Carl Schenstrøm

Actor. Born 13/11 1881, deceased 10/4 1942 - 60 years old. Schenstrøm was brought up in an old artist family and was originally trained as a bookbinder. In 1904 he became a student at Nørrebros Teater.

His film debut was at Nordisk Film in 1909 and initially appeared as an extra or in small supporting roles. Schenstrøm had a tall, slender physique. In 1913, he got his first major role in ‘Kæmpedamens Bortførelse’, as the original actor Lauritz Olsen had fallen ill. Schenstrøm kept playing a plethora of supporting roles with just as many directors. In 1914, director Lau Lauritzen caught sight of the tall Schenstrøm and recognized his potential as a comedian. He immediately joined Lau's main crew of comedic actors, and starred in more than 70 films in the period 1914-19! One of these many farces, ‘De keder sig paa Landet’, featured a pair of vagabonds who would later serve as inspiration for the characters of Pat and Patachon. The tall Pat was of course played by Schenstrøm, with Aage Bendixen playing the short Patachon in ‘Love and Burglars’, the very first Pat and Patachon-film.

In the 1920s and early 30s, Pat and a recast Patachon – Harald Madsen – became a trademark for Danish film. Palladium and Lau Lauritzen achieved great international success with the comedic duo, now also known as Fyrtårnet og Bivognen, Fyrtårnet och Släpvagnen, Long and Short, and Wat and Half-Wat.

Following the death of Patachon in 1949, the couple was very aptly characterized in the paper Nationaltidende: "When the two first came walking hand in hand, on an endless country road that continued from the screen right into the auditorium, it was something completely new (...) The films also had an easy-to-understand moral, and both adults and children sympathized with the nice little "Patachon", who not only fared so pitifully badly in the conflicts with the harsh, calculating world, but was also constantly held down by his own vagabond companion, the sane, lecturing "Pat ", completely oblivious to his own comical nature, thinking it was Patachon’s fault every time the pair was ridiculed. In this interplay between the self-righteous, domineering comic figure and the humble little helper, who, out of sheer eagerness to excuse his existence, does the most uncontrollable stupidities, lay the idea of the couple Pat and Patachon".

After his film career, Schenstrøm acted in the circus revue at Bakken and toured around Sweden with Circus Scott.

Literature: Carl Schenstrøm: Fyrtaarnet fortæller (1943). Hauke Lange-Fuchs (red.): Pat und Patachon (Tyskland, 1979). Marguerite Engberg: Fy & Bi (1980). Lars Nielsen: Carl Schenstrøm Fyrtårnet (1998). Lars Jakobsen: Fyrtårnet og Bivognen (2002).