. But cartoons had not yet been made in Denmark, but in England and – of course – especially in America, though not in Hollywood, as the film city did not exist at the time, but rather in New York.

That film in more than one sense is illusion art shows Valdemar Psilander's extremely modest and primitive wardrobe, which is still found on Nordisk Film's territory on Mosedalvej in Valby. The contents consisted of a make-up table with a mirror, a chair and a wood-burning stove with special space to warm the feet. The cloakroom building is just behind stage 1 and has been lying unused since Psilander had his roughly daily walk on the site. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

Nordisk Film in Frihavnen

The technical side of the film production, such as the production, fixation and copying of the negative film, was in the first beginning made at home in Ole Olsen's private villa on Kronprinsensvej in Frederiksberg. But the conditions here were not in the long run suitable for the purpose, and therefore already during the summer of 1906 it succeeded in adding an additional address to Ole Olsen's Film Industry, namely Manufakturhuset, 5th floor, in Copenhagen's Free Port. The Free Port was a customs closed area, so that the companies that were within its borders and received their goods from abroad only had to pay customs duties on the imported goods when these were taken out of the Free Port and into Copenhagen. It had the economic advantage that customs duties had to be paid only on the quantity of raw film used and then carried outside the customs guard. And since the film negatives always remained in the premises of the Manufakturhuset, no customs duty had to be paid. Duties were also to be paid only on the amount of film copies that went out of the Free Port, but since the majority of Ole Olsen's film production was sold abroad, the film copies could therefore be shipped from the Free Port itself, thus avoiding and saving the company the cost of customs clearance.

However, it must be said that at first there were many difficulties, and that several meters of positive raw film went to waste, because the people who worked in the film laboratory in Frihavn for good reasons did not yet always master the technical sides of film production. They were relegated to experimenting with workable solutions and results to the many technical problems that arose along the way.

However, the space in Manufakturhuset soon became too small for the rapidly expanding film production, and on 7 January 1907 Ole Olsen therefore bought new premises on Gittervej, still in Frihavnen, and the film laboratory was moved here. However, the space here gradually also became too cramped, and in 1917 the company bought a plot of land on Redhavnsvej and had a factory building built, which from the beginning was intended for the technical side of film production. The new film laboratory was therefore named A/S Nordisk Films Teknik, and here the company was housed until 1975, when it was merged with and subordinated to the film laboratory Johan Ankerstjerne A/S, which was located and is still located in Lygten in Copenhagen's Northwest Quarter. In 1908 there were 110 workers and workers employed in Nordisk Film's technical department in Frihavnen.

Grandpa, Grandma and the Movie

My grandmother and grandfather also had a very peripheral relationship with A/S Nordisk Films Teknik, as they were for many years neighbours to a Gunner Hansen and his wife and daughter, who also lived in Baggesensgade 24 on the fourth floor. Gunner Hansen was the son of Edla Hansen (1883-19??), who had already been employed at Nordisk Film in 1915, but after seven years here she came first to Astra Film and then to Palladium. In 1924 she returned to Nordisk Film, where she remained until 1957, when she retired. Edla Hansen was head of the polishing room at Nordisk Films Teknik from 1936 to 1957, but interrupted by a period from 1946-50, when she was a film editor at the studios in Valby.

The two families were good friends, and my maternal grandparents, who were both retired, looked after the Hansen family's only daughter, Randi, for several years when she came from school. Her parents both went to work and it was then almost impossible to have her child looked after after school, because the concept of a leisure home had not yet become a generally accepted part of schoolchildren's everyday life.

At my inquiry, my cousin Dennis informs the following about the Hansen family: "Yes, randi too I remember, I looked after her a lot when her mother was in a victual shop in the basement next to "Nykro". The parents were named Asta and Gunner. Randi I have met later, where she was married and lived in Slangerupgade. [...]" (Dennis in letter dated 25.1.1999).

