21 October 2008

Wonderful Fairytale Town


Wonderful Copenhagen from Colville Andersen on Vimeo.
Don't know why it didn't occur to me before to use this song. It's corny, it's kitsch - it's from a musical for god's sake - but it works well with the footage. The Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen song from the 1952 Danny Kaye musical about Hans Christian Andersen. The story is completely Hollywoodized and doesn't come close to drawing a true portrait of the writer. Believe me, I know. I produced this website for Danish Broadcasting for the bicentenary of Andersen's birth in 2005. Actually, if you're coming to Copenhagen and like history, I'm quite proud of The Time Machine on the aforementioned website. You follow in Andersen's footsteps in a flash-based 'game'.

The Hollywood film, it is said, is the single reason that generations of Americans still pronounce the English name for Copenhagen wrong. It's not Copen-HAH-gen. It's Copen-HAY-gen. Blame the songwriter/scriptwriter on that film.:-)

Tough
Meanwhile, back in fairytale land, splendid creatures roll about the streets each and every day, as Lars' photo attests [and every other photo on this blog]. You can send the dinky Little Mermaid to China, for all I care. I prefer the Cycling Girls of Copenhagen as a symbol for this city.
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8 comments:

  1. Unknown21 October 2008 at 08:55

    That was wonderful! Some of the best work Danny Kaye has done.

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  2. Colville-Andersen21 October 2008 at 09:11

    Danny Kaye did NOT film and edit this video. Just so we're straight on that. :-)

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  3. Anonymous21 October 2008 at 11:07

    I love that movie. It is so incredibly corny and bad. And I love how its portrait of Copenhagen makes Solvang look like the real deal.

    The video in this post - the one that Danny Kaye didn't do - is also quite good :-)

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  4. Anonymous21 October 2008 at 13:59

    Yes that was so corny that it was cool! Or should we say chic?

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  5. Anonymous21 October 2008 at 14:18

    I always pronounce Copen-HAY-gen, but some pronounce it another way. Then they make me feel stupid for saying it as Copen-HAY-gen.

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  6. Anonymous22 October 2008 at 00:57

    Wow!
    I posted it on criticalmass.hu
    http://criticalmass.hu/blogbejegyzes/20081022/wonderful-wonderful-copenhagen

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  7. Jewell22 October 2008 at 05:46

    Someone's partial to blondes....

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  8. chococat7826 October 2008 at 19:25

    Cute video :)

    ReplyDelete