Henk van Gelder: Loved reviewer and biographer, with endless knowledge of musical and cabaret

Henk van Gelder, NRC‘The driven reviewer of Cabaret and Musicals, was the quiet colleague who could burst into a half forgotten song, for example’ Search the sun ‘by Lou Bandy. He knew all the couplets and apparently created pleasure in the weird words (the « mahogany skin »). He supplied a successful imitation of Bandy’s nasal voice. And now Henk van Gelder died, in the night from Saturday to Sunday in a hospice in his hometown of Amsterdam. He had been sick for a while. He was 79 years old.

As a young boy in Andijk in North Holland, his birthplace, Van Gelder was already interested in the world of Showbizz. Via a few TV reviews in The truth and submitted letters in The Free People he won a place in 1965 at the art editors of Het Parool. There he interviewed everyone from the entertainment world he just approached, but he wanted to write down his opinion about their work more. In 1981 he was by a deputy editor-in-chief of NRC Handelsblad Attracted as a permanent reviewer of Cabaret, a branch of theater that, Van Gelder said, was viewed by many as ‘petty -bourgeois’. He won his own store on the art page, which he gradually expanded with the musical. On the side of his English beloved Sue Baker, he regularly fed his love for and knowledge of that genre in London (and went to visit Cynthia Lennon, because he was friends with the first wife of ‘Beatle’ John – but that aside).

Unauthorized

In the Netherlands, a musical tradition grew while Cabaret also became increasingly important-and Henk van Gelder grew eagerly. He developed into a loved and respected reviewer. His style was carelessly in -depth, personal, full of knowledge and unanimous admiring. He often wrote mildly, sometimes frostly or even short, as if the lack of quality stuck him like a bone in the throat. If a comedian then came to him about his review chapters, he answered: I don’t write for you, I write for the reader. And was the stocking.

In addition to thousands of pieces for ‘the newspaper’, Van Gelder wrote biographies. He documented it firmly, he liked to flock through cutting folders and archives. Thanks to his nose for good anecdotes, they became nice and readable. It started in 1994 with a biography of comedian and copywriter Jaap van de Merwe: The friendly guy in the world. Many, among others, about Wim Sonneveld, Willem Ruis, Louis Davids, Kees Brusse, Toon Hermans, Adèle Bloemendaal. A salute to Bram Vermeulen, Van Neerlands Hoop. And the story of an unprecedented frank Joop van den Ende (2012). The highlight was his biography of Simon Carmiggelt (1999). Minde -sorted out, lovingly, where necessary mercilessly, and also a hit portrait of the Amsterdam bohème.

‘Old box employee’

And as if there were not 24 but 48 hours in a day, Van Gelder also thought it was time to write all kinds of non-fiction books about topics that cross his path and dragged him, such as The Beatles in Holland (1989, with Lucas Ligtenberg) and The Schnabbeltoer (2005) about entertainment artists in the reconstruction period. And when he had wondered where those famous advertising slogans came from, that led to one of his best books, The smoking chimney (1996). Subject: the ‘literary variety’ of Kees van Kooten, among others, as a designer of ‘Te Kust en Color’ for Verfabriek Sikkens and Annie MG Schmidt as an author behind ‘Where would I be wee/ without mayone’ for Calvé.

Henk van Gelder also liked to ‘tap’ the editors after his retirement as he called it. In the evening he wrote the review for the next day, during the day he wrote the rest. And in between, he entertained his colleagues with tasty stories from their « Old box employee » as he called himself, and whoever wanted to, could take advantage of his endless expertise.

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