Marika Lagercrantz

[Brian Olewnick]

OK, this is a bit weird. I'm sure many of us have scoured the net in search of old friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, whatever. Back in the Summer of '71, my family, as was our custom, spent a couple of weeks at Block Island, Rhode Island staying at Cutting Cottages, a cluster of about 20 small houses on the northeast shore. There were two European families there at the same time, one German, one Swedish. Each had a lovely daughter about my age, Ise (short for Maria Louise, I think) Kahle from the German side and Ma Lagercrantz from the Swedish. I was smitten by each and briefly maintained letter contact with both. I thought Ma's full name was Manka and remembered that her dad was an editor in Stockholm.

So, when doing these net searches and happening to think of these two, I'd search on "Lagercrantz" (many hits) or "Ma" or "Manka" Lagercrantz and come up with nothing. But this afternoon, when for some reason I thought about that long ago summer, I futzed around google enough to come up with Marika (I probably misread her handwritten name back in '71!) who, as it turns out, is a fairly well known actress in Sweden! I'm pretty sure it's the same person, born in 1954, dad was poet/editor Olof Lagercrantz and she looks roughly the same:



(this is an early photo, I think, the closest to my memory)

Anyway, I thought this discovery was pretty cool (if only for me!) and was wondering if any of our Scandanavian contingent might be able to shed further light on Ms. Lagercrantz.

[Monte Smith]

Oh yeah! I did her.

[Brian Olewnick]

Damn your hide!

[Monte Smith]

Sorry. The Google game. I do the same thing, searching out names and faces from my past. Haven't found any past girlfriends online, but I did find out that this neighbor of mine who I dismissed as a total loser when he was dedicating his days back in the 1980s to learning to drum like Tommy Lee from Motley Crue is now--Google reveals--a respected percussionist in New York and his native Uruguay. Well there you go. I didn't even know he was Uruguayan.

But back to Lagercrantz....

[Brian Olewnick]

Actually, I was thinking of this thread as (also) a forum for just that: searching the net for past acquaintances. So, go for it.

[Pete C]

Let me know when you find Ise.

[Pete C]

I did once discover, much to my surprise, that Rosetta Cohen is a fairly common name.

[Tom Storer]

I searched the net for a high-school girlfriend, one Elizabeth Kunreuther. I found someone by that name who ended up a photographer, teacher, curator - married to a poet and mother of two. Sounds like that would be her. I felt very happy for her and decided not to bother her by emailing out of the blue.

[moneyp]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Anyway, I thought this discovery was pretty cool (if only for me!) and was wondering if any of our Scandanavian contingent might be able to shed further light on Ms. Lagercrantz.

Hehehe. I've seen her NAKED!!!! :-)

I remember her mostly from Bo Widerberg's ALL THINGS FAIR (may be more well-known as LOVE LESSONS) where she plays a very nasty, very carnal teacher having an affair with her student. She was quite good. Some pretty erotic scenes in there, Brian. You may need to have this.

[Monte Smith]

Hey now. The idea of seeing an ex-girlfriend naked on film. My blood runs cold. (No it doesn't). My memory has just been sold. (So what?). My angel in a centerfold, angel in a centerfold.

[Ron Thorne]

That's very cool, Brian.

I've also done many searches for long-lost friends, including a ex-girlfriend from my high school days. Lo and behold I found her, still living in Alaska, but considerably north of me, running a B&B and writing novels, poetry and screenplays. We've since established an e-mail connection. She's now a widow and grandmother, and doing quite well for herself

The internet has definitely shrunken our globe.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally posted by mone peterson
Hehehe. I've seen her NAKED!!!! :-)

I remember her mostly from Bo Widerberg's ALL THINGS FAIR (may be more well-known as LOVE LESSONS) where she plays a very nasty, very carnal teacher having an affair with her student. She was quite good. Some pretty erotic scenes in there, Brian. You may need to have this.

Yikes! So, next time we're renting DVDs, I'll just casually say to Linda, "You know, I've heard some good reports about this 'Love Lessons' thing. Maybe we should give it a try".....

Pete, yeah, one of the problems is common names (or, in unliberated female's cases, the loss of the maiden name). But Rosetta Cohen? Rose Cohen, sure, but Rosetta?!?!

[Uli]

Originally posted by Ron Thorne
The internet has definitely shrunken our globe.

Oh wey has it shrunk. Now even I get to hear about Ollie's first crushes.

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Pete, yeah, one of the problems is common names (or, in unliberated female's cases, the loss of the maiden name). But Rosetta Cohen? Rose Cohen, sure, but Rosetta?!?!

I guess they all decided that Stone was too hard to pronounce.

