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| Johnny Bode | |
|---|---|
 Johnny Bode (1912–83) at the beginning of his musical career. Photo from the Swedish magazine Charme 1931. | |
| Background information | |
| Born | (1912-01-06)6 January 1912 Falköping, Sweden |
| Died | 25 July 1983(1983-07-25) (aged 71) Malmö, Sweden |
| Genres | popular music |
| Occupation(s) | composer, singer |
Johnny Bode (6 January 1912 – 25 July 1983) was a Swedish singer, composer, Nazi sympathizer, and convicted fraudster.
After debuting at seventeen years old, Bode recorded hundreds of songs on the gramophone, many of which were his own compositions. One of his best-known songs, "En herre i frack" (A Gentleman in a Tailcoat), was sung by Swedish actor and Singer Gösta Ekman in 1936. The song later become popularized by Swedish singer Jan Malmsjö, who added it to his repertoire. The last gramophone record with Johnny Bode as a singer was recorded in 1942. Bode rebuilt his career several times during his life after numerous setbacks.
Bode lived beyond his means, was known to fail to pay his debts, and was blacklisted from several Stockholm restaurants. He had a close friendship with Gösta Ekman, until Ekman discovered that Bode had tried to sell his silverware set to a pawnbroker. Bode was also known to write bad checks.
After being convicted of fraud, Bode was declared incapable and put into psychiatric care in St. Sigfrid mental hospital in Växjö, Sweden, where he was sterilized.
Connection to Nazi Party
Before the Second World War, Bode took an interest in Nazism, which blacklisted him from Swedish show business for the rest of his life. Allegedly, it was the combination of uniforms, marches, and pompous culture that enticed Bode. He was able to get permission from the mental hospital to travel to Finland, where he enlisted with the Nazis. However, the short, out of shape, and unreliable Bode soon became a burden and was sent home with an under-officer degree from the Nazi army.
Soon after his return to Swedish soil in 1942, he once again began to make questionable career decisions. By the time he arrived resistance to Nazism was bigger than ever. On the occasion of famed Swedish actor Karl Gerhard's 100th performance of his strongly Nazi-critical cabaret act "Tingel-Tangel," Bode showed up in his Nazi uniform with his degrees on his shoulders and the Iron Cross visible on his chest. After that, he frequently wore the uniform on his occasional visits to Stockholm's nightclubs. As a result, he was ignored by his friends and blacklisted in the Swedish entertainment industry.
Shortly after that, Bode traveled to Norway, where he put up a cabaret for the Norwegian Quisling-regime. Bode promised gold and sunshine and lived a luxurious life in Oslo. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were seen in Sweden as critical of Sweden, especially the song Har du hört vad Svensken sier" (NO: Have You Heard what the Swede's Saying?). This song irritated the Swedish society and media even more. It was difficult for Bode to contact actors who wanted to play in his cabaret, for nobody was willing to put their career at stake by appearing with Bode. Bode himself sang couplets and imitated Winston Churchill, to the great joy of Nazi sympathizers. After twenty-odd appearances, the show closed due to a lack of audience.
Once again, Bode made himself unwelcome. He drank too much, stole, and skipped out on bills again. Bode was even taken in by the Gestapo and was imprisoned in the Grini concentration camp from 22 December 1942 to 30 January 1943. He was labeled a suspicious person due to his own claims to be a spy for the Swedish government, but by then his mythomania was so widely known that nobody believed him, and he was finally sent back to Sweden.
Time in East Germany and Austria
At the end of 1951, Bode traveled to the German Democratic Republic (DDR), where he attempted to make money exporting cinema movie rights to Sweden, and declared himself at a press conference at the hotel Newa in East Berlin in 1953 to be "a friend of the German Democratic Republic." However, he was soon expelled from the country. He traveled extensively and spent so much money that he went bankrupt in October 1953.
After recovering in Sweden, he moved to Brussels, Belgium to escape justice. When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that the Belgian authorities extradite him, he moved to Vienna, Austria. The Vienna Opera House suffered from major problems and needed new influences; Johnny Bode, under the name of Juan Delgada, stepped in. His bad reputation had not yet reached Austria. There, he wrote the operas Nette Leute, Liebe in Tirol and 12 Bildern (1959), Die Kluge Wienerin (1961), and Keine Zeit für Liebe. They became successes and were played across the world for many years. With that success came money and fame, but it also contributed to the Swedish police finding him. In 1955, he fled to Sweden to serve a prison sentence. A divorce followed.
Back in Austria, however, Bode married 22-year-old Inge Pelz on the Midsummer Day in 1957. Success in Austria continued, yet Bode’s behavior became more unstable. He called himself Kammersänger, an honorary title he had not received. At a press conference in Vienna he stated that he, using a pseudonym, wrote The Blue Danube (actually written by Johann Strauss II in 1866). Finally, in 1961, his young wife had enough and demanded a divorce. Bode responded by initiating a bizarre custody dispute concerning the couple's dachshund. Bode won the custody dispute and was allowed to visit the dog every Sunday. Eventually, Vienna caught up with the truths of Bode, and he hastily left the country in late 1961. His time as the operetta king Juan Delgada was over. He still enjoyed using his fake Kammersänger title, which he claimed to have been given "by Joseph Goebbels in the presence of Prime Minister Quisling", if anyone questioned it.
Later career
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bode recorded several pornographic comedy albums with titles such as Bordellmammans visor ("The Brothel Madam's Songs"), Bordellmammans dotter ("The Brothel Madam's Daughter"), and Sex-revyn Stig på ("The Sex Revue Step Inside"). Under the name of Johnny Delgada, Bode released a gay-themed single in Swedish and German, with the songs "Vi är inte som andra, vi" ("We, we're not like the others") and "Achilles klagan" ("The lamentations of Achilles").
See also
References
- Johnny Bode - En Herre I Frack, 2001, retrieved 1 December 2024
- "Johnny Bode - Biography". IMDb. Retrieved 1 December 2024.
- Sandahl, Isabell. "The man, the myth, the legend...". Jönköping University, 2023, pg. 13
- Giertsen, Børre R., ed. (1946). Norsk fangeleksikon. Grinifangene (in Norwegian). Oslo: Cappelen. p. 211.
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External links
- Johnny Bode-sällskapet (home page) – Johnny Bode Society, non-profit organization in honor of the artist (in Swedish)
- Johnny Bode-sällskapet (blog) – Johnny Bode Society, non-profit organization in honor of the artist (in Swedish)