"Nykro" was the tavern located to the left of the entrance to Baggesensgade 24. The aforementioned victual shop was located to the left of the tavern and thus closer to Baggesensgade 26, in fact, in the same property's front building, where my parents and I and my two smaller brothers came to live in over the courtyard in a side building when we moved to Copenhagen in April 1939.

En passant it can be mentioned here that in the years 1953-55 I myself was employed in the black and white evocation department at Nordisk Films Teknik in Frihavnen. This means that Edla Hansen was still the head of the plastering room, as I myself worked in Nordisk Films Teknik's evocation department during the period mentioned, which I will tell you more about later and in the chronological order of events. At the time mentioned here, there were considerably fewer employees in the whole house than in 1908, but exactly how many, I do not recall, it has probably been somewhere between 60-70 people. The lower number of employees was probably due to the more modern technical equipment and the routine procedures introduced over time, on the basis of which the work was carried out.

It can also be mentioned that in the years 1959-66 I was employed by A/S Nordisk Tegnefilm, which was a subdivision of Nordisk Films Kompagni, and which was housed in some of the illustrious company's premises on Mosedalvej. But since all films, including cartoons, were produced and copied out on Redhavnsvej, I had both in the mentioned years and later my regular time at the film laboratory in Frihavnen. And by the way, had it also had it earlier, namely around 1944-45, when Børge Hamberg and I shot some scenes for "The Tinderbox" on the site's already then outdated trick table. In the early spring of 1945, I had the opportunity to use the site's newly acquired trick camera, shooting a few scenes for a small cartoon based on Kipling's tale How the Elephant Got Its Snable, but which I abandoned later that year and scrapped. In the summer of 1955, I shot on the same camera and trick table some scenes for the cartoon Thumbelina, based on H.C. Andersen's fairy tale of the same name, and which I then had advanced plans to produce. Also, this film was abandoned before it was finished. See about these cartoon projects later.

A Film Engineering Revolution: The Sound Film

Several different inventors made strenuous attempts to turn the silent film into a speech film, as had already succeeded for the American inventor and industrialist Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) as early as 1893. In 1877, Edison had invented and constructed the so-called phonograph, which could mechanically record and reproduce speech, song and music using wax rollers, in which the soundtrack was deposited in the form of grooves. These grooves were produced by a funnel, at the base of which was placed a very thin membrane or membrane of glass or tin foil, and on the middle of the underside of the funnel sat a small fine needle. The reproduction of the soundtrack was done by placing the funnel with the needle at the end of the roller where the sound grooves begin, and when the roller is then rotated at the same speed as during the sound recording, the membrane at the bottom of the funnel is made to vibrate exactly as when recording. These vibrations, which can be amplified via a connected larger funnel, are perceived by the human ear as speech, song and music.

Above is an example of the so-called 'cringboxes', which very early became a permanent 'fixture' in market places and similar places. These cringes had different shapes and names. On the left is a so-called Mutoscope, as it looked to the audience. On the right the same apparatus opened so that one can see the scroll with the radially mounted series of photos of one or another situation. The roller is mechanically connected to the handle on the front of the appliance. By placing the head close to the binocular sight at the top and at the same time turning the handle so that the roller was turned around at a suitable speed, the photographs were shown to the spectator one by one in glimpses, thereby creating the illusion or impression of continuous movement. - © 1965 by C. W, Ceram: Archaeology of the Cinema. Thames and Hudson. London 1965.

Edison at one point had the brilliant idea that it might be interesting to combine the speech machine with a machine capable of recording and reproducing moving images. And in collaboration with his closest associate, W. K. Laurie Dickson, he first set about constructing a device, called the Cinematographer, that could record so-called moving images, which succeeded in 1888. A few years later, in 1891, he and Dickson had also constructed a device for reproducing moving images, and then set about recording and combining film and sound. The device was called the Kinetoscope, but it was still a crate-box apparatus. The combination of the two devices mentioned and the phonograph was called the Kinetophonograph. In the small studio "Black Maria" in Menlo Park in New York, built in 1894, Edison and Dickson then set about producing a series of short films, which were immediately sold to the rapidly emerging American and so-called Penny Arcades, and soon also to similar foreign "kukkasse-cinemas", including to Pacht's Panorama & Kinoptikon at City Hall Square in Copenhagen, which only in 1896 began to show "vivid, body-sized images". After this, it was these that were projected onto a large, white canvas, and which could therefore be seen by many spectators at the same time, who came to dominate the market.

