Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. At the height of her acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and starred in a series of box-office hits, including Thin Ice (1937), Happy Landing, My Lucky Star (1938), Second Fiddle (1939) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941). Henie's autobiography, written with Janet Owen, is Wings on My Feet (1940). However, she made a triumphant return to Norway with the Holiday on Ice tour in 1953 and 1955. As a wealthy celebrity, she moved in the same social circles as royalty and heads of state and made Hitler's acquaintance as a matter of course. During sixteen years of touring she earned something in the range of $10 million and her movies probably netted her more than $25 million. Oscar Holte, the outstanding Norwegian skating coach, supervised much of her training in Oslo and at St. Moritz, Switzerland, as she prepared to enter the International Winter Sports Week at Chamonix, France; retroactively, this special "week" became an official part of the first Winter Olympics in 1924. Skating, a feat she would repeat in 1932 and 1936. Henie returned to the United States in 1932 for more exhibitions and for the third Winter Olympic Games at Lake Placid, New York. From 1937 to 1945 she was one of the leading box-office attractions in the film industry. The highly-publicized shows were well attended by film stars and filmmakers, including Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century-Fox. Miss Henie had been suffering from. Memorial ID. She did not die from her leukemia; but she died of a hemorrhage caused by change in air pressure in the jet flying from Paris to Oslo. After her marriage to Mr. Onstad, a childhood sweetheart, in 1956, she became interested in modern art. Sonja's marriage to Winthrop ended in 1956. Because Norway did not yet have indoor ice rinks, she traveled around Europe to train throughout the year and benefit from the best instructors. 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.". The result of her first entry into the national championship at Frogner, in 1922, was to win second place. ." Henie-Onstad museum. Until shortly before her death, Miss Henie had remained socially active and continued to direct the activities of the $3.5 million art museum she and her husband had presented to Norway. 3, Actors and Actresses (1986). OSLO, Oct. 12 (AP)--Sonja Henie, ice-skating queen and film star, died tonight on an ambulance plane flying from Paris to Oslo. Second Fiddle displays Sonja [Henie] as Trudi Hovland, a schoolmarm of Bergen, Minn. who is called to Hollywood because her local swain has sent her photograph to Consolidated Pictures Corp., which has been looking high & low for just such a heroine. "Sonja Henie's tutu!" She also planned to become a Hollywood actress and to accomplish on screen for ice-skating what Fred Astaire had done for dancing. Sonja Henie was born on April 8, 1912 and died on October 12, 1969. 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). in ice shows and even starred in her own television special. At 11 she won the national championshipand also entered her first Olympics, in which she placed last. Sonja Henie - Wikipedia "Tormented by a rival who was cold as ice." Born on April 8, 1912 in Oslo, Norway, her father, Hans Wilhelm Henie, was a successful fur trader and her mother, Selma Lochman Nielsen, had a fortune of her own. At 14 she was the Norwegian Skating Champion. An excellent video documentary directed and produced by Edvard Hambro is entitled Sonja Henie: Queen of the Ice (1993). Encyclopedia of World Biography. In plummeted when a photo of her with Adolphe Hitler was published. The pictures were reported to have grossed $25-million. A stand of bleacher seats collapsed at a Baltimore armory, injuring more than 250 people. She also had numerous lucrative endorsement contracts, and deals to market skates, clothing, jewelry, dolls, and other merchandise branded with her name. Within a month of her last amateur victory, Henie signed with promoter Arthur Wirtz to appear in a U.S. tour. Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies' figure skater. She Her first American film, One in a Million (1936) , starring Don Ameche and Adolphe Menjou, opened in New York in 1936 and quickly grossed $2 million. When live television began to cut into the film industry, Henie stopped making movies and returned to traveling ice shows. Unfortunately she had a serious drinking problem which eventually 1. The draw for the free skating [then] came under suspicion after Henie landed the plum position of skating last, while Colledge had to perform second of the 26 competitors. (June 6, 1956 - October 12, 1969) (her death), (September 15, 1949 - May 14, 1956) (divorced), (July 4, 1940 - February 13, 1946) (divorced), View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro. Memories of Henie, the first ice queen, nearly lost in her homeland of Her death in Los Angeles, California on October 12, 1969, robbed the skating world of one of its brightest stars. They also made her wealthy. As Honorary Jumper", "Photo Norwegian Air Shuttle Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner EI-LNA", "Cheap flights to Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm Norwegian", "Sundance Film Review: 'Sonja: The White Swan', https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sonja_Henie&oldid=1151351901, Inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame (1982), In 1938, at age 25, she became the youngest person to be made a knight first class of. O'Brien, Richard and Jack McCallum. 