Johnny Bode

Johnny Bode
Johnny Bode c. 1931
Background information
Born	(1912-01-06)6 January 1912 Falköping, Sweden
Died	25 July 1983(1983-07-25) (aged 71) Malmö, Sweden
Genres	popular music
Occupation(s)	Composer, Singer

Johnny Bode (6 January 1912 – 25 July 1983) was a Swedish singer, composer, Nazi sympathizer, and convicted fraudster. Bode had a turbulent career, and was convicted of fraud and sent to a mental hospital. He was known to release music under several different aliases.

Music career

Bode began his music career at 17 years old recording hundreds of songs on the gramophone, many of which were his own compositions. One of his best-known songs, "En herre i frack" (A Gentleman in a Tailcoat), was sung by Swedish actor and singer Gösta Ekman in 1936. The song later became popularized by Swedish singer Jan Malmsjö, who added it to his repertoire. The last gramophone record featuring Johnny Bode as a singer was recorded in 1942.

Bode was known for failing to pay his debts and was blacklisted from several Stockholm restaurants. He had a close friendship with Gösta Ekman, who became one of his most influential supporters, until Ekman discovered that Bode had forged his name on a cheque. As a result, Ekman cut ties with Bode entirely.

After being convicted of fraud, Bode was declared incapable and put into psychiatric care in St. Sigfrid mental hospital in Växjö, Sweden, where he was sterilized.

Bode's interest in Nazism in the early 1940s led him to be blacklisted him from Swedish show business for the rest of his life.

CIMG4150 Johnny Bode k1

Connection to Nazi Party

During his stay at St. Sigfrid, Bode attained permission to travel to Finland, where he enlisted with the Nazis. However, due to Bode's physical status and general unreliability he was sent home with an under-officer degree from the Nazi army.

By the time he returned to Sweden in 1942, resistance to Nazism was stronger than ever. On the occasion of Swedish actor Karl Gerhard's 100th performance of his Nazi-critical cabaret act "Tingel-Tangel," Bode showed up in his Nazi uniform with his degrees on his shoulders and the Iron Cross visible on his chest. After this, he frequently wore the uniform on his occasional visits to Stockholm's nightclubs. As a result, he was ignored by his peers and blacklisted in the Swedish entertainment industry.

Shortly after this, Bode traveled to Oslo, Norway, where he put up a cabaret for the Norwegian Quisling regime. Some of the songs he wrote during this period were mistaken by Swedes as being Swedish. It was difficult for Bode to find actors who would risk performing in his cabaret. Bode himself sang couplets and imitated Winston Churchill. After about twenty appearances, the show closed due to a lack of audience.

In late 1942, Bode was imprisoned in the Grini concentration camp after claiming to be a spy for the Swedish government, but his mythomania was so widely known that he was not taken seriously and he was sent back to Sweden.

Time in East Germany and Austria

At the end of 1951, Bode travelled to the German Democratic Republic (DDR), where he attempted to make money exporting cinema movie rights to Sweden. He declared himself at a press conference at the Hotel Newa in East Berlin in 1953 to be "a friend of the German Democratic Republic" but was soon expelled from the country. He continued to travel extensively, causing him to go bankrupt in October 1953.

After recovering in Sweden, he moved to Brussels. When the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded that the Belgian authorities extradite him, he moved again to Vienna. The Vienna Opera House was suffering and needed new performers; Bode, under the name of Juan Delgada, stepped in. There, he wrote the operas Nette Leute, Liebe in Tirol and 12 Bildern (1959), Die Kluge Wienerin (1961), and Keine Zeit für Liebe. They were successful and were played across the world for many years. This contributed to Bode's rising fame, which eventually led the Swedish police to find him. In 1955, he went to Sweden to serve a prison sentence.

After returning to Austria, Bode married 22-year-old Inge Pelz, in 1957. In Austria, Bode's professional success continued, but his behavior grew more and more unstable. 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 nearly one hundred years earlier). In 1961, his young wife demanded a divorce. Bode responded by initiating a bizarre custody dispute concerning the couple's dachshund; he won, and was allowed to visit the dog every Sunday. Bode's reputation abroad eventually caught up with him in Vienna, and he left the country in late 1961. 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 1960s and early 1970s, 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"). Under the name of Johnny Delgada, Bode 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").

See also

• Könsrock

External links

• Johnny Bode-sällskapet (home page) – Johnny Bode Society, non-profit organization in honor of the artist (in Swedish)
• Johnny Bode-sällskapet (blog) – Johnny Bode Society, non-profit organization in honor of the artist (in Swedish)