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<\/a>Why, Verity? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\nBecause I love a gorgeous tragic dead boy, and people who\u2019ve read it say it\u2019s a car crash from start to finish.<\/p>\n
How?<\/strong><\/p>\n I can\u2019t read Swedish. But I downloaded a translation\u00a0app and know a couple of Swedes who helped me when Swedish idioms came out garbled and hilarious. The majority of the book was perfectly readable, even when I needed to make some leaps of logic to complete sentences.<\/p>\n And yes, it\u2019s a scream from beginning to end.<\/p>\n Who?<\/strong><\/p>\n Nils Asther is probably best known for his titular role in Frank Capra\u2019s The Bitter Tea of General Yen<\/em>. He had a long career, stretching from the First World War up to the 1960s, though his talent was mainly wasted on flimsy romantic roles. “I\u00a0quit because I couldn’t stand making those ‘pretty boys’ films in uniform any more,” as he put it. His Swedish accent made him difficult to cast when the talkies came along, but his unusual beauty meant he stayed in demand for a long time, despite his open disdain for the film industry. Women were wild about him. Men, too. One male fan left the actor a fabulously expensive\u00a0ring in his Will, a posthumous declaration of desire.<\/p>\n I mean, it\u2019s little wonder.<\/p>\n Hollywood marketed Nils as a mysterious Scandinavian, an intellectual, an adventurer, and friend of Lenin for some reason. But in his memoirs, Narrens V\u00e4<\/span><\/span>g<\/i> (meaning \u2018The Fool’s Way\u2019), Nils looks back at the truth of his life (and I’m using ‘truth’ very loosely here) with bitterness, hilarity, and a ridiculously\u00a0long\u00a0list of lovers. How he found\u00a0time for filming is beyond me.<\/p>\n Anyway, I thought it would be fun for other silent film fans if I summarised the fun bits in English.<\/p>\n Strap In, This Is Going To Get Bumpy<\/strong><\/p>\n Or not. Once upon a time, a boy was born to Hilda and Anton, one-time lovers who had grown to\u00a0despise each other. To conceal her\u00a0shame, Hilda gave birth in Denmark and left her son in an orphanage temporarily to give her and Anton time to arrange a \u2018colossal\u2019 wedding that neither of them wanted.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t tell their son any of this. That would have taken the fun out of the next eighty years.<\/p>\n Despite his timid, bookish demeanour, little Nils Anton Alfide Asther\u00a0was branded The Bad Child from the start. His elder half brother, Gunnar, was favoured in all things, and Nils and Hilda were largely left to their own devices, eating alone, vacationing alone, and trying to smile when Anton\u2019s business partners came over, boasting about their money and their mistresses.<\/p>\n It seems everyone knew Nils\u2019 shameful origins except him. The parish priest harboured a special dislike for the boy, making Sundays an ordeal he would later turn into gruesome art. (I’ll be sharing this painting later. It’s… something.)<\/p>\n Anton and Hilda’s marriage was poison. Neighbours whispered about the couple\u2019s wedding night, when Hilda was seen trying to hurl herself out of a window. Relatives were concerned when she named her baby boy after her brother who brought shame on the family for sleeping with a maid. Hilda\u2019s father beat the teen so badly \u2013 in front of the other children \u2013 he later killed himself.<\/p>\n So far, so horrifying.<\/p>\n Nils recounts his early memories like a series of battles. As a small boy, he walked in on his father violently assaulting his mother. She proceeded to use Nils as a human shield, which cemented in Anton\u2019s paranoid brain that his wife and youngest son were in cahoots against him. Another night, Nils and Hilda barricaded themselves into a bedroom while Anton beat on the door with a gun.<\/p>\n It sounds like a melodrama from the silent films. And yes, Nils is probably embellishing. But decades before writing his memoirs, Nils gave interviews in Hollywood telling of how his main memories of Sweden were his mother crying alone in large rooms, and of being stunned when strangers treated them with kindness. The little details, like hardly daring to breathe when a certain floorboard creaked, ring true for survivors of abuse. After leaving Sweden, Nils never spoke to his father or half-brother again.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>Once upon a time in Denmark, on a cold and dreary day in 1897, a boy was born to parents unknown. The child\u00a0spent his first few months in a notorious orphanage until he was adopted by a beautiful, melancholy Swedish lady and her wicked\u00a0husband who took him home to their big house in Malm\u00f6.<\/p>\n