Edvard Persson

Biography

Edvard Persson began his career with small parts at the Folkets Hus theater in Malmö. At the age of 18 he joined a traveling theater company, Opera Comique. Soon enough he was given the leading roles in operas and operettas. The company traveled around Sweden with plays such as Värmlänningarna or The Merry Widow. It was here he met Ellen Rosengren in 1909, an actress who eventually became his first wife. They were hired by the Apollo theatre in Helsinki, Finland, where they spent the following seven years. In 1919 he came back to the Folkets Hus theatre in Malmö. He played his first parts as a comedian and got an instant breakthrough. During the 1920s his fame increased, both by theater and silent movies. In 1932 he got a contract with the newly formed Europa Film and achieved a national breakthrough with The Southsiders (1932). Edvard Persson was primarily a comedian, not a character actor. In movies like South of the Highway (1936) or Kalle på Spången (1939) he is the good-hearted patriarch who has to face an external danger, threatening the traditional way of life and the security of the people. In many of his movies he is a populist, anti-intellectual, prejudiced, patriot with a back-to-nature philosophy. The peak of his career was his tour in USA 1946. In Chicago he had an audience of 21,000 people. At the end of the 1940s his popularity dwindled, and after 1950 it went downhill because of awful screenplays. Although he was in bad health he continued to make movies almost until his death.