Victor Borge.

At age 13 in 1922, Børge Rosenbaum began his concert career. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Music under Egon Petri and Frederic Lammond after attending Øster Borgerdyd High School in Copenhagen. By 1934 he was performing in musical revues. When the Nazis invaded Denmark in 1940, Rosenbaum, who had publicly derided Adolf Hitler, escaped to the United States with a visa secured through his marriage to an American woman.

Borge made his American radio debut on the Bing Crosby show in 1940 and soon became a television regular, appearing on programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and What’s My Line?. In 1953, he opened his one-man Broadway production Comedy in Music, which ran for 849 performances—the longest solo run in Broadway history. He also performed frequently on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Mike Douglas Show. As a composer, he joined ASCAP in 1961 and wrote Blue Serenade. His film appearances included a role in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964.

Borge married Elsie Chilton on December 24, 1933; they divorced in 1953. On March 17, 1953, he married Sarabel Sanna Scraper, who died on September 19, 2000. He had five children: Frederikke, Ronald, Vebe, Sanna, and Janet. His son Ronald often appeared on stage as a timid page turner. After escaping Denmark, Borge became a United States citizen but remained popular in his native country.

Victor Borge, the Clown Prince of Denmark, combined classical piano with comedy. His phonetic punctuation skit, where he accents commas and periods with sound effects, remains a classic. He founded the Thanks to Scandinavia Foundation to honor the region’s rescue of Jews during World War II. In 1999, he received the Kennedy Center Honors from President Bill Clinton for lifetime contribution to arts and culture. His record of 849 consecutive Broadway performances for a solo show still stands.