Through the years, her shows and later art exhibitions drew the attention of such people as Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon and Gustaf VI Adolf of Sweden and she met with them. Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. Practicing as much as seven hours a day, she studied with teachers in Germany, England, Switzerland and Austria. 1974); James Robert Parish, The Fox Girls (1971); and James Vinson, ed., The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, vol. The pretty, blond skater stood out among the competitors in a white silk and ermine skating dress that had a short skirt. We had been flying for only an hour and she just slipped away.. Loveland continued, "she seems to float, like something in gossamer wings, but anyone tempted to drift off into an ethereal realm is brought back by a pair of very shapely limbs, which move with the smoothness of running water and the strength of youth." -- Sonja Henie OSLO, Norway -- She was the first to spin, the first to jump, the first to be crowned a figure skating ice queen. As the first and only ice-skating film star, Henie is a show business phenomenon comparable only to the swimmer Esther Williams , who appeared in romantic comedies in the late 1940s. 2023 . At the time of the 1994 Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan rivalry, their altercations were compared in the press with the sparring that went on between Henie and Swedish skater Vivi-Anne Hulten many years earlier. An excellent video documentary directed and produced by Edvard Hambro is entitled Sonja Henie: Queen of the Ice (1993). Adolf Hitler greeting Sonja Henie at a rink in Munich six weeks after the 1936 Winter Olympics, where she won a third straight women's singles title. 8 Remarkable Female Figure Skaters at Winter Olympics - History 436. When their daughter showed a special passion for skating at about age six, which she began under the instruction of her brother Leif, they provided her with whatever training she required. For this, she was condemned by many Norwegians and Norwegian-Americans. "Sonja Henie's tutu!" Plain Dealer (January 16, 2002). Public interest in Henie has fueled continued debate about her off-ice and off-screen behavior. Her talent was evident from a very early age. Sports Illustrated (February 14, 1994): 18. Sonja Henie, Michael Kirby - Die Fledermaus! - YouTube The signature of her ice skate blades adorns the cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She had high profile romances with Tyrone Power, boxer Joe Encyclopedia of World Biography. Four thoughts about Sonja Henie " I skated with Sonja, and wrote the first biography after her death. 1928, '32, '36 Games: Sonja Henie, 3-Time Gold Medalist ullstein bild via Getty Images <em>Eleven-year-old Sonja Henie competes at the 1924 Winter Olympics.</em> Henie, the Norwegian. Three times the Olympic figure-skating champion, Miss Henie won most of the major world skating titles from 1927 to 1936, when she turned professional. Eight Sonja Henie movies crossed the $100 million domestic gross mark. Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA). A 1930 New York Times article dubbed Henie a "Pavlova on Ice" and stressed her athletic prowess. In 1953, Henie formed a new partnership with Morris Chalfen to appear in his European Holiday On Ice tour, which proved to be a great success. Henie's brother speaks of her extremely violent temper in Raymond Strait and Leif Henie, Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows: The Unsuspected Life of Sonja Henie (1985). A year later she won Oslos junior skating championship. Biography. "Henie, Sonja Sonja In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Norway, she was out of the country. Sonja Henie | Encyclopedia.com While improving her skating, in the next few years, she also studied ballet with a former teacher of Anna Pavlova, and eventually she combined the two forms on ice. But Henie stopped producing shows after an accident in 1952 prior to a performance. Barbara Ann Scott, Canadian Figure Skater, Dies at 84 - New York Times "Tonya-no! Jimmy believes that, as the new star, she can be used to bolster the publicity value of Roger Maxwell (Rudy Vallee), a crooner on the studio pay roll whose self-esteem is more impressive than his newsworthiness. But Henie will be best remembered for putting skating above the personal and political. Sonja Henie, Skating Star, Dies - The New York Times It was a box-office smash, as were others she made in the following dozen years. "Gee-Whizzer." There, Henie won her second gold medal in figure skating, with 2,302.5 points. Her illness had been a well-kept secret. She won the first of 10 consecutive world skating titles at Oslo in 1927, captivating the crowd with her ballet style, a white silk and ermine costume and short skirt and a dimpled smile. Henie was portrayed in the 2018 Anne Sewitsky film Sonja The White Swan, shown at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.