ICE FOLLIES - Icy Road

Three young Minnesota guys who loved to skate used their skills and comic antics to entertain friends on the frozen lakes around St. Paul in the 1920s.  They eventually put together a couple of acts and got booked for half time gigs at hockey games. Their big break came in 1935 with an 8 week booking at Chicago’s famed College Inn in the Hotel Sherman.  The place sold out for eighteen months!  Encouraged, they dreamed even higher and reasoned, "The audience loved us here! How about taking our show to people who can’t come to us?"

Back home they enlarged and improved the show by combining Ziegfeld-inspired spectacle, Vaudeville comedy shtick and popular music with skating's unique beauty and speed.  They called it "Ice Follies", piled the skaters, props, and scenery on a bus in St. Paul for a Nov. 7, 1936 date with destiny in Tulsa. Not only did those Minnesota boys, Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Oscar Johnson invent the touring ice show, their adventurous little troupe gave birth to an entirely new entertainment industry.

“Ice Follies” became a national institution and toured new editions annually until 1978. It was purchased by Irving and Kenneth Feld, owners of Ringling Brothers Circus among other entertainment productions, and was transformed in 1980 into “Disney On Ice."