Johannes Meyer

Biography

Six-foot-plus of Nordic light, Johannes Meyer strode into Copenhagen in 1884, fair-haired and restless. School-leaving certificate in hand, he twice knocked on the Royal Theatre School’s door—twice turned away—so he walked straight onto Dagmarteatret’s boards in 1905 and never left the city’s spotlight again, trading one stage for another until every playhouse in town had seen his stride. Cameras found him in 1909: Nordisk Film cast him as Erneste des Tressailles in Viggo Larsen’s Revolutionsbryllup, the first of 100-plus screen visits. Silent years rolled by, but 1925 froze him in memory—his Viktor Frandsen in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Master of the House (Palladium Film) became the quietly tyrannical husband audiences loved to judge. Sound arrived; Meyer slipped into character nooks and supporting crannies from 1933 onward, last seen in 1967 as Bilvis in Gabriel Axel’s Hagbard and Signe. Between shoots he lent his velvet voice to radio plays and early TV dramas, directed at Fonixteatret and Nørrebros Theatre, and finally entered the Royal Theatre as staff in 1941—the same institution that once said no. He exited, softly, in 1972, aged 88, leaving Denmark with a century-long echo of footsteps across boards, sets, screens, and airwaves.