Creator / Victor Borge

"A smile is the shortest distance between two people."

Børge Rosenbaum (3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), a.k.a. Victor Borge, was a Danish man who combined two very distinctive forms of entertainment—classical piano music and Stand-Up Comedy—into one amazing whole. He himself was an exceptionally talented pianist, but rolled along with general comedy and making fun of his own craft. He had his own show in the 50s and 60s, The Victor Borge Show, that was largely a musical showcase but also demonstrate his deft comedic tone.

Among his most famous routines include "Phonetic Punctuation," his battle with a soprano soloist (where he was very particular about her not touching his piano), working Happy Birthday into other works, and entire sections where he would turn familiar jingles on their head.

Apart from his music, he helped popularize the Cornish game hen in the United States in The '60s.

He was born in Denmark, and kept a thick accent his entire life. He became an American citizen just before World War II, as his wife was American (he also once publicly denounced Hitler and it was simply safer for him and his family on the other side of the world — that and the fact that he was Jewish). He remained active in performing his entire life, including many shows in his home country of Denmark. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 91, but people are still rediscovering his routines today.

---

Borge and his work provide examples of:

• Bait-and-Switch Comment: one of his standby gags was to tell the audience that the Steinway people had asked him to announce that he was playing a Baldwin piano (or vice versa). He also front-loaded a ton of them into his Mozart opera sketch.
  "Next, the chorus comes in, but no one knows why except Mozart. And he is dead."
  "Then, the baritone comes in and sings, Toreador, en garde. But he finds out that he is in the wrong opera. So he is fired."
  "Now, her father comes in, and he is the basso. And he is very angry because he has just found out that she is not his daughter. Now that has nothing to do with the opera, I just found that out myself! And that's what we call 'research'."
  • This wasn't limited to music-related humor. In one performance, Victor describes the wife of one of his brothers.
    "She is very cute, his wife. She's typically Danish and (so is) her family. These strong-looking people, you know, pot-bellied and wispy-mustached. Even the men look funny in that family."
• Big "SHUT UP!": As part of the "Caro Nome" routine with Marilyn Mulvey he would interrupt her with this during one of her high notes.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Giuseppe Verdi. Joe Green to you." "Giuseppe" is the Italian for of the name "Joseph" and "Verdi" is Italian for "green."
• Brick Joke: Often utilized whenever one page's worth of sheet music is either discarded or given to someone in the audience. Victor would play the first part of a familiar tune (such as the first three notes of Beethoven's Fifth), only to play the last note or two after either finding it on the floor or having it handed back to him.
• Brawn Hilda: As part of his Mozart opera sketch, Victor describes an operatic singer who "not only fills part of the soprano, she overflows it".
  "Her measurements are 36-24-36, and her other arm is just as heavy. She stands about 4 1/2 feet tall—lying down."
• Broken Record: Demonstrated here, in which his page-turning assistant doesn't know when to turn the page.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In his Mozart opera sketch, as Victor describes the events of the opera, a tenor appears in a small forest, represented by two giant trees. After the tenor performs his song in the first scene, he hides behind one of the trees, never to be seen or heard from for the rest of the sketch.
• Driven to Suicide: In one sketch, Borge conducts a performance of "Dance of the Comedians". When the first violin keeps playing instead of pausing, he's sent offstage in disgrace, and then there's a gunshot.
• Enforced Method Acting: When he performed with an orchestra (such as in the above-mentioned "Dance of the Comedians"), he would hold back from acting out his full routine during rehearsals and throw in improvised bits during the performance, so that the orchestra members' reactions to his antics would be genuine.
• Gag Penis: "Why are there three pedals on this grand piano? Who do they think I am?"
  • "If there are children in the audience, I cannot perform the second half in the nude. I'll wear a tie. The long one. The very long one."
• Literal-Minded: How does Victor handle following an opera singer performing "It's Now or Never"? Moving the piano, of course!
• Malaproper: He introduced the 'Cara Nome' aria from Rigoletto as "the 'Cockamamie' aria from Rigor Mortis, by... by.. by all means. That is, by Giuseppe Verdi. Joe Green to you."