Above is a series of single photos of a cat in motion, which excellently demonstrate the principle of the art of illusion called film. When such serial photos are presented singly at sufficiently short intervals, the impression of continuous movement arises in connection with the so-called 'inertia' of the visual sense. - Eadweard Muybridge: Animals In Motion. Edited by Lewis S. Brown. Dover Publications, Inc. New York 1957.

Here is Edison's newer version of a so-called "cringe box", where the pictures in this case are shot and shown on a film strip. The latter is suspended on a series of coils, some of which are equipped with bars for the propulsion, which can be done either mechanically using a crank or an electric motor. Although it is not directly apparent from the picture, it is probably a device with a crank. At the top is the binocular sight, through which a single spectator at a time could watch the film. Edison patented the apparatus in 1891 under the name "Kinetoscope". - © 1965 by C. W, Ceram: Archaeology of the Cinema. Thames and Hudson. London 1965.

In Denmark, two engineers, Axel Petersen (1887-1971) and Arnold Poulsen (1889-1952), succeeded in inventing and constructing a tone film system in which the sound was recorded together with the image and soundtrack photographed onto the film strip itself. This system was partly part of the tone film system that prevailed in Europe. Petersen & Poulsen's tone film system was demonstrated in 1923. However, speech films had already been experimented with at Nordisk Film in 1908-09, and at the Cinema at Gl. Kongevej 100, as well as at Biorama, both places in 1909. Biorama tried again in 1914, but it was not until Petersen & Poulsen's tone film system, where the sound was photographed onto the film strip itself, that the result had lasting practical applications. The system was demonstrated through some small films that the company had produced and showcased in the Palace Theatre on October 12, 1923.

Petersen and Poulsen had their sound system patented so that they had the only right to do so in Scandinavia. At that time, they entered into cooperation with Nordisk Film, which at that time had the money changer Carl Bauder (1882-1944) as chief executive. The latter considered that the patent rights excluded other film companies, in particular American film companies, from using the same system in their films broadcast on the Scandinavian film market. It came to some lawsuits that went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and including the American film companies' lawyers claimed that the sound system that Petersen and Poulsen claimed to have invented had already long since been put into general use and patented in America. The American film companies therefore threatened to boycott the Danish film market if Bauder won the lawsuit.

Bauder was of course aware that it would mean cinema death in Denmark if the Americans made good on their threats. What he wanted was only to make a financial gain by ordering the American film companies, which used the same sound system as the one for which Petersen and Poulsen had taken out a patent and who rented out their films in Denmark, to pay some kind of license fee. And the case ended with American film companies being required to pay a certain license per film of the films they distributed on the Danish film market for the following six years.

Arnold Poulsen and Axel Petersen are seen here in the Palads Theatre's operator room in October 1923, where their tone film system was demonstrated for the first time to a larger audience. However, the system only had a practical lifespan of about four years, until 1927, when it was outcompeted by American tone film systems and patents. - The Danish Film Museum's Picture Archive.

But in the context of Petersen and Poulsen's sound film system, one could once again find the approximately ubiquitous Storm P. Together with the especially later famous film comedian Chr. Arhoff (1893-1973), Storm had a revue number, a nonsense monologue, called "Storm-and-Stille", and with this number the couple appeared in Petersen & Poulsen's talking film 1923, which for a special invited circle was first demonstrated in Denmark in the Palace Theatre on 12 October 1923. In the days 20-26 October s.a., the films were shown as a pre-program for the theater's normal, silent feature films, which, however, as mentioned, were usually accompanied by live orchestral music.