[26][27][28]. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list. Henie was also successful in Hollywood. Over the next decade Miss Henie won Olympic titles at St. Moritz, Switzerland (1928), at Lake Placid (1932), and at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria (1936). Henie improved rapidly and by 1926 she was . From Wikipedia: Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 - 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. success. Henie's first love was dancing, and she began to study ballet at age four; the ballet element in her later skating, both as champion amateur and professional, was always evident. However, being a naturalized citizen of the United States effectively put a stop to any propaganda on her behalf until Pearl Harbor. These honors were the result of talent, intensive training, and an interest in doing something different from other skaters. Other stories echo these allegations, although in a milder fashion. Darryl Although Trudi does no skating in her screen test, she makes the grade. "The World's First Ice Queen." Michael Weatherly's Brother Has Died - popculture.com She was signed by 20th Century-Fox and debuted in One in a Million (1936), in which she played an ice skater. The band goes to Ellis Island to meet the girl and soon discovers that the refugee isn't a 10-year-old child, but a young woman, Karen Benson ( Sonja Henie ). After Henie won the world championship one last time in 1936, she prepared to retire from amateur sports and enter professional skating. Burial. Sonja Henie Death Fact Check, Birthday & Date of Death - Dead or Kicking Henie incorporated ballet movements into her skating; she had taken ballet lessons from the age of five and was influenced by ballerina Anna Pavlova. Henie's popularity as a film actress attracted many new fans and instituted skating shows as a popular new entertainment. Her contribution to skating is secure, however, because she combined all of the elements so important to the sport today: high drama, athletic prowess, and star power. Ted Scott ( John Payne) is a band pianist whose publicity manager decides that, for good press, the band should adopt a foreign refugee. Encyclopedia of World Biography. Henie began skating when she was six years old. Colledge, Cecilia. skater to parlay her athletic success into a lucrative career. She announced then that she was turning professional, and toured the United States in an ice show. Henie's unprecedented three Olympic gold medals have not been matched by any ladies' single skater since, nor have her achievements as ten-time consecutive World champion. ." Mitt livs eventyr, Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1938. Sonja is buried on a hilltop overlooking the skating even more. After her marriage to Mr. Onstad, a childhood sweetheart, in 1956, she became interested in modern art. In 1927, at the tender age of 14, she won the first of ten consecutive world championships. In December 1937 Henie was received into Norway's Knightly Order of St. Olaf. Henie, Sonja (1912-1969) Norwegian figure skater who won three consecutive gold medals and became a movie box-office attraction surpassed in her day only by Shirley Temple and Clark Gable. During sixteen years of touring she earned something in the range of $10 million and her movies probably netted her more than $25 million. [29], Not to be confused with American basketball player, After the war, Henie was mindful that many of her countrymen considered her to be a, 1936 European Figure Skating Championships, "Cecilia Colledge: Champion figure skater", "AFI's 100 Years 100 Stars America's Greatest Legends", "Nektet pne festspill hvis Flagstad skulle synge", "International Women's Sports Hall of Fame", "Sonja Henie Joins 508th Regt. In addition to the income from the fur business, both of Henie's parents had inherited wealth. By 1939 she was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood. While Irina Slutskaya of Russia has held the record for most European titles among ladies' skaters since 2006, Henie still retains the record of most consecutive titles, sharing it with Katarina Witt of Eastern Germany/Germany (19831988). OSLO, Oct. 12 (AP)--Sonja Henie, ice-skating queen and film star, died tonight on an ambulance plane flying from Paris to Oslo. [citation needed]. After retiring Ice-T appeared on the music scene in 1987 with a new style: gangster rap, which offers rhymes about crimea, ice skating, gliding along an ice surface on keellike runners known as ice skates. She also had numerous lucrative endorsement contracts, and deals to market skates, clothing, jewelry, dolls, and other merchandise branded with her name. In 1921, at Oslo's Frogner Stadium, Henie competed in and won Norway's highest junior level of competition. She produced her own show at New York's Roxy Theatre in January 1956. Another measure of her worth is that in 1940 her legs were insured by Lloyds of London for $5,000 per week. When live television began to cut into the film industry, Henie stopped making movies and returned to traveling ice shows. A bubbly, smiling figure in her performances, she was in fact a fierce competitor who wanted nothing to do with her rivals. ed. Commenting on the difference between skating in her shows and in competition, Miss Henie once said: "When I was in championship competition I was on the ice for exactly four minutes. 