Peter Theander passed away at 82

According to some sources, Peter Theander passed away at the age of 82 last month.
(We have not been able to verify this 100%)
His brother Jens died in 2008.

They both started to produce under-the-counter pornography in late 1967/early 98.
Production started in their cellar* in Rodosvej and in the back of their Antiqueshop Rådhusantikvariatet. (You would not find much antiques there … )
The police raided the premises of resellers and almost drove everyone out of business.
“We were very small at the time and probably dodged under the radar a little bit” Peter claims in an early 1969 interview.


When it came clear for everyone where the laws was heading, the police stopped bothering the porn-stores, and especially the Theanders started to slowly build up what would be their empire.
Peter and Jens’ main magazine, Color Climax, started it’s run already in 1968 and was in color.
From there they continued to expand into being the largest company of porn.

The dream of getting an interview with Peter (or Jens back then) is gone.
It wouldn’t have happened with Peter anyway. I’ve tried.
My they have found piece

M:)rten



Klimaks – The Very First Magazine From Jens and Peter

It has taken me some time to track down a copy of this magazine and I have also been searching for sources to verify that this is the first magazine they made. It is actually the only magazine I own.

About the Laws (short recap)

I’ve already mentioned that porn in Denmark was liberated on July 1st 1969, but the process started way earlier. In Copenhagen there were many shops In the mid-sixties, that could provide customers with porn. Since porn was illegal, this included written text, police tried to strike down on it, raiding shops and warehouses. The problem was to define what porn actually was. The law did not. The police had to drag the confiscated material to the court, and sometimes they experienced the court disagree. This made the job futile, they did have other things to attend, too.
This led the Danish Justice Minister to commission a review of the law, in 1964. In 1966 it was recommended that written words should no longer be procecuted as illegal.

As citizens of Copenhagen, Peter and Jens Theander witnessed all this up close. They both seem to have been taxi-drivers at this point, but decided in 1966 to put their money into a second-hand bookstore named Rådhusantikvariatet. It basically was a pornshop. The clearly illegal stuff was hidden under the counter. Pinups and nudist-magazines was on display. They soon experienced the demand for the ‘harder stuff’ and must at this point have decided to make their own magazines.

Klimaks – the First Theander Publication

In 1967 they published their first magazine Klimaks. A Black & White hardcore magazine with 28 pages. Their first edition was produced in a quantity of 10.000 prints and it sold out pretty quick. (So it’s not unlikely they reprinted the magazine, but I have found no knowledge of this)


Jens Theander is showing this magazine to a TV-team where he says “It’s called Klimaks and it has no number, we didn’t know at the time that we would go on to produce a series called Color Climax”

There is no text at all and there are 30 pictures in total (plus 3 on the cover). In the story itself only 13 are of the ‘hard’ sort. 5 closeups of the female genitals, 5 shows the women giving oral sex to him and 3 are pictures of intercourse. It is safe to say they were learning the art.

a Simple Story

Story is simple and pretty standard:
We meet two women who are horny. Of course they are …
So they start to undress each other. On page 8 they hear something and on page 10 a guy pops his head in, with a big grin. “Of course I’ll join”.

The short-haired woman starts giving fellatio to the man on page 15. (Remember, we’re now over halfway through the pages). It’s first on page 16, though, that we actually can see the action.
The last picture shows his penis buried in one of womens vagina, while the second woman is lying on top of her (See bottom left pic on front-cover).
12 of 13 action-pictures are close ups. The thirteenth is actually not hard, short haired woman gives fellatio, but you do not see anything.


I do not know if my copy is a reprint, but backcover shows a stamp claiming the responsible publisher to be Bengt Olsson at AP Forläget in Sweden. This is ofcourse non-existent. They put this on the magazines to trick the police to believe it came from Sweden. Bengt Olsson is a very generic, Swedish, name.

         – – – 
sources:
– Historien om Ugens Rapport – by Søren Anker Madsen, 2010
– Excerpt from a TV-clip filmed in the 70s at Jens Theanders office, aquired from “Da Barneporno var lovligt”, part 2.
– Child Pornography, an Investigation – by Tim Tate, 1990

50 years of legislation

I should have posted this on the actual date :).
May 30th, 2019 it was 50 years ago since porn was legalized in Denmark. This happened after a long fight throughout the 60’s. 
Denmark almost immediately became a huge attraction for tourists and smart business-men (and con-artists) found creative ways of making money.
Theander-brothers was involved in organizing the exhibition “Sex 69” in October 69. It was a tremendous success, they had to expand it by two days to cover the demand.
By the time they closed 48000 people had entered Københallen.
§ 234 was officially lifted on July 1st, 1969.
 