The two engineers in the following many years successfully sought to improve their tone film system, which they had begun to work on developing as early as 1918. They were then employed by the Danish company Electrical Fono Film Company, which had been established in 1916. The company passed in 1928 to the owner of Nordisk Elektrisk Apparatfabrik, Valdemar Selmer Trane, who renamed the film company Nordisk Tonefilm, and who in the following time shot more than 60 small films, some of which premiered on 4 March 1929 in the cinemas Colosseum, Kino-Palæet, Palads Teatret and Roxy.

American film in the lead

In America, the technicians at Warner Brothers developed a tone film system, which was called Vitaphone, and on August 6, 1926, they were able to demonstrate the preliminary result in their own cinema in New York. The talking films, however, were a composite program of small films, similar to Petersen & Poulsen's demonstration in 1923. But on October 6, 1927, Warner Brothers premiered "The Jazz Singer" with revue singer and actor Albert "Al" Jolson (1886-1950), and although the film was only partly a talk film with music and synchronized song numbers and a little speech, it immediately became a huge success with the American audience. This was not least due to the fact that in the film Jolson in a tearful voice preferred the song to his mother, "Mammy", so that not an eye was dry with the audience.

In 1928, Warner Bros. followed up the success with another Al Jolson film, "The Singing Fool," "The World's Greatest and Most Famous Speech and Tone Movie," which the commercials and ads proclaimed. In it, Jolson sang "Sonny Boy", which immediately became a world slayer. "The Singing Fool", as the film was called in Denmark, had its Copenhagen premiere in the Colosseum on August 17, 1929, and it was also a great success with the general Danish audience. The newspapers' reviewers were, for good reason, a little more critical of the not-yet-perfect speech films.

An advertisement in Biograf-Bladet no. 14, 1930/31 advertises a Harry T. Sørensen with the record tone apparatus "Syncrotone", with which he had some success, as by mid-1931 he had sold over 30 plants to various provincial cinemas, which wanted to get away easily and cheaply at the transition to tone films. However, the record tone system as such did not have much chance of surviving the competition with optical sound systems, which technically had the advantage that both image and sound were found on the film strip itself.

At the same time as "The Singing Fool", Universal Studios had the tone film "Show Boat", "The World's Best Tone Film", Denmark's premiere in Palads Teatret, where everything was sold out for the two evening performances, respectively at 7 and 9.25. For the rest, the films had already been provided with the so-called subtitles to reduce the language problem.

However, the sound side of the films was still recorded on gramophone records, a system that lasted for some years, but of course could not compete in the long run with the optical sound system. Both in the USA, England and Germany, optical sound had been experimented with since about 1900, and already then the principles of the method were established. In the so-called optical sound recording, the sound is recorded and reproduced by photoelectric means, and two methods are distinguished: the intensity method and the area or amplitude method. In both cases, sound waves via a microphone induce variations in the light beam.

Above is a fairly representative sample of Copenhagen cinema ads from around 1930/31, when the sound film had been established as a phenomenon that could no longer be ignored. Even a very hesitant Charlie Chaplin had to surrender, albeit at first reluctantly. The Little Theatre and the Colosseum showed his The Light of the City, 1931, which did not contain a single spoken line, but rather background music that Chaplin himself had composed. The first Danish-Norwegian feature film with tone was Eskimo, which premiered on 9 October 1930 in the Kino Palace. The following year in May 1931, the same cinema showed the next Danish speech film, Præsten i Vejlby, described as "the first Danish full-evening tone and speech film", but otherwise it was foreign sound films – especially American ones – that dominated the Danish cinema repertoire. – Source: Niels Jørgen Dinnesen and Edvin Kau: The film in Denmark. Akademisk Forlag 1983, as well as The Film's Who What Where – Danish titles and biographies. Politikens Forlag. Copenhagen 1968.

