Inger Stender

Beginning in the 1930s, Stender was an actress for several stage companies throughout Denmark, including the Riddersalen, Odense Theater, Apollo Theater, Aalborg Theater and Aarhus Theater. She was a prolific and versatile stage actress, playing roles in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Tartuffe, and Henry IV as well as cabarets and comedies. In one season alone at the Odense Theater (1934–1935), Stender played 14 leading roles[2] and received critical success as The Ship's Boy in Alle Mand på Dæk (All Hands on Deck). Stender also became an operetta star when she sang the title role in Den Skønne Helene (The Beautiful Helena) and was Zorina in Zorina.[1]

Stender made her film debut in 1931 as the daughter Rosa in Hotel Paradis. The following year, at the age of 20, Stender played her first leading role as the sweet heroine in the Liva Weel farce Odds 777. Throughout the 1930s and the early 1940s, she continued to be cast as the charming young girl in such films as Benjamin Christensen's Barnet and the Herman Bang story, Sommerglæder. It was in her next film that Stender finally caught the type of role for which she would become known—the 1943 Marguerite Viby comedy Som du vil ha' mig -! (However You Would Have Me-!), in which she played the sophisticated, and a little too intimate society girl.

Danish film historian Morten Piil described Stender's onscreen persona as blonde, beautiful and sophisticated with an almost aristocratic elegance yet a "mischievous twinkle" in her eyes. He refers to her as the Danish version of Marlene Dietrich.[2] Stender continued to reprise this persona as the opera singer in Så mødes vi hos Tove, the rash society dame in Foldboldpræsten and the threatening woman in Fra den gamle købmandsgård (1951). However, Stender said that her desire was to play a light comedy part like the lead in the Noël Coward operetta Bitter Sweet, but that newspaper reviews focused so much on her beauty that it perhaps prevented her from receiving more varied roles.[2]

I would like to have a light comedy role as the funny girl. I'm actually not nearly as boring as I look.

— Inger Stender, Ekstra Bladet, 1946 [2]

Stender performed in film and television in the 1970s, but in smaller roles of matronly or maternal characters. She made 38 films over a span of six decades, with her final role in 1981 in the Danish television series Matador.