Biographical/historical: Victor Jessen (1901-1995) was a Danish-born engineer who moved to Los Angeles in 1929. Beginning in the 1930s he filmed dance performances, without permission, in order to preserve them for future audiences. In 1954, Jessen created a black-and-white film of Gaîté Parisienne starring Alexandra Danilova, Frederic Franklin and Leon Danielian, by splicing together strips of film he had surreptitiously recorded in theaters during performances by Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo over a ten-year period (1944–1954) and then editing the footage to conform to a sound recording he had also secretly made.