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. (b. and easily eclipsed the earnings of any other star athlete, male or female. He named Henie as the instigator. In the fall of 1968 Henie was diagnosed with leukemia. appeared on the cover of Time magazine and her skates were immortalized Although later cleared of any responsibility for the accident, she did not stage any more arena- type shows. [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. Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: Sports Figures. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sonja-henie. Her name and likeness were mentioned and portrayed by an ice skating Donald Duck in Walt Disney's 1939 The Hockey Champ. Henie was portrayed in the 2018 Anne Sewitsky film Sonja The White Swan, shown at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.[26][27][28]. I want to do with skates what Fred Astaire is doing with dancing. In 1936 she signed with Twentieth Century-Fox, and she starred in 10 popular films, beginning with One in a Million (193637) and Thin Ice (1937). She was 57. It is her effect on the sport of figure skating that is unrivaled. Henie won her first major figure skating competition, the senior Norwegian championships, at the age of 10. Olympic ice queen Sonja Henie became a Hollywood star and Hitler She was the first Weatherly did not disclose his brother's cause of death as he paid emotional tribute alongside a throwback photo of himself and Will playing on the beach as children. - 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) Rap singer We had been flying for only an hour and she just slipped away.. Born April 8, 1912, in Oslo, Norway, Henie was blessed from the beginning with every attribute a skater might need. Films in Review (July-August 1996): 60. The hallmarks of Henie's future successes were in place. Sonja Henie's Night, an exhibition that played before and during the intermission of ice hockey games at Madison Square Garden during March 1936, was a success. The results of 1927 World Championships, where Henie won in 32 decision (or 7 vs. 8 ordinal points) over the defending Olympic and World Champion Herma Szabo of Austria, was controversial, as three of the five judges that gave Henie first-place ordinals were Norwegian (1 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 2 = 7 points) while Szabo received first-place ordinals from an Austrian and a German Judge (1 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 8 points). At 14 she was the Norwegian Skating Champion. In August 1931 her Chrysler roadster came in second in an amateur automobile race in Stockholm, and she became runner-up in the Norwegian national tennis tournament in 1932. Another measure of her worth is that in 1940 her legs were insured by Lloyds of London for $5,000 per week. controversy. [3] She also won six consecutive European championships from 1931 to 1936. The best paired her with some of the biggest male stars of the time, including Tyrone Power in Thin Ice and Second Fiddle (1939), Don Ameche (for the second time) and Cesar Romero in Happy Landing (1938), and Ray Milland and Robert Cummings in Everything Happens at Night (1939). Sonja Henie was born on April 8, 1912 in Oslo, Norway. A champion in her own day, she has become a legend in ours. Sonja is buried on a hilltop overlooking the Henie married Daniel Reid Topping, an American sports investor from Greenwich, Connecticut, on 4 July 1940; they divorced in 1946. A bubbly, smiling figure in her performances, she was in fact a fierce competitor who wanted nothing to do with her rivals. But the minute I skate in them I become a professional, so why shouldnt I go on tour?. In an era before television, these films were an introduction to skating for millions of American viewers. From 1931 through 1936, Henie competed in and won six consecutive women's European Figure Skating Championships. Dolgan, Bob. Her final two Hollywood films, released in 1945 by RKO and in 1948 by Universal, no longer enthralled postwar audiences, who preferred more sophisticated scripts. "Henie, Sonja "She went after me in every which way from that point on," said Hulten. Of the films in general, he decided, "The best of them hold up as unmatched combinations of romantic comedy, catchy songs, and dazzling skating routines." Henie was married three times, to Dan Topping (19401946), Winthrop Gardiner Jr. (19491956),[16] and the Norwegian shipping magnate and art patron Niels Onstad (19561969). Her jumps and spins seem ridiculously easy compared to the athletic feats of contemporary figure skaters. