Comedian Victor Borge Dead at Age 91
G R E E N W I C H, Conn. -- Victor Borge, the daffy pianist whose whimsical approach to the classics earned him the moniker the “clown prince” of Denmark, died today. He was 91.
Borge died at home in sleep, his longtime manager, BernardGurtman, said.
Borge had just returned from Copenhagen, the city of his birth,and was excited about spending Christmas with his family, Gurtmansaid. Borge would have turned 92 on Jan. 3.
For decades, Borge delighted audiences by deflating thepomposity of classical music. He fell off his bench, played musicupside down and in weird ways, and repeatedly milked laughs fromsuch classic routines as “phonetic punctuation” in which he usedgoofy sounds to indicate commas, periods and question marks in hismonologue.
He kept up a busy career into his 80s, touring and issuingvideos, including his most popular, “The Best of Victor Borge,”which sold some 3 million copies.
“Some people reach the point where they must try desperately tohold on to something that isn’t there anymore, no matter how greatthey are,” he said in an interview in 1986. “This is where I amvery, very lucky. We all do what we can, we all have limitations.Apparently, within my limitations, there is enough to go on and onand on and on.”
Trailblazer
Borge performed 100 or more nights a year, sometimes as pianistand sometimes as conductor, usually as a clown but sometimes indead earnest. In his later years, he directed Mozart’s “MagicFlute” in Cleveland and prepared a concert version of “Carmen.”
“I could probably play every night. I have enough offers. Andsometimes it is very tempting to do that,” he said in a 1992interview. “If I decide to stay home, it’s a very expensivesleep.”
In 1999, Borge was one of five performers selected for theKennedy Center Honors.
“He’s never said a four-letter word, never had any dirt,”Gurtman said. “He’s a total professional that you meet once inyour life. He was a trailblazer like Milton Berle, he did it once,and did it live.”
Record Solo Run
A native of Denmark, Borge learned English by spending day afterday in movie theaters, and memorized some of his routinesphonetically. Rudy Vallee gave him a shot at radio. Then he becamea regular on Bing Crosby’s “Kraft Music Hall.”
In Hollywood, Borge appeared in “Higher and Higher” with FrankSinatra in 1943 and “Meet the People” in 1944. He became a U.S.citizen in 1948.
In 1953, Borge’s one-man show, “Comedy in Music,” began a run of 849 performances, the Broadway record for a solo show. Herevived it in 1977 in a limited run of one month that was extendedto two.
Borge married his second wife, Sarabel, in 1953. They had threechildren, Sann, Victor and Frederikke. He had two children, Ronaldand Janet, by his first wife.
No Leisurely Retirement
Despite his fame, Borge felt an insecurity that kept him from aleisurely retirement or from indulging his passion for sailing.
“When you are trying to defend a position, or create aposition, in any field in your life, then every change, every move,has to be defended,” he said in 1986. “Every move can be the endof it or an advance. You have to be courageous.”
His routines came from reality. Borge once saw a pianist slideright off his bench while playing a concerto, and he recreated thatdisaster hundreds of times.
“I do a thing with a page turner. Everybody who has ever triedto have a page turner knows that it is terribly dangerous, and thebetter musician you are the more you have been exposed tomistakes,” Borge said. “So, when I do that routine the orchestramembers just fall off their seats. They all know.
“Many in the audience also know it, but the ones who do notknow the reality will laugh at the clowning of it.”
Serious Musician
In his moments of serious playing, Borge was praised as adistinguished proponent of the Romantic style, but his seriousrecordings amounted to one side of a record. He said a microphonemade him nervous, “because as a musician I know how to do it and Iknow I can do it. And if it doesn’t turn out the way I really cando it, I don’t want it.”
He was born in Copenhagen on Jan. 3, 1909, the youngest of fiveboys. His father was a violinist for 33 years in the RoyalSymphony, and expected his son to follow suit. Instead, the boytook a liking to his mother Frederika’s instrument, the piano.
He made his concert debut at 13, and kept that up until 1934.His friends, though, knew him as a parlor comedian, and in 1931 anew career opened when he wrote the music for an amateur show, andthen substituted for the star.
Borge made Adolf Hitler a butt of his jokes, and he wasfortunate to be in Sweden when the Nazis invaded Denmark in 1940.Soon after, he and his American wife, Elsie, left for the UnitedStates, arriving with nothing but their Scottish terrier.
In an Associated Press interview when he was 80, Borge said“luck, good fortune and stamina” kept him performing.
“I never have to get ‘up’ for a performance,” he said. “The moment I walk on the stage, no matter what my mood, if I have any regrets or feel sick or in pain, all that disappears. That is whenthe climax of my day occurs.”