Scott Lord Danish Silent Film: The Golden Clown (Kloven, A.W. Sandberg 1...

A. W. Sandberg had cowritten his first filming of "The Clown", which had starred actor Valdimar Psilander, in 1917 with Laurids Skards. "The Golden Clown", cowritten by A.W. Sandberg with Poal Knudsen, starring Gosta Eckman and Karina Bell, was one of two remakes of films that had been originally shot in 1917 that Sandberg had filmed that year, his having also during 1926 having directed Gunnar Tolnaes and Karina Bell in the film "Oriental Love/The Favorite Wife of the Maharadjah" (Maharajahens Yndlingshustru). The Danish Film Museum viewed both films as "tame" in years that brought "decline" for A.W. Sanberg and "catastrophe" for Nordisk, causing the company to liquidate during 1928-1929. Forsyth Hardy, in his volume Scandinavian Film chronicles that after the war, the Danish film industry, by then principally Nordisk Film, had greatly lost popularity through competetion with the better equipped United States and Sweden, which may have been a factor in the decision to refilm earlier successes.

Danish Silent Film

Nedbrudt nerven/The Hill Park Mystery (A. W. Sandberg, 1923)

Thomas C. Christenson, Who was kind enough to write to me from the Danish Film Institute last year, in his articles Restoration of Danish Silent Films: In Colour and Restoring a Danish Silent Film: Nedbrute Nerver writes about the restoration of what he deems to be “a comic mystery plot set in contemporary time in an unnamed Western country.” Nordisk Film Kompagni title books were used in the restoration to augment the original nitrate print.

Starring in "The Hill Park Mystery" was actress Olga d'Org, the photoplay having been written by Laurids Skands.


A.W. Sandberg, notably at a time when Denmark was looking for foreign markets to which to export Film to quell an economic crisis caused by competion from Hollywood, gained recognition as a director by adapting the works of Charles Dickens, including “Our Mutual Friend” (1921), starring Karen Caspersen, ”Great Expectations” (1922), starring Olga d'Org, “David Copperfield” (1922) and “Little Dorritt” (1924), starring Karina Bell and Karen Winther. Peter Cowie, in his volume Scandinavian Cinema, writes that Anders Wilhelm Sanders had chisen Dickens because of his "fondness of emotional drama".

Danish Silent Film

A.W. Sandberg