Nils Asther

Swedish actor (1897–1981)

Nils Anton Alfhild Asther (17 January 1897 – 19 October 1981) was a Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid 1950s, known as "the male Greta Garbo". Between 1916 and 1963 he appeared in over seventy feature films, sixteen of which were produced in the silent era. He is mainly remembered today for two silent films – The Single Standard and Wild Orchids – he made with fellow Swede Greta Garbo, and his portrayal of the title character in the controversial pre Code Frank Capra film The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

Asther, born Nils Anton Alfhild Asther, was the son of Swedish nationals Anton Andersson Asther (born February 21, 1865, Caroli, Malmö) and Hildegard Augusta Åkerlund (born November 3, 1869, in Södra Sallerup, Malmöhus County). Although Anton Andersson Asther had promised Hildagard Augusta Åkerlund aka Hilda Åkerlund marriage, she however was unwed when she gave birth to Nils in Sankt Matthæus parish in the Copenhagen borough of Vesterbro where she stayed very briefly. Thus, due to the marriage promise, technically, Nils was not an illegitimate child. (Also: when the parents married, a note was made of Anton´s official acknowledgement of the boy.) He spent his first year as a foster child in Hyllie, Sweden with saddlemaker Rasmus Hellström and wife Emilia Kristina Möller. He was christened in Hyllie on February 26, 1897, before moving in with his biological parents who had married on May 29, 1898, in Malmö. His half brother Gunnar Anton Asther (born March 4, 1892, in Caroli, Malmö) was his father's child from a previous marriage to Anna Paulina Olander, who had died in July 1895. As a young man Asther moved to Stockholm, where he received acting lessons from Augusta Lindberg. It was through Lindberg that Asther received his first theatrical engagement at Lorensbergsteatern in Gothenburg, and in 1916 Mauritz Stiller cast him in The Wings (Swedish: Vingarna), a gay themed Swedish silent film from 1916, directed by Mauritz Stiller, based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel Mikaël. In Copenhagen, actor Aage Hertel of the Royal Danish Theatre took Asther under his wing. This soon led to a number of film roles in Sweden, Denmark and Germany between 1918 and 1926.

In 1927, Asther left for Hollywood, where his first film was Topsy and Eva. By 1928 his good looks had made him into a leading man, playing opposite such stars as Pola Negri, Marion Davies and Joan Crawford. He grew a thin mustache which amplified his suave appearance. One of his most popular films was Our Dancing Daughters, starring Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Anita Page, and Dorothy Sebastian. Asther was cast opposite Greta Garbo in Wild Orchids as the tempting Javanese Prince De Gace. With the arrival of sound in movies, Asther took diction and voice lessons to minimize his accent, and was generally cast in roles where an accent was not a problem, such as the Chinese General Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Asther made six films there. He returned to Hollywood in 1940, and although he made another 19 films up until 1949, his career was never the same, and he appeared mostly in small supporting roles. In the early 1950s, Asther tried to restart his career in television, but managed only to secure roles in a few episodes of minor TV series. he returned to Sweden, almost destitute. There he managed to get an engagement with a local theater and had four film roles before finally giving up on acting in 1963 and devoting his time to painting. The theatrical community and the film industry in the 1920s accepted gay actors with little reservation, always provided they remained discreet about their sexual orientation and there was no public suggestion of impropriety. Asther was closeted. He proposed marriage to Greta Garbo to hide the true nature of his sexual orientation. Asther and Garbo had known each other in Sweden, and finding themselves relatively new to a foreign land they spent a great deal of time together. They often visited a friend's ranch outside Hollywood where they could relax, ride horses, go climbing, or swim at Lake Arrowhead. "Sailor" was a favored term for Greta Garbo's male, gay/bisexual friends. In 1929 during filming on location in Catalina The Single Standard with Nils Asther, she was overheard berating the actor for grabbing her so roughly. "I'm not one of your sailors," she reminded him. Rumors exist from the early 1930s that Nils had relationships with Swedish director Mauritz Stiller and Swedish writer Hjalmar Bergman and with other male colleagues. Asther mentions some of this in his memoirs. He had a long term relationship with actor/stuntman and World War II Navy sailor Ken DuMain. According to Ken DuMain, he met Asther on Hollywood Boulevard in the early 1940s, and they enjoyed a long term relationship. They had one child, Evelyn Asther Duncan, nicknamed in the media as "the international Baby" due to her Swedish father, American mother, and Bavarian birth. Their daughter's nationality was debated, and Asther offered to apply for American citizenship if it would help the process of getting their daughter into America. Right from the start, Asther and Duncan's marriage proved stormy and became fodder for the tabloids. They divorced in 1932.

Asther's memoir was published posthumously in Swedish. The book was put together with a foreword by theatre historian Uno "Myggan" Ericson, who had met Asther only once, when he arrived in Gothenburg in 1958. The afterword was written by Iwo Wiklander. The middle of the book, written by Asther, covers the years between his birth and his return to Sweden in 1958. Iwo Wiklander claimed in later interviews that Nils Asther was intent on erasing parts of his life before his death, and that much material in his autobiography was exaggerated – or completely made up – to make a more interesting story. Countess Linde Klinckowström von Rosen claimed their "engagement" was a practical joke while filming together. She did however, introduce Nils to her family, and to the Swedish painter Nils Dardel and his freethinking artistic circle.