Page6-The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, E)ecember 16,1993
Canada
M-T
CJN Exclusive
Victor Borge
Veteran entertainer Victor Borge, who will he 85 in January, is quick-witted both onstage and off.
On a recent weekday morning, the world-famous comedian-pianist, in Toronto to perform at Roy Thomson Hall, visited the Jewish Com-mimity Centre (JCC) to see the Judy Ellis Glick-man photo exhibit commemorating the Danish Jewish community's 1943 rescue.
Borge, horri Borg Rosenhaum in Copenhagen. chatted with photo exhibit volunteers and visitors, his conversation peppered with one liners and punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter.
"Welcome to Toronto,' 'said o well-wisher. "Are we still in Toronto?" he inquired, referring to the long drive up Bathurst Street from his downtown hotel.
■ ■ ' 7 saw your picture in the exhibit, and you haven't changed!" mar\'elled an admirer. Borge 'glanced down at his chest, pausing for effect. ' 'My tie is different,'' he noted, deadpan.
' 7 love your wdrk,'' said a Grade 8 student from Associated Hebrew Schools. "You're clever,'' Borge responded enthusiastically. ' 7 like you too.
Borge the cutup is also gracious, even charming, as he demon.strated by obliging a request for a kiss from a female volunteer with not one but two kis.<ies, one on each cheek.
His visit tO: Toronto marked his first opportunity to see the photo exhibit, which was commissioned byVianks To Scandinavia, a scholarship fund he co-founded in 1%3: (In Toronto the exhibit was sponsored by the Holocaust Remembrance Committee of the Jewish Federation oj Greater Toronto.)
Especially for the occasion, Borge wore, cufflinks bearing biblical quotations in; Hebrew. His attire, from his dark blue blazer to his spotless tasseled loafers, was testament to his attention to detail.
Tliat night, on stage, he performed for two and a half hours, receiving t\vo standing ovations. His unique brand of comedy includes physical humor, conmientsoh the idiosyncracies of language, and classical piano music, at which his skill is apparent even in incomplete pieces ("I don't play endings well," he lies). . . While Borge was at the JCC, he spoke with CJN .reporter Frances Kraft.
CJN: Before you left Denmark in 1940, you were already a well-known performer. How did you find the courage to publicly criticize Nazis as part of your act in wartime Europe?
Borge: In those days [the Nazi threat] was hanging over our heads, but nobody dreamed that it would go to the extent that it did. Denmark was a denuK-racy; arid there was no limitation of what one could do or say so long as it was within [good) taste, that is the way I have operated on stage. Those were the things people talked about.
CJN: How did audiences receive those routines ?
Borge: They laughed as much as they would laugh today. I said, "What's the difference be-' tween a Nazi and a dog? The Nazi lifts his arm." Of course it was funny, and everybody understood the hint.
CJN: Did you realize hOw bad things would get?
Borge: Yes. I used to say that Churchill and I were the only two who saw it coming, because everybody else said it can't happen here. But there were no borders in that respect,
CJN: How were you personally affected by Nazism?
Borge: There were Nazi sympathizers and there was a Nazi pany in Denniai-k, though small; and .sometimes in the audience they would make loud remarks interfering with my routine. I was always ori the front page [of the Nazi newspaperl. There were warnings — V'Be careful, because you . don't know what can happen toyou" and "Jew bastard", the whole thing;
One day I was walking arid a couple of fellows lifted me up by my anns, but I was too fast for them. We were walking along the lake in Copenhagen, and I pushed one ijvthe water, and the other one (here Borge pauses to laugh at the memor)')... tried to fish him out. I ran home, and from then on I neveriA'alked out alone. That was about a year and a half br two years before the
■ invasion-- [of Denmark by Germany]. .
I was convinced the invasion-M'ould come, so 1 had arranged [to .appc;ir at], a vcr>; popular theatre in Sweden.
CJN: After you left Denmark, did you know what was happening to the Jewish community there?
Borge: I knew while I was in Sweden. While I was at the theatre in Sweden. Denmark was in-vade:d. That was in 1940. For a couple of years nothing happened to the Jews. I came (to the United States] in 1940. 1 knew from radio and from personal contact [what was happening in Denmark] — there were still people coming, travelling.
CJN: What were your ties to the Jewish community when you were living in Denmark?
Borge: That is very difficult to describe in a few words. I werit to the synagogue. I went to religious school for a couple of years as a child. I was bar mitzvahed, and Tjust stuttered through
car with gas? But two weeks later I was on the Bing Crosby program, by a miracle. I spokie to 30 million people, which was the number that listened every week. I was on that show for 52 weeks, and I was chosen after the first program as the comedy find of the year on the radio, by the commentator.
Then after the first show; I went over to the gas station with an interpreter. Tasked hini to say that I knew I couldn't be used to fill up cars, but I had just spoken to 30 million Americans who weredying laughing. It's a funny .story, and it's ■true.-.
My roiJtines had been translated to English, and 1 was standing there reading and hearing people screaming and laughing, arid I didn't know what I was saying. I just read it.
That was riiy debut, and from then on, every week I had five or six minutes On each show, and
the things I had to say. My parents were not religious. I never knew my grandfathers — I was a latecomer, very late. My father was 62 when I was born. :
r loved to go to the. synagogue' on the Hijgh Holidays. Copenhagen has a very beautiful synagogue, and I loved the performance, I loved the theatricality. I did not uriderstand a word of it and I came home, as a child, and tried to do the same thing. I took the. bedspread around me as a tallis, and my father's hat, and I tried to do the formalities.
