Lodewijk Ferdinand Dieben was raised in a working-class family in
The Hague. Dieben worked as a
piccolo, house servant,
street singer, and a
conscriptionist with the Navy before he started a serious career in variety in 1915. At first he performed with his brother under the name The Bandy Brothers (Bandy being an Anglicisation of his last name Dieben with the syllables reversed.) Soon it became apparent that the characters of the brothers were too different to work together; in contrast with Willy, Lou was known as a difficult person. Lou continued under the name Lou Bandy. In 1921 he married the pianist
Eugenie Küch, a German officer's daughter who would have a great impact on his career: she taught him decent social skills, taught him the importance of speaking proper Dutch, and helped him get his first lucrative contracts. With her support, the young man from the Hague found himself within a few years working with the top artists and theater impresarios. Bandy continued to perform following the
German occupation of The Netherlands in
World War II. In 1942, he was banned from performing when he mocked the limp of
Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart during a performance at
Royal Theater Carré in
Amsterdam. Bandy was known by the public as a singer of happy lyrics, but to those who knew him better, he had a less upbeat image. He married the much younger
Sinia Franke in 1948, and in 1952 married 19-year-old girl
Carla van den Hurk. He divorced Carla in 1958 and was getting lonely. When he was not popular anymore and he became very lonely he
killed himself in his Zandvoort apartment close to the sea. == References ==