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Cissy van Bennekom

Dutch postcard. Cissy van Bennekom in De familie van mijn vrouw (Jaap Speyer 1935). Loet C. Barnstijn Productie.

Cissy van Bennekom (1911-2005) was a Dutch theatre, film and radio actress who played in a series of popular Dutch films in the 1930s.

Francisca Wilhelmina "Cissy" van Bennekom was born in Haarlem on 19 July 1911. Van Bennekom began her career at the end of the 1920s as a linen clerk in department store De Bijenkorf in Amsterdam. In 1928 she entered the theatre world at the age of 17, through mediation of a friend. She became a regular actress of the company Nederlandsch Tooneel of Louis Saalborn and Dirk Verbeek, where she debuted as a fairy in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. She continued with a long series of supporting roles, mainly those of maids and nurses, among others in De familie Schimek (1930), Jonkers op avontuur (1930), Wat doet mijn vrouw van 2 tot 5 (1931), De deftige straat/ Quality Street (1931) , Oplichters (1931), and a digression at the open air theater in Cain (Ensemble Jacques Sluyters, Emmen 1930). In 1932 she moved to the Vereenigde Schouwspelers, where she acted in Goethe's Faust and, under the direction of Pierre Mols, played Manuela in Jongedames in uniform (1932), known from the German film Mädchen in Uniform by Leontine Sagan. The daily Vaderland praised her performance: "Cissy van Bennekom, a promising talent, plays the major role just as well as her colleague Hertha Thiele did in the film.' It was her first major role, opposite the Enny-Mols Leeuwe as Fräulein von Bernburg and Julia Cuypers as the director.

In 1934 Van Bennekom played the part of Doortje in her first film, the popular folk comedy De Jantjes/ The Bluejacks (Jaap Speyer 1934). It premiered in February 1934 at Theater Tuschinski in Amsterdam, and was based on a successful popular play by Herman Bouber that already had been released as a silent film in the 1920s. Together with Willem van Oranje (Jan Teunissen 1934), De Jantjes was the first Dutch talkie, after a few unfulfilled and unrealized experiments. The cast was completely Dutch and Dutch sites played important parts; this was explicitly covered in the press. The movie had a huge press coverage since September 1933 and was a great public success when it came out, although the communist newspaper Tribune noted in 1933: "It will probably stink of chauvinism. Just a film that the Dutch bourgeoisie can use, with the heightened international situation. "Undoubtedly this was a hint at the election of Hitler as Chancellor.

After De Jantjes, Van Bennekom acted in eight Dutch sound films. Firstly the fisherman drama Op hoop van zegen/ The Good Hope (Alex Benno, 1934), based on a popular play by Herman Heijermans that, again, already had been released as a silent film. The film press described the film as not a huge artistic innovation from a filmic perspective, but with strong performances by actor Esther de Boer-van Rijk as the old fishermen’s widow Kniertje and Cissy van Bennekom as the daughter of Simon the ship’s carpenter. Afterwards came De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife’s Family (Speyer, 1935), De vier Müllers/The Four Muller (Rudolph Meinert, 1935), ’t Was 1 April/It was April First (Detlef Sierck, 1936), Op een nacht in mei/One Night in May (Speyer, 1936), the short film Amsterdam bij nacht/ Amsterdam by Night (Benno, 1937) and De spooktrein/The Ghost Train (Carl Lamac, 1939). Although she had mainly supporting roles, in the 1930s Van Bennekom became a famous Dutch movie star. She had the reputation of being “a difficult character" because she took no notice of the directors, with whom she says she 'had to fight serious battle in order to be allowed to change the grotesque, in broken Dutch constructed texts and to be able to put the correct accents." Neither was she positive about her colleagues, calling them "coward and obedient corpses" and only speaking positively about the actors Adolphe Engers and Chris Baay. Moreover, she complained she had to arrange her costumes for movies herself and sometimes had weekdays of 24 hours making just 15 guilders.

From her own oeuvre, Van Bennekom only spoke positively about the films De Jantjes, Op hoop van zegen and De spooktrein. For the films De vier Mullers (1935) and ’t Was 1 april (1936) Van Bennekom travelled to Berlin and Vienna. She called the experience "an abomination, an object of horror, a byword for a man of good taste." At De vier Mullers she was forced to work because bound by her contract. This she did with great reluctance: when she read the script, she burst into tears. The actress said while shooting Op een nacht in mei (1936) she almost tore her contract, because there was a line of text in the script forcing her to dye her hair blonde. In addition, she says she was mistreated by the director of that film, Jaap Speyer, and she had to “stand so long under these dirty rotten carbon rod lights for a close-up, that your hair started to singe.” Also privately, Van Bennekom was a tough cookie. In 1938 she was big news in the newspaper. She had to appear in court for slapping an intrusive man, who then sued her. Outraged by the verdict - she had to pay 5 guilders - she wrote to the newspaper De Telegraaf that the judge was favouring bold men. She only regretted that she had lost her temper. The judge then wrote a rebuttal in the same newspaper. She was pushing in when quitting a tram, after which the man ran after her and called her names. She sold the man such a blow “that he surely heard it if he did not see it”, as she said herself. Cissy went on appeal, where the compromise was a penalty of 1 guilder. Due to the jubilee of Queen Wilhelmina in 1938, in the end she did not even had to pay that one guilder.

