Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam. Publicity still for the TV show Bij Dorus op schoot (On Dorus' lap) (1967-1969) with Tom Manders as the vagabond Dorus.
Dutch artist, comedian and cabaret performer Tom Manders was best known as Dorus. His TV shows were huge successes in the Netherlands and he also made a few films which were financial disasters.
Antoon (Tom) Manders was born in The Hague, The Netherlands, in 1921. Already at a young age, his talent for drawing became apparent. He attended the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Netherlands for 3 years and was active, among other things, as an advertisement painter and designer of posters. Later he also designed decors for theatre and cabaret, regularly for Lou Bandy, Wim Kan and theatre Carré in Amsterdam. During World War II, Manders had to work in Germany but after half a year, he fled from his job as a painter. Because of Wim Kan, Manders got the idea to start doing cabaret himself, like his older brother Kees. Starting in 1953, Manders was involved with the design of Carel Kamlag's cafe Saint-Germain-des-Prés at the Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam. Manders performed there himself as a vagabond, a role that would later become famous as Dorus. When VARA offered him an opportunity to perform on television, he had the café copied in the studio and started a successful show that would be broadcast for several years. Between 1956 and 1962, Manders worked together with organist Cor Steyn for the program De Showboat. Together they created tracks like Twee motten (Two moths), Als ik wist dat je zou komen (Had I known you would come by) en Bij de marine (In the navy).
Tom Manders got into financial trouble when he tried to produce Dorus films. Having already conquered Dutch, Belgian and German TV audiences with his studio bound television shows, Manders felt the need to broaden his scope and go out into the real world to make a series short films on location. While most of his shows had featured him performing sketches, singing songs and some of them had been complete mock-opera's, this would be the first time that Dorus the lovably tramp would interact with other characters to form a coherent story. Each one of these three television specials would be set (and filmed) in a different Dutch town. For the first one, De Wolf en Zijn Zeven Dochters/The Wolf and his Seven Daughters (Tom Manders, 1963), Dorus visited Volendam. In 1967, he won the Zilveren Roos prize and started a new program, Bij Dorus op schoot (On Dorus' lap). In a particularly famous scene from 18 November 1967, a 3-year old girl tries to sing the famous Dutch children song Poessie Mauw, of which she endlessly repeated only the title. Also in 1967, the former chemical products business on the Mauritsstraat 65 in Rotterdam was converted to Cabaret Dorus. This only lasted until 1970 and with the closing of Cabaret Dorus, the show Bij Dorus op schoot also ended. Since 1985, there is a block of houses in the same location named the Tom Mandershof. In 1971, Dorus made one more television appearance, in which he scared visitors of Madame Tussauds by pretending to be a wax statue. In the same year, he had another musical hit with In de hemel is geen bier (There is no beer in heaven). In February 1972, Manders had a car accident. In the hospital, he was diagnosed with cancer. Three weeks later he died in Utrecht because of a heart attack. He was 50. Since 1946, he was married to Anna Maria Josephina Hennen, with whom he had five children. In 2009/2010 Albert Verlinde produced a musical about the life of Tom Manders with the title Dorus, the musical. Their son Tom Manders worked as a film and TV director. Karel de Rooij and Peter de Jong, better known as Mini & Maxi, played the main roles. The show was written by Lars Boom and Dick van den Heuvel and directed by Peter de Baan.
Source: Chip Douglas (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