Arid I stillgo to the synagogue when I'm in Copenhagen, a couple of times I've been there on the Holidays. Arid I still love the spectacle.
I don't understand religion, but I am convinced that without it the world would have been worse than hell, because the nations and people behaved out of fear for the hereafter.
CJN: Tell me about your early experiences in the-■ States. ■
Borge: In 1940 I got on the Blng Crosby program. That was the first thing that happened in. the United States — the Kraft Music Hall. I couldn't .speak English at that time, and I went to California and lived on 2.^ cents a day, because that was the lasf^mciney I had that 1 could get out of Sweden.
1 was .seeking a job at a ga!< statjon near NBC studio — the radio .station — and they couldn't u.sc me because 1 couldn't speak English. 1 thought it was kind of funny, you know. How much English do you have to know to fill up a
I told the audience about Scandinaviii and a little about Denrnark.
CJN: What kind of feedback did you receive on wur remarks about Scandinavia?
Borge: Strangely enough, in later yeairs wheti I went to Denmark I met many Americans visiting Denmark as tourists, who came over to me and said,' 'You know, it's thanks to you that we are in Deninark, because we listened to you every week on the Bing Crosby program. You always had something funny to say, and we felt that your country must be a very charming country because of what you said about it."
When I was on the Pontiac show on television, the idea was not that they would sell Pontiacs after the show, but that whenever people saw a sign or the name Pontiac they would smile, because it was connected with a pleasantry. They realized the value, 1 think, in advertising, (hat you associate the product with something plea.sant.
My. product at that time, personally, was Denmark.
: I am against fanaticism, and I didn't want to be fanatical about the Danes either. That-s why I told you the story about the Danes who were not^so Danish in that respect ^ the Nazi Danes, and there were plenty ofnhcm. There strHmrc.-not just in Denriiark, in Italy now.
It's a very difficult subject. Nobcxly scenic to do anything about it, and whatever they do about it doesn't change it, it just delays it. 1 haven't seen .a cure for hale. I can't believe something 1 don't sec.
CJN: // 'soften said that comedians are very serious people. How would you describe yourself?
Borge: I don't describe myseir
CJN: You are a very accomplished musician. Do you feel you've given up anything, musically, with the type of performances you do?
Borge: No, I've gained, because [otherwise] I might not have reached what 1 would have been looking for. Few people do; even the biggest and the greatest, because there's always a summit. When you reach the summit, there's one behind
it: ^
CJN: What is it you were looking for?
Borge: I wasn't looking for anything,:but 1 have reached something that has made me happy.
CJN: /.V there something particularly Danish about your humor, in the same way that British humor is uniquely British?
Borge: No, I don't think so. When I talk about Denmark, I talk about the world that was when 1 grew up. '.
Denmark is a very well organized country -r the Denmark 1 livedin. I think it was one of the . churchmen who said in the old days that Denmark is a country where few have too much and fewer too little. There were not the big ups and downs that we see here in the large countries. The farms were evenly distributed, education was evenly distributed, and so on.
[As for] Danish humor in coriiparison to English hiimor, [each] satirizes what people are familiar with [in their own country].
CJN:. How woiild you define: humor? •
Borge: [Someone] once said that humor is overthrow on expectancy, that things don't turn out the way-you expect. A person walks down the street and slips on a banana peel — that's terrible, biit it can also be very funny. Expectancy that is not fulfijled is the whole basis for humor.
At my fatheir'is funeral, my mother was heartbroken. Some of his colleagues from the [Royal Danish Philharmonic] orchestra carried his casket, and they were all wearing; silk hats. The flute player was very tall and skinny and had a hat that was.too big, and the French horn player, had a hat that was too small; and they looked ab- . solutely hilarious. 1 said to my mother "If Father could open his eyes now and see this; he would die anyhow," and my moiher laughed.
The cure, the power of humor, if used right, is immense. [Laughter].activates part of your body that is only activatedvvhenyou cry. You need it. -V' .- ' ■
CJN: How did you come to co-found Vumks To . Scandinavia in 1963?
Borge: We actually started! with Thanks To Denmark [in 1962], then as the stories [aboiit World Wai; II] became better kriown, we realized that without Sweden there wouldn't have been any escape, and stories about heroic deeds in Norway and Finland began to come out in books and newspapers.
It bothered me that only the Danes were being praised, [so] we started Thanks To Scandinavia. . (The fund has since provided over 1,000 scholarships and grants to Scandinavian - students, researchers, doctors and educators at American coilegesand medical centres.).
The great thing about the Scandinavian countries is that their governments stood behind the rescue. That made the countries: the church, the monarchy and the people.
There are also rotten eggs in probabjy every basket, but the good should not suffer becau.se there are rotteii eggs. Therefore 1 say that it is as important to thank the ones who did great deeds in other countries.
In Roriiania, there were great efforts, to save Jews. Even in Germany, there were decent Germans who saved their Jewish friends at the cost of lives. ■'■ —
CJN: Df) you have a philosophy by which^you try to live your life'.'
Borge: Yes. 1 am not overly iriiprcssed.[by ac-■c()mplishn)ents] lxvau.se I know that nolxxiy dws any mtirc than the capacity which is invested in . thcni. You can't, bc-lall — physicailylall because vou want lo.