Apparently De Jantjes caused Van Bennekom also a shift in her stage career, for in Autumn 1933, she played with the Ensemble of Herman and Aaf Bouber in ’t Kind van de buurvrouw, after the novel Arie by Johan Elsensohn, in 1934 followed by Kromme Lindert , a piece by A.M. de Jong, adapted from his novel De martelgang van Kromme Curve Lindert. Then with Frits van Dijk she played the leads in Kleine man, wat nu…/ Little man, what now ... after the novel by Hans Fallada, directed by Johan de Meester, and performed at the Grand Theatre in Amsterdam in 1934. Where there was praise for the actors, the press considered the stage adaptation by the Dane Jens Locher a caricature relative to the well-known novel. Through her film roles in De familie van mijn vrouw (Speyer, 1935) and De vier Mullers (Rudolph Meinert, 1935) Van Bennekom was barely visible on stage in 1935-1936. In 1935-1936 in Loet Barnstijn’s The Hague based studio Filmstad, filming took place for a movie called Liefdes-Idylle, in which Van Bennekom played the lead opposite newcomer Henk Speyer and was directed by Jaap Speyer. Van Bennekom experienced her own idyll in March 1936, because she married Clemens Wilde, sound-engineer at Filmstad. Kurt Gerron and Adolphe Engers acted as witnesses. Soon after, late March 1936, Van Bennekom went to the Ufa in Neubabelsberg to act in the comedy 't Was 1 april (Detlef Sierck, 1936). Van Bennekom played a secretary who captures the heart of a baron, played by Herman Tholen. Liefdes-idylle came out in late 1936 as Op een avond in mei, while its production was not too idyllic (see above).

In the late 1930s Van Bennekom shifted territory to cabaret and radio and renewed her stage career. Since 1937 Van Bennekom played with the ABC Cabaret of Wim Kan and Corry Vonk, founded in 1936 and based at the Amsterdam Leidseplein Theater. In 1937-1938 she played at the Amsterdam Tooneelvereeniging of Albert van Dalsum and A. Defresne in Artisten-Ingang/Stage Door, Van kelder tot dak, Welkom thuis? en Het lied van het meisje en de moordenaar. Later in 1938 Van Bennekom joined Van Dalsum and Defresne when these joined the Nederlandsch Toneel, now under the direction of Cor van der Lugt Melsert. The company became the regular one of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Van Bennekom played in Van den Vos Reinaerde, Pater Malachius’ Mirakel, the classic Gijsbrecht van Aemstel, Menschen van onze stand, and Onze stad/Our Town by Thornton Wilder. At the same time she wasn’t afraid to do popular entertainment as well, as in the soccer supporters comedy Een van Ajax ... een van Blauw-Wit, directed by Peter Köhler. In 1939 Cissy van Bennekom played for Dutch radio in the radio play Spreek met Vlaanderen en het komt in orde, the first Paul Vlaanderen series, based on the British radio play Send for Paul Temple by Francis Durbridge. Van Bennekom played Cora Granders, the niece of the detective. Director was Kommer Klijn, script was by J.C. van der Horst, music by Louis Schmidt. Theo Frenkel played Vlaanderen himself, other actors included Lily Bouwmeester, Cor Hermus and Paul Steenbergen. The series had 8 episodes, broadcasted between February and April 1939. At the same time Van Bennekom rehearsed for a stage performance of G.B. Shaw's Pygmalion, performed by Het Nederlandsch Tooneel, with Frits van Dijk and Lily Bouwmeester in the lead. The piece had its premiere in April 1939. Moreover, Bouwmeester had already played the leading role in the film version of Shaw's piece in 1936. In the summer of 1939 Van Bennekom played in the Amsterdam studio Cinetone her last film role in De spooktrein/The Ghost Train, directed by Carl Lamac and with sets of Joop Geesink. In particular, the performance of Jan Musch as the station manager was widely appreciated, but there was also praise for Van Bennekom’s performance. "Despite her small role Cissy van Bennekom shows she is a superb film actress", the newspaper Vaderland wrote.

When in May 1940 the Netherlands was occupied by the Germans, Van Bennekom stopped her stage and film career. However, the pre-war Dutch films in which she had acted were still widely shown in Dutch cinemas. When the south of the Netherlands was liberated already, Adolphe Engers and Cissy van Bennekom presented a New Year’s wish on January 1, 1945, in the act Thomasvaer en Pieternel, written by Professor Casimir for the radio station Herrijzend Nederland. The performance took place in the Philips Theatre in Eindhoven, after a declamation of Vondel's Gijsbrecht van Aemstel by Albert van Dalsum. After World War II Van Bennekom played in Duet for two hands of Mary Hayley Bell, which premiered in April 1946 in the Centraal Theater in Amsterdam. It was directed by Cees Laseur, who also played the lead. In 1947 Van Bennekom joined the cabaret of Wim Sonneveld in the show Vanavond om 8 uur. In the sketch Het dienstbodenprobleem Cissy played 4 different parts. Also, she contributed to the first experimental television broadcasts by Philips. In 1948 she retired from public life, wanting to focus on her second marriage. She moved to France and became a sculptress. She got an offer from America to play a role in a play in Kansas City, but refused as she wanted to stay with her 4-year-old daughter. After the death of her second husband, Van Bennekom returned to Amsterdam, where she went to live in the Jordan quarter. Cissy van Bennekom died at age 93 in Amsterdam on March 1, 2005.

Sources: foremost kranten.kb.nl/, also IMDB, Dutch Wikipedia, www.filminnederland.nl/, www.theaterencyclopedie.nl/.

Taken on: November 26, 2011

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