Victor Borge

Victor Borge was a prodigy. He took up the piano at the age of 3 and gave his first piano recital when he was 8 years old. In 1918 Victor was awarded a full scholarship at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, studying under Olivo Krause. Later on, he was taught by Victor Schiøler, Liszt's student Frederic Lamond, and Busoni's pupil Egon Petri.

Borge escaped Denmark during the Nazi occuption of Denmark in World War II and escaped to Sweden, and managed to escape to Finland.

Victor traveled to America on the USS American Legion, the last passenger ship that made it out of Europe prior to the war, and arrived August 28, 1940. He had 20 dollars, three of which went to the customs fee.

He returned to Denmark only once during the occupation to visit his dying Mother. He managed to do this by disguising himself as a sailor.

When Victor arrived in America, he didn't one word of English. However, he did learn English by watching movies and soon adapted his jokes to the American audience.

1941 he took the name of Victor Borge and started on Rudy Vallee's radio show. Not long after this, he was soon hired by Bing Crosby for his Kraft Music Hall.

Borges claim to fame was the humor he used when playing classical music. Anyone who has seen a Victor Borge routine will not soon forget it.

Amongst his routines is the recitation of a story using "Inflationary Language". Borge will increment numbers embedded in words, whether they are visible or not ("once upon a time" becomes "twice upon a time", "wonderful" becomes "twoderful", "forehead" becomes "fivehead", etc).

Borge was renowned for his comedic ability. It was not unusual, during a particularly energetic piece of music, for him to fall off his Piano stool.

Another great routine was when Borge would place his music on the piano and begin playing. A puzzled look would come to his face, and after a few minutes he would pause and turn the music around. He would then begin playing again and a piece of well known classical music would resound. At this point, Victor would flash a victorious grin at the audience.

My own personal favorite was when he would be playing a particularly serious piece of classical music and then break out in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or similar.

A truly talented musician who is sadly missed.