Emanuel Gregers

Emanuel Gregers (28 December 1881 – 22 March 1957) was a Danish actor, screenwriter and film director. Gregers made 36 films during a career which extended over four decades from the Danish golden age of silent film until 1949. Critics often dismissed his work as dependable yet uninspired, however many of his light-hearted comedies achieved great popularity in Denmark. Gregers most notable films were romantic comedies starring his wives Bodil Ipsen and Marguerite Viby. Career Emanuel Gregers was born on 28 December 1881 in Horsens, Denmark. At the age of 16 years Gregers debuted at the Horsens summer theater and performed in local theaters for the next 10 years. Around 1909, he moved to Copenhagen and performed in the larger theaters including Norrebros Teater and the Betty Nansen Teatret. Although he quickly shifted to working in film in 1912, Gregers maintained a lifelong attachment to stagework: he owned the Casino theater in Copenhagen and managed it from 1921 to 1931, then continued as a stage director into the 1940s. Gregers first appeared on film in 1912 with Olaf Fønss in the silent film Bryggerens datter (The Brewer's Daughter) written by Carl Th. Dreyer. The following year he began work with the Filmfabriken studio, where he performed in another Dreyer story Krigskorrespondenter (The War Correspondent), and became the studio's upcoming star. However, by 1914 Gregers interest had shifted to working behind the camera. He directed himself in a couple of smaller films, then moved to Nordisk Film where he devoted his full attention to writing and directing. In the early 1920s, Gregers directed a series of films that featured his wife Bodil Ipsen. Most notable was the melodramatic crime story Lavinen, in which Greger's employed an elaborate flash-back structure to relate how the lead character's past leads to a murder. It was also at this time that Gregers was part of Nordisk Film's push for larger films based on literary works. In 1920, Greger's filmed Den flyvende Hollænder (The Flying Dutchman) based on the 1839 novel The Phantom Ship and, in 1922, he made Den sidste af Slægten (The Last of the Family Tree) based upon a novel by the later Nazi writer Edvard Nielsen-Stevns. For the later film, Gregers ran into trouble with the Danish censors. In the climatic ending the villain, a depraved artist, falls to his death from scaffolding inside a church. The censors objected and removed the ending.