Trivia

First husband of Asta Nielsen; directed 30 of her films.

The director Urban Gad began his career at the Danish theater. There he met the actress Asta Nielsen and they formed a very successful couple in the later film business. Asta Nielsen became the first European movie star at all.

In the second part of the 10s - after his collaboration with Asta Nielsen ended - his film career diminished slowly.

His films include a German-language adaptation of Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Assumption of Hannele, which Gad directed in 1922.

Urban Gad was married with the actress Asta Nielsen from 1912 to 1918.

He went to Germany together with Asta Nielsen and in the next years he realised successful silent movies.

His uncle was the famous painter Paul Gauguin.

He was also not able to continue his film career in his native country and his last cinematical work came into being with "Lykkehjulet - Das Glücksrad/Pat und Patachon: Das entschwundene Testament" (1926).

Because of lacking success he was only able to shoot several movies in Germany till 1922. Afterwards he returned to Denmark.

Urban Gad shot his first movie as a director in 1910 with "Afgrunden - Abgründe" with Asta Nielsen.

His mother was the (in Denmark) very well known playwright and expert of good manners Emma Gad.

Along with Stellan Rye, Urban Gad was one of the great directors in German cinema before the First World War who had come to Berlin from Denmark in the early 1910s.

Gad's most famous film to date is the comedy Engelein (1914), which premiered in 1914. In it, the 32-year-old Asta Nielsen plays a 17-year-old who has to "play" a 12-year-old in order to deceive her strict uncle in order to preserve her inheritance.

At the theater, he met Asta Nielsen, with whom a fruitful collaboration developed. The two decided to make films together in 1910. Gad wrote the screenplay and directed the film Afgrunden, in which Asta Nielsen played the leading role and which became a box office hit.

He made films in Germany until 1922, then returned to Denmark. There, he was able to direct only one more film: Lykkehjulet (The Wheel of Fortune (1927), also: Pat and Patachon: The Vanished Testament), a film starring Danish comedians Pat and Patachon.