Johnny Bode

Johnny Bode (6 January 1912 in Falköping, Sweden – 25 July 1983 in Malmö, Sweden) was a Swedish singer, composer and enfant terrible.

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
Died25 July 1983(1983-07-25) (aged 71)
Malmö, Sweden
Genrespopular music
Occupation(s)composer, singer

After his debut at seventeen years old, Bode recorded hundreds of songs on the gramophone, many of them his own compositions. One of his best-known songs is "En herre i frack" (A Gentleman in Tailcoat), which Gösta Ekman (senior) sang in 1936. The song later become popularized by famous Swedish singer Jan Malmsjö, who added it to his repertoire. The last gramophone record with Johnny Bode as a singer was recorded in 1942. The life of Johnny Bode is one of the most amazing in the history of Swedish music. Over and over again, when his career was demolished, he was able to rise and build a new career, only to ruin it himself shortly after.

For the most part, Bode lived far more extravagantly than he was able to afford. He was a well-known figure in show business in those days, and was liked in the pubs because of his generous style. Even the fact that he was often broke didn't stop him. He was a master of sneaking out the back door and letting others pay his debts. Another distinguishing characteristic of Bode was his unmatched mythomania. Over and over again he lied to others, a personality flaw that blackened his career. He became good friends with Gösta Ekman and was almost like a son to him, until the day Ekman discovered that Bode had tried to sell their silverware set to a pawnbroker. Bode skipped out on countless hotel bills, and was blacklisted by several of Stockholm's finest restaurants. He was also involved in the theft of expensive carpets, and embezzlement through false checks.

Bode's out-of-control lifestyle many times led him into crime. After many cases of fraud, he was declared incapable, and put into psychiatric care in the mental hospital of St. Sigfrid in Växjö, Sweden. In connection with the diagnosis, he was sterilized.

Johnny Bode and the Nazi connection

Before World War II, Bode became fascinated by Nazism, which blacklisted him in Swedish show business for the rest of his life. Apparently, it was the combination of uniforms, marches, and pompous culture that enticed the childish Bode. He was able to get permission from the mental hospital to travel to Finland, where he enlisted with the Nazis. However, the short, fat Bode soon became impossible and was sent home with an under-officer degree from the Nazi army.

No sooner was Bode back on Swedish soil than he started to ruin his career once again. By the time of his arrival 1942, resistance to Nazism was bigger than ever. When the famous Swedish actor Karl Gerhard played his strongly Nazi-critical cabaret "Tingel-Tangel" for the hundredth time, Bode showed up in his Nazi uniform, with his degrees on his shoulders and the Iron Cross highly visible on his chest. After that, he frequently wore the uniform on his occasional visits to Stockholm's nightclubs. As a result, the only friends he had ignored him, and he became blacklisted in the Swedish entertainment industry.

Shortly after that, Bode travelled 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 irritated the Swedish society and media even more. It was very hard for Bode to get in touch with actors who wanted to play in his cabaret, as 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 had to close due to lack of audience.

Once again, Bode was making himself unwelcome. He drank too much, was stealing and skipping 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.[1] 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.

The DDR and Austria years

At the end of 1951, Bode traveled to DDR, where he attempted to make money exporting cinema movie rights to Sweden, and declared himself at a pompous 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 too much money, which resulted in him going bankrupt in October 1953.

After a time of recovery in Sweden, he moved to Brussels to escape justice. When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that the Belgian authorities extradite him, he moved to Vienna in Austria. The Vienna Opera House suffered from major problems at this time and needed new influences. Johnny Bode, under the name of Juan Delgada, came as manna from heaven. His bad reputation had not 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 the success came money and fame, but also contributed to the Swedish police finding him. In 1955 he flew to Sweden to serve a prison sentence. A divorce followed.

Back in Austria, however, Bode married the 22-year-old Inge Pelz on the Midsummer Day in 1957. The success in Austria continued, but was no good medicine for the labile Bode. He continued in more wild style. 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 '60s and early '70s, 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"). He also, under the name of Johnny Delgada, 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").

References
  1. Giertsen, Børre R., ed. (1946). Norsk fangeleksikon. Grinifangene (in Norwegian). Oslo: Cappelen. p. 211. Missing or empty |title= (help)
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