SONJA HENIE - Hooray For Hollywood

While the Shipstads and Johnson were getting the show on the road in 1936 a young Norweigan phenom named Sonja Henie was winning her 10th World championship and 3rd Olympic gold medal in ladies figure skating. But that was only the beginning. The dimpled, charismatic Norweigan skater used her sports fame to open the golden gates of Hollywood. By 1938 Sonja had made three 20th Century Fox musicals and came in just behind that other dimpled darling Shirley Temple as the year’s top box-office star. She ultimately made eleven feature films, all were not critic’s delights but each was a hit with the public.

As brilliant and clever a business woman as she was a performer Henie is reported to have been as hard at the bargaining table as the ice on which she skated. She made a multitude of endorsement deals for everything from skates to cars to wallpaper, and every young girl begged for a Henie doll, coloring book, and paper doll set. In 1940, together with her own show’s promoter Arthur Wirtz, she co-produced a series of ice revues in the Center Theatre at New York’s Rockefeller Center. Henie didn’t perform there but oversaw six productions during a ten year run. Breaking with producer Wirtz in 1951 she created “The Sonja Henie Ice Revue” but found her dual role as star and producer difficult, finally teaming with the “Holiday On Ice” organization for U.S. and International tours until retiring in 1960. Sonja Henie died of Leukemia in 1969.

Sonja Henie’s films were such a bonanza for 20th Century Fox that rival studios quickly began to make their own skating films hoping to also catch the brass ring. None of them garnered the same success.