A closer look at Danish Laws and legislation is written in this post.

(Sources:)
Picture: De forbudte billeder (The forbidden pictures)
First Sexhibition in Denmark (Politiken.dk)

The Loophole

I’ve mentioned it before, the legalisation of porn in 1969 created a loophole which made it possible to produce and distribute pornographic content including underage material and porn including animals. If you watch the documentary DR2/Impact TV made last year (Candy Film – Da børneporno var lovlig ) you will be aware that it never was legal to produce child porn in Denmark. The loophole in the law made it possible for Peter Theander (and other even bigger CP retailers) to buy content produced in other countries and distribute this as magazines and films. It has never been proved, to my knowledge, that Rodox Corporation actually produced child pornographic material, but they did produce magazines and 8mm movies including this, bought in from other countries. They probably didn’t care much about the laws in the countries where porn was made though.

I will go deeper into this dark side of Color Climax Corporation later. Next post will be about Rodosvej 13.

Peter Theander as Porn Director

Peter Theander (to the right) instructing a couple in the art of lovemaking on film

sources:  Impact TV / DR2 – Da Børneporno var lovligt
Danish Laws
Various News-articles

A note about the 1967 police-raid

The Copenhagen Police-raid in 1967 was mentioned in the previous post. All the major porn-companies were hit and a few supposedly went out of business due to this. I said it was unknown why the Theander brothers dodged the bullet. I would say it still is, but Peter Theander himself gives a short explanation on why, in an interview with Gordon Schindler. The interview was done around 1969.

As a company we were very small at this time. We had just started and there were 3 or 4 big companies. Then all the trouble with the police started and they nearly close the other companies. But we were so small here that they didnt see us.

Jens and Peter Theander had just started their business at the time the police conducted the raid. So it seems that they might not have been targeted. This probably gave the brothers an advantage. Peter is known to be an extremely skilled business-man, so this was what they needed to lay the foundation to what would become Denmark’s most successful porn-company in the seventies and eighties.
peter_68

Sources:
Interview with Peter Theander by Gordon Schindler, ca 1969.
Interview with Ole Ege, ‘Candy Film – da børneporno var lov’ (ep 1) (Impact TV/DR2 2016)

It all begins in Rådhusantikvariatet, Studiestræde 17

The history of what would become Europe’s (and maybe the worlds) largest producer of porn started in Studiestræde 17 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The history of Studiestræde 17 itself is over 600 years old. Current building was build in 1803. The ground floor has been in commercial use throughout its history. A shop renting out furniture was there in 1955 and there has also been a second-hand recordstore in the building up until 1961. In 1961 B. Anthony Antikvarboghandel opened its doors as an antique-shop. On September 19th, 1966 the Theander-brothers bought B. Anthonys Antikvarboghandel(*). When Jens and Peter opened their Rådhusantikvariat it was to sell porn. Apparently they chose to keep the signs outside the door, telling bypassers about antique books, arts and souvenirs being available on the inside. Not true.

Studiestræde 17 was in the late 60's housing Rådhusantikvariatet

Found on Google maps february 2016.

Porn was still being illegal in Denmark at the time. According to Ole Ege in the Danish documentary “Candy film – da børneporno var lovlig“, pictures of women even slightly spreading their legs would be considered illegal and confiscated. This did not stop Jens and Peter from selling harder stuff from under the counter. For instance, in 1967 they aquired the rights to a handful 8mm movies from England. Ivor Cooke was the producer of these hardcore movies (B&W).

Continue reading

Candy Film – Da børneporno var lovlig

2016-02-03-(9)

DR2 in Denmark currently airs a three-part documentary called “Candy Film – Da børneporno var lovlig”. (Candy Film – when Child pornography was legal). If you’re interested and understand Danish you’ll find the two first episodes at dr2.dk . Program is in Danish.
I’ve seen it all and it’s very interesting. It’s a good documentary that also sheds some light on the beginning of Rodox/CCC. Part three will be aired on Monday, February 8th

I will go into the subjects brought up in this documentary but will stick to my plan as it is. This blog has really suffered under my health but I am currently working on material that soon will be updated here. Still, don’t expect posts to occur to often, but I can assure they are now in the brewing.

