Dick Laan



Dick Laan (18 December 1894, Wormerveer – 6 October 1973, Heemstede)  was a Dutch children's writer and film pioneer. He is best known for his Pinkeltje (published in English as Fingerling) series of children's books.

Early career
Laan was the son of Jan Cornelis Laan and the grandson of Teunis Crok, the founders of the oil and fat processing company "Crok & Laan" (since 1971 part of Unilever). The Laan family moved in 1902 to Bloemendaal. Dick Laan started working in his father's factories in Wormerveer, and was included in the company's board of directors in 1916.

Films
When production at this factory temporarily dwindled during the First World War, he started spending more and more time on his main hobby, filming. He made his first movie in 1917, and another 50 movies and documentaries followed. He was the first to make children's movies, filmed with children he knew from his football club, Koninklijke HFC, and the scouting club De Zwarte Pijl where he was a Scout Leader.

In 1927 he founded the Dutch Film Collective (De Nederlandsche Filmliga) with several other directors (see: De Nederlandsche Filmliga).

In 1929 he produced and directed the film Voetbal, the first artistic movie about the sport. The famous movie director Joris Ivens once stated that he had learned a lot from Dick Laan.

Books
His writing of screenplays for movies led him to write children's books. His first published work consists of a number of boy's juvenile (adventure) books.

Pinkeltje
However, Laan is by far best known for his Pinkeltje series of children books, featuring a pinky-sized hero. The first book was published in 1939 and went on to sell 3 million copies in Dutch. He would write another 28 entries in the series, though the last four volumes were published only posthumously. Translations of Pinkeltje have been made in English, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish and Icelandic.

Films
In 1978, 5 years after Dick Laan's death, Harrie Geelen directed and wrote the screenplay for a live-action Pinkeltje film, which was quite successful in the Netherlands and starred Aart Staartjes as Pinkeltje and Wieteke van Dort as his female companion Pinkelotje.

Legacy
Pinkeltje's popularity in the Netherlands is witnessed by the forty-plus nursery schools and kindergartens named after Pinkeltje, Pinkelotje or other characters from the books.

Tributes
In Heemstede, where Laan spent the last years of his life, a street was named the Dick Laanlaan (laan means 'lane') in his honor, later changed to the "Laan van Dick Laan". Almere has also a Dick Laan street and in his birthplace Wormerveer is a Dick Laan square.