The reluctant actor.
Hasse Ekman, born in 1915, was the son of the actor Gösta Ekman the Elder. Of course, he should have become an actor straight away, but at the age of 17 he wanted to become a writer. And indeed, by 1953 he had written scripts for 30 films, two books and a play. Instead of entering the acting profession and being inspired by his father, he was afraid of being compared to his father, and therefore avoided the acting profession. Gösta Ekman the Elder died when Hasse was only 22 years old. However, they became more good friends than just father and son. Despite his father's hard pace of life and theatre life, there was still the strength and time to, when the day was over, cook and spend time with the family in the apartment on Artillerigatan. Their only film together in which both father and son Ekman appear was the film Intermezzo from 1936.
His first roles.
In his first stage role he played a dancing master in Glada änkan in 1932. His first theatre role was in a simple American farce at the old Folkteatern that same year. It was performed at one of his father's several theatres. In the same year, Gösta Ekman the elder lost all the money he had scraped together and then some. Hasse remembers the notes from the bailiff threatening to seize that sometimes sat on the front door, and sometimes the furniture ended up in the pawnshop. Hasse had his first film role in the feature film classic Hemslavinnor with Dagmar Ebbesen in 1933.
Until the 1950s.
Among his own films, which numbered 25 by 1953, Hasse thought that Flicka och hyacinth was the best. It premiered in 1950 and he both wrote the script and directed it. Hasse had his greatest success with the film Fram för lilla Märta in 1945, where he balanced his desire to feel artistically good, but at the same time make a film that would do well in cinemas. Ekman was particularly pleased with the film Första divisionen in 1941 and the play Slå nollan till polisen.
Hasse Ekman and Ingmar Bergman.
Both directors were extensively written about and compared in the Swedish press for better or worse. Ingmar Bergman soon took over as the artistic director of the two. Hasse Ekman left Sweden in the 1960s and settled in Spain where he died on 5 Feb 2004.