Note: You will also be able to find the email-address to make contact at the bottom of each posts, if you have any questions, comments or stories to tell.

sources:
Impact TV Denmark

A Movie to Fight the Danish Laws on Porn

Gabriel Axel was a famous Danish Film director, actor, writer and producer (Real name Axel Gabriel Erik Mørk). He is best known for the Academy Award winning movie Babette’s Feast. However, his movie from 1968 Det Kære Legetøj (The Dear Toy, it is also known as Danish Blue and Sex and Law) is quite interesting for us. It’s some sort of documentary advocating the legalizing of porn.

In this movie we’ll find both Peter and Jens Theander. Peter plays the role as Max the Producer, Jens plays a photographer and shop-owner. Their adult bookstore Rådhus-Antikvariatet is also briefly seen in this movie. (Actually, we get to see the interior of the shop in several scenes.)
Jens Theander and Peter Theander
Even if Peter and Jens are playing scripted characters, we can most likely pull information out of this.

First of all, the scenes that portrays the shooting of porn-scenes is shot in the cellar of Rodosvej. This is the same cellar as the first magazines were shot in. (A fellow Rodox-researcher and friend ‘Dry Creek’ have painstakingly compared scenes from this movie and early magazines and have concluded that it is the same cellar). One or both of the brothers is supposed to have lived in Rodosvej at the time. If it is so, they did shoot in their own house.

 Second, the girl playing the female model in the explicit scene the brothers are shooting does appear in Color Climax 04 (published autumn 1968, prior to the ban-lift).

 model1

Reading the program for the movie, we can also make a note of the fact that none of these people are credited. The movie-program has a cast-list, naming the actors. At the bottom it says: “samt anonyme forretningsfolk og modeller fra pornobranchen” (including anonymous business-men and models from the porn business).

Considering this movie is labeled a documentary and that Theanders (and models) are uncredited as mentioned above, it is likely the movie somewhat portraits the truth about the brothers, their shop and their production.

references:
Det Kaere Legetøj – 1968 (director Gabriel Axel)
Color Climax 04 –    1968 (a Theander Production)
Wikipedia article on director Gabriel Axel
Wikipedia article on movie Det Kære Legetøj 
F
ilm program for Det Kaere Legetøj.
Huge thanks to ‘Dry Creek’
PS: The movie Det Kaere Legetøj is really good and interesting, track it down if you’re interested in this stuff!

The Theander background story

Peter Grundtvig Theander was born in Copenhagen on December 5th, 1941. Jens Grundtvig Theander was born on January 22nd, 1944.

Very little is so far known about their childhood. What we do know is that the brothers opened an antique store in the area of Copenhagens Town Hall in the mid-sixties. It’s name was “Rådhus-Antikvariatet” which translated would be something like “Town Hall Antique-store”. The red light district of Copenhagen (Istedgade) is situated 500+ meters from this area. The shop is situated pretty close to the town hall and this area is very beautiful. And for this reason a tourist-attraction. The store can be seen in one of Color Climax’s early magazines called ‘Porno-Instruction’ from 1970.

The Antique store Jens and Peter Theander opened in Copenhagen around 1966

The chronology of the story now is not clear. Peter Theander drove a cab and Jens Theander installed intercom-systems. Whether this was something they did after opening the store is unclear. An article about the History of Porn states they struggled to make ends meet with their store, so this could be jobs taken to increase income. A story claims that while installing an intercom-system Jens witnessed the owner of the store open an envelope full of foreign currency. This was currency recieved due to post-order sales abroad. Jens supposedly thought that they could do this just as well.(*)

Porn was at this time (1966-67) still illegal in Denmark so it had to be sold from beneath the counter. The Danish police often dropped by Rådhus-Antikvariatet to check if they had illegal porn. In the beginning they were selling pinup-magazines. How they managed to avoid being caught is still not known. They soon decided to start producing their own pornography. According to anniversary-editorials in their magazines, Color Climax themselves claims to have published their first Porn magazine in 1967. This will be covered in depth in later posts.

Jens Theander was married two(**) times, Peter at least once. Peter Theander is still alive. Jens Theander died on Mallorca December 20th 2008. He is buried in Denmark.

 

 (*) We do not know if this story is true. It is a story that might be a myth
(**) Until 2015-04-03 this blog has claimed he was married three times. This is incorrect.
Danish References:
stamtavle.taxbol.dk (This site is now defunct.)
injour.dk
Pictures are taken from the magazine ‘Porno Instruction’ from 1970.

A note about updates

There have been no posts here since november 26th 2012. There is a simple reason to that. We’ve been in doubt wether this blog should be kept clean of pornographic material. The decision is as follows.
To fully understand every aspect of Rodox we need to show examples from their work.