2009-05-21 23:06:30. Could it be Ms. Hart seems a little "chilly!" Please pardon the periodic visual/audio glitches; the source. [15], Also according to Kestnbaum, "Henie's largest contribution to public images of skating"[15] was in her professional ice shows and in her Hollywood films, which were often the first time audiences were exposed to figure skating through the mass media. Her union with American sports investor (and later owner of the New York Yankees) Daniel Reid Topping lasted from 1940 to 1946, likely a victim to her grueling film production and touring schedules. Henie did not appear in these shows, but rather was an advisor and financial partner. When she returned the following year, she secured the women's national championship title and, as part of her record-making legacy, would come back the subsequent six years to retain that title. plummeted when a photo of her with Adolphe Hitler was published. (b. Henie kept her Hollywood home in Holmby Hills and enjoyed her Grundholtet villa in Norway and apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Like many Hollywood stars, she supported the U.S. war effort through USO and otherwise. In 1940 Sonja married businessman Daniel 27 Apr. Sonja Henie - Turner Classic Movies Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/sports/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/henie-sonja. He soon signed Henie to a five-year contract. Encyclopedia.com. . Onstad transformed her art collecting interest from traditional masters to contemporary works; they donated 250 paintings and millions of dollars to Norway and in 1968 completed the Henie-Onstad Museum near Oslo to house the collection and, after Henie's death, her career memorabilia. Dividing her remaining years between homes in Norway and the United States, Henie lived happily with her third husband, Niels Onstad. She appeared on several television shows in the next few years, including a one- hour special of her own. Henie tried to break the musical comedy mould with the anti-Nazi film Everything Happens at Night (1939) and It's a Pleasure (1945), a skating variation of the often-told A Star Is Born tale about alcoholic-star-in-decline-helps-newcomer-up. She once called Eddie Pec, the only person she permitted to sharpen her skates, in New York, to ask him to come to Chicago, where her show was to open. Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 - 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. [2], Kestnbaum argues that although Henie's skating was "athletic and powerful for her day",[2] she purposively added elements,such as using the toepicks of her skates to run or pose on the ice, in movements similar to the use of pointe technique in ballet, that undercut her power and athleticism. Entries on Henie, many with further bibliographies, appear in Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green, eds., Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary (1980); Robert J. Condon, The Fifty Finest Athletes of the 20th Century: A Worldwide Reference (1990); and Robert Markel, ed., The Women's Sports Encyclopedia (1997). to be attended by top motion-picture stars and executives, including Twentieth CenturyFox's Darryl F. Zanuck, who signed Henie up for a first-time appearance on the American screen as a leading star. The Hollywood Ice Review was polished by Henie's unwavering pursuit of perfection. This was more than a day's pay for Steve Turocy, who at age eighty-two remembered having to settle for a $3.30 seat because the others were sold out. It is her effect on the sport of figure skating that is unrivaled. The couple was still together in 1969 when Henie died. It was also noted in Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows that before the war started the Henies had visited with Adolf Hitler and that during a 1936 show in Berlin she had given him the Nazi salute and said "Heil, Hitler.". - IMDb Mini Biography By: Elizabeth Ann Family (1) Spouse Niels Onstad ( 6 June 1956 - 12 October 1969) (her death) Winthrop Gardner ( 15 September 1949 - 14 May 1956) (divorced)

Can You Take Align And Culturelle Together, Adam Ried Husband, Is 72k A Good Salary In California, High Priestess Certification, Articles W