Dutch film stars of the 30s: the little Song Bird of the Jordaan
n 1934, as the Dutch film company Monopole DLS was sailing on the success of De Jantjes, the producers were looking for an actress for Bleeke Bet, their next project. They needed someone who could sing, dance and, most importantly, someone with a wellknown face. They chose Jopie Koopman, a revue and cabaret artist, who was very popular home and abroad. Jopie got the role of Jan, a pretty girl from the Jordaan neighborhood in Amsterdam, who is forced by her mother to marry the son of a wealthy businessman. In the film, which turned out to be a great success and marked her breakthrough, Jopie sings a song that became very popular, Het radijsleid.
The booming industry of Dutch sound film, found a perfect interpreter in Jopie Koopman. Catchy tunes and a famous, likable, handsome performer were way more relevant to the audience than character study and a complex plot. Over the course of eighteen months Jopie starred in six films: Bleeke Bet , Malle gevallen, De big van het regiment, Het Nederlandsch Cabaretalbum, Op stap and ‘t Was één april. Koopman was always casted for her singing skills, and in each one of these films there was a scene that allowed her to display them.
Jopie played mostly young and sensible single women. And in the context of a Dutch cinema, inhabited by rude ‘geinponems’ (‘jokers’), opportunists, drinkers and back-stabbers, her characters always show more integrity and an intuitive correctness, an understanding of what can safe-guard them against moral and emotional errors. They always distance themselves from the machinations of the hagglers around them. Their solid moral values made them somehow boring but their ‘pallor’ allowed other actresses to ‘shine’ when they were stabbing them. Actresses like Aaf Bouber and, especially, Fien de la Mar.
Jopie faced Fien in four different occasions. And it was never a pleasant experience for the young actress. Fien eventually got on her nerves and Jopie admitted in an interview that: It is very difficult to work with her. Sometimes she is nice and friendly, but she always keeps Jopie on her toes. She was always afraid to say something that can make Fien snap. Fien could frighten her – she used to have terrible rage fits.
When Op stap premiered in 1936, critics begun to doubt Jopie’s talents. A reviewer wrote in Het Vaderland that Jopie Koopman, in Op stap too, represents the problem of our national film industry. With time, the classic formula of Dutch film with a star singing a song and making some jokes had stopped working. Reviewers started criticizing the banality and thinness of the stories, and were annoyed by the songs that, in their opinion, broke the pace of the film and added nothing to the plot. And when the public also started to turn their back on this genre, Jopie’s film career was over at once.