  • He also referred to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" as "Clear the Saloon".
  • Victor would also refer to Franz Schubert's "Seranade" as "Sara Nude".
  • Borge would tell the audience he was about to play a song by "Flist". When one of his guests would explain that the composer's name was F. Liszt, he would respond, "'F. Liszt', young man, is 'Flist'! You don't say 'M. Ozart', do you?"
• Martial Arts and Crafts: The only way to explain his rendition of Hungarian Rhapsody #2 with a fellow pianist. This was faithfully recreated on The Muppet Show where he did the same thing with Rowlf, which is difficult enough with two humans.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He often pretended that he didn't know how to play piano at the beginning of his concerts, and would complain that the stagehand didn't mark the Middle C key on his keyboard. But he was in fact a virtuoso pianist.
  • During one bit, he started playing On The Beautiful Blue Danube, noticed something sounded more than a little off, started again ("That's what it says!"), then realized the sheet music was upside down.
• Overly Long Gag: The page-turner sketch has him get an assistant to turn the pages as he plays... who can't read music. Leading to Borge playing the last few bars over and over and over as the assistant remains cheerfully oblivious.
• Piano Key Wave: He had a comedy bit where his piano sounds wrong... so he takes the row of keys out, flips them, and it sounds perfect.
• Pinball Scoring: "Inflationary Language", in which numeric-sounding words and syllables are incremented by one. As an example, if the line was originally written, "I ate a tenderloin with a fork", it would be reread as "I nined an elevenderloin with a fivek."
  • Or "Anyone for tennis?" would be "Anytwo five elevennis?"
  "Watch out, Bob, he is an officer." "Yes, he's two, but I'm two three!"
• Running Gag: Sneaking "Happy Birthday" into various songs. Once did this as a full routine where he played it in the style of various composers. He would also slide off the piano bench while performing.
• "Sesame Street" Cred: He advocated buckling your seat-belts when on the show... because you never know when you'll slide off your piano bench.
  • He also performed Phonetic Punctuation on The Electric Company (1971) to illustrate punctuation marks
  • And of course, was the guest star of an episode of The Muppet Show
• Shown His Work: Nobody could poke fun at music like he did unless they knew as much about it as he did.
  • He would also play a strange-sounding tune, stop after a few bars, and turn the sheet music upside down or sideways. As soon as he started again, the tune became instantly recognizable. His botched attempt was in fact what the tune would sound like if someone tried to play it with the sheet music turned about.
• Special Guest: Victor Borge has interacted with many performers, including a Musical Phonetic Punctuation piece with Dean Martin.
• Sublime Rhyme: Victor frequently did this whenever attempting to play from Dmitri Shostakovich's sheet music.
  Victor: And now, a little Shostakovich. (confused pause) Just a moment!
• Take That!: Victor was certainly no fan of contemporary composer Dmitri Shostakovich. Whenever the time came to perform Shostakovich, Victor would play random notes in a brash, chaotic manner.
  Victor: We're gonna wait 'til he gets sober.
  • Evidently he was not overly fond of the "Caro Nome" from Rigoletto, or at least pretended not to be when he performed it with Marylyn Mulvey.
    Victor: (upon being told) Oh God...! (stumbles around on the stage for several seconds to regain himself) All right, for those of you who are staying... Miss Mulvey will now play the Cockamamie Aria from the opera Rigor Mortis, by... by... by all means. Who wrote that?
    Marylyn: Giuseppe Verdi.
    Victor: Why? (Marylyn glares at him) Er, why yes, yes he did.
• Together in Death: Borge passed away in his sleep just three months after the death of his wife of nearly 50 years. His daughter, Frederikke Borge, commented, "It was just his time to go. He's been missing my mother terribly."
• Throw It In!: During one performance (a concert in honour of his 80th birthday), violinist and friend Anton Kontra asked Borge to perform a piece (Monti's Czardas) together on the spot. Borge was familiar with the the piece but had never played it. He ended up improvising his part and his friend went along with it, and the audience got to witness two master musicians have a jam session.
• Too Fast to Stop: Invoked when Victor slides from one end of the piano to the other. This always ends with him falling onto the floor.
• Viewers Are Geniuses The more you know about music, the funnier he is.
• Who Needs Their Whole Body?: Victor's physical description of Mozart.
  "As you know, Mozart was only from here (bottom of the ribcage) up. Mozart was what we call a bust."

---