[Al in NYC]

I found out through my Googling, much to my surprise, that one of my old high school girlfriends is a full professor of English at Stanford with an mile-long list of publications. Damn... most of what we did together was skip all our classes and smoke dope in the back of the student lounge, and then drive around in my truck trying to find more dope to smoke and stores where we could shoplift food for the inevitable munchies. Spent so much time stoned that I guess I never realized she was also smart.

[Sand]

I didn't know that her name was Marika Lagercrantz and that she was Olof's daughter, but I recognized her right away, as she has starred in a several films earlier on - and in a Norwegian crime series that was on TV during Easter.
The only book I bought on this year's book sale a few weeks ago was Olof Lagercrantz' "Om kunsten å lese og skrive" ("About The Art Of Reading And Writing"). My local book store hadn't ordered it for the sale. It arrived a few days later and this now out-of-print booklet that I read more than a decade ago has been lying on my table waiting for your hint.

[Brian Olewnick]

See, I knew my post served some larger purpose!! ;-)

[moneyp]

Originally posted by Al in NYC
I found out through my Googling, much to my surprise, that one of my old high school girlfriends is a full professor of English at Stanford with an mile-long list of publications. Damn... most of what we did together was skip all our classes and smoke dope in the back of the student lounge, and then drive around in my truck trying to find more dope to smoke and stores where we could shoplift food for the inevitable munchies. Spent so much time stoned that I guess I never realized she was also smart.

Al, what's her name? I may know her!

[Brian Olewnick]

mone's probably seen her naked.

[moneyp]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
mone's probably seen her naked.

I'm not sure yet. What's her name?

[lazarus]

Marika Lagercrantz is a very known and popular actress here in Sweden. Both from movies/television and theatre-scenes.
Her big breakthrough came after the Widerberg-movie Mone mentioned in his post but she was fairly known long before that.
In the 70´s she was a member of a leftist action theatre-group named Jordcirkus ("Earthcirkus").
A couple of years ago the readers of a swedish newspaper voted her as the sexiest woman in Sweden.

Her father was (he´s dead now) a very wellknown editor, poet and writer. For many years he was an editor-in-chief for Swedens biggest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. He has also written many very popular introduction-books about different writers, like for example Joyce, Proust, Swedenborg, Strindberg and swedish poet Gunnar Ekelöf.

[Armando]

I found out I have distant relatives in France and Spain because a woman in Barcelona did a search for the last name we share: Bellmas. She found my web site, contacted me, and -- after several email exchanges -- we found out when our lineages were both in France for the last time (before my old man's dad or grandfather went to Cuba from Cataluña).

Then, a few months later, my wife and I went to the south of France to meet this woman and her family. It was an incredible experience.

All thanks to the web.

[walto]

Careful, Brian. I just read a piece in the Boston Globe this week about a raft of marriages that have been broken up because one or the other spouse has googled some old flame. There was actually one geezer quoted to the effect that he felt more loyalty to his first love than to his wife (of about a hundred years) who he felt "came between them."

[Uli]

What Walto sed. Especially if your old flame turns out to be a Celebrity. You could have been somebody, Ollie.

[Brian Olewnick]

Thanks for your, um, concern guys, but this relationship shall remain purely Plato-net-ic. Found a video interview of her (the first site if you google on her full name) and, despite understanding not a word of Swedish, she comes across as a lovely, intelligent person with the same graceful smile she showed 32 years ago. Nice to see.

[walto]

That's my old sensei for you. Laz says the woman was voted the sexiest woman in Sweden by the readers of one paper. Brian? he likes her intelligence and graceful smile.





Not that those aren't sexy things.

[lazarus]

I must ad to my comments about Lagercrantz being voted as the sexiest woman in Sweden that she´s defenitively not the bimbo-type.
She´s gives the impression of being very intelligent, sophisticated and having integrity.
You almost never read about her private life and you never see her at premier partys or thing like that. She´s an ARTIST!

[Brian Olewnick]

OK, I give up. Where's the cheapest flight to Stockholm?

[Brian Olewnick]

Well, I know you've all been on tenterhooks awaiting the outcome of this adventure. A few weeks ago, I found a Swedish theatrical company that Ma had done some work for, e-mailed them and asked if they wouldn't mind forwarding a hello to her from me. They did, she remembered me (!) and we're now in contact back and forth. Very lovely. She has a daughter named Moa who's also an actress (any knowledge of her, Laz, Sand or anyone?) and might be doing some work in NYC next year. If so, Ma will come and visit and we'll hook up.

I love the Net.

[Tom Storer]

I wonder if your wife loves the Net. ;-)