Georg af Klercker
actor, director, writer
- Birth name:
- Ernst Georg af Klercker
- Born:
- 1877-12-15, Kristianstad, Skåne län, Sweden
- Died:
- 1951-11-13, Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden
- Professions:
- actor, director, writer
Biography
Born in Kristianstad, Georg af Klercker first wore a uniform, not a director’s beret, as a lieutenant with the Svea Life Guards. In 1907 he traded his sabre for greasepaint, left the barracks and joined a wandering theatre troupe before the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm beckoned him onstage. Four years later he stepped behind the camera, taking the reins at Svenska Bio. 1912 put him in front of the lens one last time: in *The Springtime of Life*, shot by visiting Frenchman Paul Garbagni, af Klercker acted alongside Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller—three names soon to crown Sweden’s cinematic Golden Age. That same year he launched his own filmmaking career, scoring an instant success with the brisk thriller *Dödsritten under cirkuskupolen* (*The Last Performance*). From 1915 to 1917 he blazed across the new art form like a comet: fourteen titles in 1916 alone—a pace so ferocious it hurled him into a nervous collapse at year’s end. He scaled back to nine pictures in 1917, then quietly exited the director’s chair after 1918. The stage reclaimed him; he settled in Malmö and lived there until his death in 1951.