Grandma, the movie and the line of kings

Grandma has told that she had a couple of times been in Kosmorama in Østergade and in the Cinema Theatre in Vimmelskaftet, which probably must have happened during one of her visits to the family in Copenhagen, because when the two mentioned cinemas were established, she was in all likelihood in the service of a farmer near Maribo on Lolland. In any case, she has told that in the Cinema Theatre in Vimmelskaftet in 1906 she had seen two reportage films: "Frederik the 8th's Proclamation" and "Christian the 9th's Funeral". She then sat in the front row of the hall, to even see what flickered past up on the canvas. On another occasion, however, she had also seen other of the two cinemas' more romantic film performances. However, Grandma had more to think about than film and cinema when she found out around May 1907 that she had become pregnant, as told earlier above. Presumably around Christmas time of the same year, she returned to Copenhagen, partly for the purpose of visiting the family and partly to, when the time came, to be admitted to the Nativity Foundation. Here she came down, as already mentioned, with her first child, my mother, on January 18, 1908. And here it was that Grandpa came and picked them both up when they were discharged from the foundation's birth home, to take them home with him to Lolland.

Grandma, unlike Grandpa, was strongly royal, and there is therefore reason to look at which king(s) and queens ruled during my maternal grandparents' lifetime. After Frederik VII's death in 1863, Prince Christian, son of Duke Frederick of Glücksburg.m and Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel, under the name Christian IX (1818-1906) became King of Denmark, which he ruled until his death on 29 January 1906. On 26 May 1842 he married at Amalienborg Palace to Princess Louise of Hesse-Kassel (1817-98), who in her later capacity as queen was called "Europe's Mother-in-Law". Among the couple's six children were first and foremost Crown Prince Frederik, born on 3 June 1843 in "The Yellow Palace" in Copenhagen, where the princely couple lived at the time, and child no. 2, Princess Alexandra, born September 1, 1844, also in "The Yellow Palace". On 10 March 1863, the princess married the eldest son of the English Queen Victoria, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who under the name Edward VII was King of England from 1901 to 1910 and Alexandra consequently queen of that country during the same period. The Queen died on November 20, 1925.

King Christian the 9th. Queen Louise (from Hesse-Kassel)

Christian IX's and Queen Louise's fourth child was the previously mentioned Princess Dagmar, born 26 November 1847 in "The Yellow Palace". On November 9, 1866, in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, she was married to Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovitsch, who in 1881 under the name Alexander III was appointed Tsar of Russia. At the conclusion of the marriage, Princess Dagmar was given the name Maria Feodorovna. The Tsar died on 2 November 1894, and was succeeded by his son, Nicholas II, and his wife, Zarina Alice of Hesse. At the March Revolution of 1917, the Tsar had to abdicate, and he and his wife and five children were kept under house arrest in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) until in 1918 they were brutally executed by firing squad in the basement of the property in which they stayed, as previously mentioned.

Christian IX died as mentioned in January 1906 and was shortly after buried in Roskilde Cathedral in the Glücksburgs' chapel. The king was succeeded by his son, Frederik VIII, who on 28 July 1869 married Louise of Sweden-Norway, born on 31 October 1851 at Stockholm Castle. The couple had a total of eight children, of whom Christian, born September 26, 1870 at Charlottenlund Palace, was the oldest and thus crown prince. Child number two was Carl, born August 3, 1872 at Charlottenlund Castle. On 22 July 1896, Prince Carl married Princess Maud of England, a daughter of the later King, Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (see above). On 12 and 13 November 1905, Prince Carl was popularly elected King of Norway, and as was the case for his brother, Christian X, in Denmark, he became a national rallying point during the German occupation of 1940-45.

Queen Louise (of Sweden) King Frederick the 8th.

