Kaj Gynt
Swedish-born American actress and playwright
Karin Sophia Matthiessen; née Cederstrand; 24 October 1885 – 1956), known under the pseudonym Kaj Gynt or Kay Gynt, was a Swedish-turned-American actress and, for one notable 1927 Broadway musical, a book writer.
Career
Acting
Before emigrating to New York, Gynt performed three years with the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. In America, she played Kate in the 1917 film The Eternal Mother and was a skating party guest in the 1917 film, The Last Sentence, directed by Ben Turbett. In 1921, Gynt played Clorinda in Henry Bataille's 3-act romantic comedy, Don Juan, at the Garrick Theatre, New York.
Writing
She authored the book for the 1927 Broadway musical revue, Rang Tang. She also co-authored, in 1936 with Langston Hughes, a proposed production, Cock o' the World, music by Duke Ellington, Wilbur Hughes Strickland, MD (1903–1987), and Billy Strayhorn. The work was never performed.
Growing up, emigration, marriage, and family
Gynt grew-up in Stockholm and was friends with Greta Garbo. At age 22, she and Harold Gustav Frederic Matthiessen (1883–1940) arrived at Ellis Island, New York City, 21 December 1907, aboard the SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria from Cuxhaven. That same day, they married each other at the Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church, 155 East 22nd Street (between Lexington and Third Avenues).
“Kaj Gynt” enters the record as swedish-born American actress and playwright. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gynt, Swedish-born and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Kaj Gynt” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Gynt, Swedish-born and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q86629526. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885, 1956, 1927 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kaj Gynt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.