August 28 - 2004
Meeting in Copenhagen
With: George Olesen

 

Eighteenth Event
Copenhagen 28 august 2004
 

Attending Members: Brian Jensen, Torbjörn Onegård, Jan-Ola Sjöberg, Bosse Engberg, Björn Harnby, Arne Olin, Ulf Bennetter, Magnus Eriksson, Simon Treschow, Lars-Olof Hansson, Mikael Lyck, Ulrik Lundin, Per-Åke Sjögren, Åsa Svennberg, Hans Erik Hansson & Anders Hansen

Special Guests: George & Rigmor Olesen
Guests: Tone Berggren & Barbro Harnby

The Copenhagen Central Railway Station was built in the years 1907-1911. The architect, Henrik Wench, designed the ceiling with an eye to the long Viking boathouses.

Henrik Wench would probably not have liked the shoe-box architecture of McDonalds fast food stand right in the middle of the departure hall.

However, he might have enjoyed the 14 modern Vikings and the 2 valkyries who met outside McDonalds at 2 o’clock in the afternoon of August 28th.

This was the start of the 18th meeting of the Scandinavian Chapter of the Lee Falk Memorial Bengali Explorers Club. Simon Treschow chief co-ordinator of this meeting, the first ever held in Denmark, took charge of us Phantom fans and of our guests, George & Rigmor Olesen and put us all on the train to Lyngby.

George is a tall thin gentleman with an easy manner. He is 79 and has both Danish and Norwegian ancestry. His wife is 12 years younger, born in Aarhus in Denmark. She is very vivacious and still speaks excellent Danish. The Olesens spend 3 months every summer in Aarhus where they have an apartment. The rest of the year they live in their home in Florida.

The train ride to Lyngby took only 20 minutes. From the station we walked the last bit to the Engelsborg School where the meeting was being held. The school, a number of low yellow buildings, built around the beginning of the century is very charming. In the yard there are several trees and benches.

Simon, who teaches history, geography and religion at the school had made one of the conferencerooms available to us.

The remaining two fans had now joined us so Brian could open the meeting welcoming us all and, of course, giving a special, very warm, welcome to George and Rigmor Olesen. He presented George with a framed special award for his 43 years of work on the Phantom.

After this short ceremony, George Olesen took over the meeting. He thanked Brian for the award and then started telling us about his background and his career.
He has drawn as long as he can remember but it was after the second world war where he flew gasoline from India into China that he was accepted by the National Academy of Design in New York. This was a free education at the time.

He “met” the Phantom in 1936 at 12 years of age and was not impressed. Later in New York he met Bill Lignante and through him he got connected with King features and with the Sunday pages of  ‘Ozark Ike’, ‘Red Ryder’, ‘Little Beaver’ and some detective and horror stories. He also did news illustrations of news incidents like, car crashes, courtroom scenes as well as political cartoons.

At this time he also started helping Sy Barry with first the daily strips but after a while only the Sunday strips. He was hired by Sy Barry and paid by him. In fact he was unknown to Lee Falk until he was introduced to him at Lee Falk’s 50th birthday party. After that Lee Falk often left his material directly to George.

Around 1978 George Olesen took over the dailies and the Sundays as sole penciller,
In August of 200 he gave up the Sundays and left them to Graham Nolan.

As the afternoon went on we took a pause for sandwiches and sodas, after which George continued telling us how he works. He breaks down the script in daily pictures and makes copious notes of what is supposed to be in the frames. He has extensive archives of pictures of Devil, Guran etc to be able to draw them correctly. He very generously distributed to all of us signed originals and sketches and we could also look at scripts and material ready to be sent to Ulf Granberg.

George concluded his long talk with some very amusing anecdotes from his life with the Phantom.

All in all, it was a most interesting afternoon. Time flowed very fast as George is a born storyteller and our group an excellent listening audience.  

There was no time for our usual show of “objects to drool over”. But there was time for a signing session. George signed comics, posters and much else until it was time to depart.

As we walked to the restaurant we saw a glimpse of the school concierge locking up after us. A tall man in trenchcoat, hat and dark glasses…

The dinner with George and Rigmor as honorary guests took place in a private room at the Postgaarden Hotel. Delicious food, excellent beverages and stimulating conversation was had by all. George and Rigmor, after a tiring day, retired early and were driven back to Copenhagen by Simon.

As for the rest of us……………Aah. Let it end here with the observation that it was a most successful meeting.

- Ulf Bennetter, member 13