However, King Frederik VIII did not get a long reign, as on a trip to Hamburg he died of a heartbeat already on May 14, 1912. He was also buried in the Chapel of the Glücksburgs in Roskilde Cathedral. He was succeeded by his son, Crown Prince Christian, who under the name Christian X was to have a relatively long reign, namely until his death on 20 April 1947, which means a total of 35 years.

On April 26, 1898, Prince Christian married Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, daughter of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III and Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna of Russia. The wedding ceremony took place in the "Villa Wenden" in Cannes in the south of France. Princess Alexandrine was born on 24 December 1879 at Schwerin Castle. The royal wedding has thus taken place the same month and year as my grandmother was confirmed in Frederiksberg Church, and as the royal person she was, she has undoubtedly with joy and participation heard and read about the event. Grandma later even very much appreciated especially Queen Alexandrine, whom she even met and greeted in person, but more on this in chronological order.

The couple had only two sons, namely Crown Prince Frederik, born on 11 March 1899 at Sorgenfri Palace, and Prince Knud, born 27 July 1900 in the same place. In 1947, Prince Canute was appointed heir to the throne, as the newly appointed king, Frederik IX, had only daughters and was therefore feared for the succession. However, by the constitutional amendment in 1953, the line of succession was changed in favour of female succession, whereby Princess Margrethe, born 16 April 1940, was appointed heir to the throne.

Queen Alexandrine King Christian X

After his father's death in 20 April 1947, Crown Prince Frederik was appointed king under the name Frederik IX. Thus, his wife, Crown Princess Ingrid, was born on 28 March 1910 in Stockholm, the daughter of Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden and Queen Margaretha, Queen of Denmark. The couple were married on 24 May 1935 in Storkyrkan in Stockholm and settled at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen. On 16 April 1940 the couple had their first child, Princess Margrethe, later Queen Margrethe II., 29 April 1944 Followed Princess Benedikte, and on 30 August 1946 the couple's third and last child, Princess Anne-Marie, was born.

King Frederick the 9th. Queen Ingrid

The immensely popular King Frederik IX died on 14 January 1972 of heart impairment and pneumonia at the Municipal Hospital in Copenhagen, and a clearly grief-ridden Crown Princess was proclaimed Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. On the 24th of the same month, the king, like what had been the case for his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, was interred in Roskilde Cathedral. But neither my grandmother nor grandfather experienced this, because they had died in 1962 and 1964 respectively and were interred at Assistens Cemetery in Nørrebro in Copenhagen. But especially grandma had followed the later Crown Princess Margrethe's birth and upbringing throughout the 1940s and 1950s.

King Christian X on horseback in 1920 Queen Margrethe II 1972

This mentions the number of kings and queens who successively ruled during my maternal grandmother's lifetime (1884-1962), and of course also during my maternal grandfather's lifetime (1869-1964). We can therefore appropriately return to the mention of my maternal grandparents' and my family relationships. More precisely, this means that in the following we shall return to the time around my own birth.

Source for the above-reproduced portraits of the Danish kings and queens:

The painting of King Christian the 9th is painted by H. Chr. Jensen 1887. The portrait of Queen Louise is probably painted by the same artist. The Museum of National History at Frederiksborg.

The painting of King Frederik the 8th is painted by Otto Bache. The portrait of Queen Louise is probably painted by the same artist. The Museum of National History at Frederiksborg.

The painting of King Christian X is painted by Herman Vedel. The portrait of Queen Alexandrine was probably painted by the same artist. The Museum of National History at Frederiksborg.

The photographic portraits of King Frederik the 9th and Queen Ingrid are reproduced after Kay Nielsen: Denmark's Kings and Queens, Hamlet Publishing House, Copenhagen 1980, and Lademanns Leksikon, respectively.

The picture of Christian X on horseback at the reunion in 1920 is a section of a newspaper picture from Our History. Special print of series of articles on the occasion of Berlingske Tidende's 250th anniversary.

The portrait of Queen Margrethe II is a section of an official picture of the Queen and Prince Henrik.