Ove Sprogøe

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Ove Sprogøe (around 1988)

Ove Sprogøe , actually Ove Wendelboe Sprogøe Petersen , (born December 21, 1919 in Odense , † September 14, 2004 in Tårnby on Amager ) was a Danish actor . He became internationally known for his role as Egon Olsen in 14 Olsen Gang films.

Life

Ove Sprogøe was born in 1919 as the son of the printer Hans Arthur Sprogøe Petersen (1884-1967) and his wife Inger Marie Lund (1888-1959). The family had lived in Copenhagen since the late 1920s . He married Eva Rasmussen in 1945 . At first he worked as an office worker and took private acting lessons. Sprogøe tried twice in vain to be accepted into the drama school of the Royal Theater in Copenhagen. In 1944 he passed the entrance examination to the drama school of Folketeatret , a private theater in Copenhagen, and began his training there. Sprogøe made her stage debut in 1945 and in film in 1946. In addition to numerous major theater roles, Ove Sprogøe was best known as a comedy actor in film until the 1970s. This also includes the fourteen Olsen Gang films (1968–1981 and 1998) starring Poul Bundgaard and Morten Grunwald . He also played the doctor Louis Hansen in the television series Matador .

Ove Sprogøe has appeared in 166 films and TV films, making him the most productive Danish film actor. He was honored four times with the Danish Film Prize Bodil (1956 as best actor in På tro og love , 1972 as best leading actor in Den forsvundne fuldmægtig , 1975 as best leading actor in The (probably) last prank of the Olsen gang and 1999 for his life's work). He was also a respected theater actor who appeared in about 150 roles and was engaged at the Folketeatret for about fifty years as well as guest roles on many other Copenhagen stages. Occasionally he also appeared as a singer, in 1966 he had a hit in Denmark with the title Fandens oldemor . He described Det er så sundt (1982) as his “only serious record” . In 1982 he acted as an announcer for GDR television in the context of the repetition of all Olsen Gang films that had appeared to date, in which he spoke in German with a Danish accent.

Sprogøe played in many television series (including Oh, these tenants , Matador , private detective Anthonsen ), dubbed cartoons (including Pinocchio , Cinderella , Lady and the Tramp ) and recorded radio plays (including The Hobbit ).

In 1998 he withdrew from the film business with the 14th and last Olsen Gang film. At that time he was already suffering from heart problems.

In the last years of his life, Ove Sprogøe lived a secluded life in the Copenhagen suburb of Kastrup . He died on September 14, 2004 at the age of 84 in a nursing home on Amager, into which he had to move only a few weeks earlier because of his progressive gout disease . Shortly before, his wife Eva died there on August 20th. Ove Sprogøe had three sons, one of whom, Henning Sprogøe , also became an actor.

At his own request, Ove Sprogøe, who was always concerned about the privacy of his family and was considered extremely humble, was buried in an anonymous grave in the immediate family circle. Also unusual for a popular actor is the fact that, according to his own admission, he never owned a television set.

Honors

On the initiative of prison guards at Copenhagen's Vridsløselille Prison , the street leading to the prison, on which Egon Olsen leaves prison at the beginning of most Olsen Gang films, was to be renamed Egon-Olsens-Allé in memory of Ove Sprogøe. The city of Copenhagen complied with this request and on December 21, 2004, Sprogøe's 85th birthday, renamed part of the street in front of the Vridsløse State Prison "Egon Olsens Vej" (Egon-Olsen-Weg). The rest of the road to the prison is still called Fængselsvej (prison path ).

On October 25, 2005, a place in Odense, Ove Sprogøes' birthplace, was renamed Ove Sprogøes Plads. Since 2006, the Ove Sprogøe Prize ( Danish : Ove Sprogøe Prisen) has been awarded annually in his honor as a Danish cultural prize for exceptional achievements or presentations in theater , film or television . This prize was donated by Nordisk Film and Morten Grunwald and comes with prize money of 30,000 kroner .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

  • Bodil 1956: best actor in På tro og love
  • Bodil 1972: best leading actor in Den forsvundne fuldmægtig
  • Bodil 1975: best leading actor in The (probably) last prank of the Olsen Gang
  • Bodil 1999: Lifetime Achievement

literature

Denmark

Germany

  • Jacob Wendt Jensen: Mächtig mightig, Egon - The biography of Ove Sprogøe , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-360-02135-9 .

Web links

Commons : Ove Sprogøe  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Obituary pages for Ove Sprogøe's death

Fan pages / miscellaneous

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://olsenbandenfanclub.de/news/2004-12-22_egon-olsens-vej_fotos.php
  2. ↑ http://www.olsenbandenfanclub.de/darsteller/ove_sprogoe_presse.php
  3. ↑ http://olsenbandenfanclub.de/stichworte/ove-sprogoe-preis.php
personal data
SURNAME Sprogøe, Ove
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sprogøe Petersen, Ove Wendelboe (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish actor
DATE OF BIRTH December 21, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Odense
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 2004
Place of death Amager