Else Frölich

Biography

Paris, 1887: the city’s gaslight flickered on the first breath of Else Thaulow, child of a Norwegian painter and a Danish mother who spoke three languages and never sat still. Three springs later the family crossed the water to Copenhagen, trading the Seine for cobblestones and Carlsberg. At twenty she married the velvet-voiced tenor Louis Frölich; together they criss-crossed Scandinavia in a rattling train of trunks and evening dress. In Kristiania—now Oslo—1909, audiences stampeded the stage door after hearing her sing; critics wrote that “the North has found its own fire.” The flicker of a projector soon lured her south to Valby. Nordisk Film rolled the camera on her in 1911 and never really stopped for the next seven years. Between 1911 and 1918 only Clara With and Ebba Thomsen could rival the queues that formed whenever a new Frölich picture premiered. She swayed opposite Valdemar Psilander’s smolder and Anton de Verdier’s elegance, round-cheeked and unmistakably sensuous, spine straight as a dancer’s, heartbreak tucked playfully behind her eyes. When the silent era dimmed, she traded greasepaint for fountain pens, spinning plots and dialogue for a younger generation. Years later her son Henrik Sandberg took those stories, added Passer’s comic lightning, and lit up Danish cinemas all over again.