Karl Gerhard

Biography

Karl Gerhard was born in Stockholm in 1891. He began as a touring stage actor and got to know many people in the Swedish theater and budding film business, but from around 1920 he switched to become a revue actor and producer in Stockholm. His literary and musical gifts and sense of style made him the leading revue producer of Stockholm, and he clearly felt influenced by the German cabaret tradition. During the thirties he was one of the leading persons in Stockholm showbiz and in a number of songs he responded to the Nazi challenge. At the same time he promoted stars like Zarah Leander. The political side of his stage act culminated in the summer of 1940, when his revue "Gullregn" (Golden Showers) included the couplet "Den ökända hästen från Troja" (The notorious Trojan Horse) which graciously nailed down the politics of appeasement and vacillation of the Swedish government and the threat of the pro-Nazi fifth column, which had to be reckoned with since the mid-thirties. Using an obscure paragraph, the Government stepped in and forbade performance of the song, invoking reasons of communal security: for the remainder of the season, the stage props for the number (a large wooden horse, painted in the traditional red tint - the kind that is a trademark Swedish souvenir, but gagged) was left and Karl Gerhard read out the order of silence and the risible law paragraph, while the stone cake of the song began to spread in secret New promoters and writers entered the scene in the forties, and while he continued to be a successful revue producer on his own, he also cooperated with some of the new generation, such as Povel Ramel, who in some sense is his artistic successor. He continued to perform and produce in the theater till the early sixties, and has been an inspiration for younger actors and singers into the present age. In 1964 he died during a cardiac operation. In later years he was allowed to legally use "Gerhard" as his surname. Karl Gerhard was married three times, first time to the young actress Mary Johnson.