Victor Borge

Musical humorist Victor Borge entered the world as Børge Rosenbaum on January 3, 1909, in Copenhagen, Denmark. As the child of a violinist from the Danish Symphony Orchestra, he took up the piano at three and was promptly recognized as a prodigy. A scholarship took him to the Royal Danish Music Conservatory, where he trained with Olivo Krause and Victor Schiøler before becoming a protégé of Frederic Lamond and Egon Petri. His first professional appearance came in 1926, and within the next ten years he stood among Scandinavia’s leading stage and screen performers. Satire always colored his work, growing sharper once the Nazis began their advance across Europe. As a Jew he openly ridiculed Hitler onstage; when German troops occupied Denmark in 1940 he was placed on a temporary blacklist and fled, departing Finland aboard the S.S. American Legion—the final American passenger vessel to leave Northern Europe before World War II.

Reaching New York City with no English, Borge quickly mastered enough of the language to open for Rudy Vallée on radio and later join Bing Crosby’s program. He became a regular presence on both radio and television, then reached Broadway in 1953 with Comedy in Music. The show ran until 1956, logging 849 performances and earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running one-man production. His distinctive style fused one-liners, sight gags, and musical pranks, simultaneously puncturing classical music’s pretensions and broadening its reach. Although these antics sometimes masked his pianistic skill, he performed with leading ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the London Philharmonic. He issued numerous albums and home videos, collaborated on the books My Favorite Intermissions and My Favorite Comedies in Music, and kept performing after his ninetieth birthday. Borge died at home on December 23, 2000.