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/sports/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/henie-sonja. included dazzling ice-skating routines which she choreographed herself. Other stories echo these allegations, although in a milder fashion. ." Biography. Three years later she married socialite Winthrop Gardner Jr., who divorced her in 1956. She enjoyed music and dance from an early age, studying ballet and after beginning her competitive skating career, admired the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova after seeing her perform in London.[2]. 8 Remarkable Female Figure Skaters at Winter Olympics - History She said her greatest hope was to become a movie star, and she soon did. 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. Age at Death: 57. However, being a naturalized citizen of the United States effectively put a stop to any propaganda on her behalf until Pearl Harbor. Sonja Henie (1912 - 1969) - Genealogy Her free-skating program, with its musical medley of stage songs, received a standing ovation. "Ice Wars: The Prequel." Her wide, dimpled smile, pixie eyes and blonde Nordic good looks made her a great favorite of audiences during the years of World War II. 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. The experience inspired her to introduce choreographic design in her free skating program, an innovation that helped her win an Olympic gold medal in 1928 at St. Moritz, Switzerland. Sonja-yes!" In January 1930, after additional success in winning Norway's skating doubles championship three times, she impressed her first New York City audience of 15,000 at the amateur Ice Carnival exhibition at Madison Square Garden. In addition to traveling to train and compete, she was much in demand as a performer at figure skating exhibitions in both Europe and North America. How did Sonja Henie the ice Star die? - Answers Sonja Henie, Skating Star, Dies - The New York Times Newsweek (October 25, 1999): 53. (Read Scott Hamiltons Britannica essay on "Training for Olympic Gold."). She had already delighted in dancing, and--with her brother Leif giving her her first lessons--enjoyed Modern figure skating is deeply indebted to Sonja Henie (1912-1969), one of the greatest athletes of this century. She grew up in Norway and was a dominant presence on the ice for . Honorary Colonel and Godmother of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, For a time, Sonja Henie's picture adorned the tail of a, This page was last edited on 23 April 2023, at 13:57. Her third and final marriage was to fellow Norwegian Niels Onstad, a shipping magnate, on 9 June 1956. She broke with her manager in 1951, and began producing shows on her own, but gave them up after a block of seats at a Baltimore armory collapsed before a show in March, 1952, injuring more than 250 people. Plain Dealer (January 16, 2002). Through her live ice shows and a series of Hollywood movies, Henie enlarged the audience for figure skating and transformed it into a thrilling entertainment. https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/henie-sonja, "Henie, Sonja She entered her first Olympic Winter Games the next year, primarily for experience, and took third place in the free skating competition. Darryl The daughter of a fur wholesaler in Norway, Sonja Henie received her skating even more. After she complained to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, the guard was summoned to apologize for the incident. Michael Weatherly is mourning the loss of his brother. The Norwegian Royal Family attended both events and indeed attended her funeral in 1969. Following the success of Thin Ice, Henie showed her growing business savvy by getting Twentieth Century-Fox to renegotiate her contract. Both Hans and Selma became deeply involved in Sonja's skating career. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. He was 85. While we were in Paris she suddenly became much worse and she was examined by a doctor, he said. Sonja Henie. . Encyclopedia.com. Selma had designed her daughter's above-the-knee skirt with heavy fur trim to give it fullness. 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). Norway's king and queen attended the funeral service. [14] Figure skating writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum credits Henie with transforming figure skating into what she calls "a spectacle of the skater's body" and for "shifting [the sport's] meanings firmly in the direction of femininity". Jewelry takes people's minds off your wrinkles. Skater Sonja Henie 'Put A Dollar Sign' Behind The Gold Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. Henie was not judged to be responsible for the incident, but she decided not to hold any more arena-style shows. I don't think she ever really learned to enjoy life. skating routines. Nora and her uncle get railroaded into spending the night at a broken-down hotel in Canada. Her talent was evident from a very early age. She is said to be one of the best figure skaters in history. . When Geoffrey and Ken track Norden to a small village in the Swiss Alps, they soon find themselves competing over the affections of beautiful Louise (Henie), who has a deeper connection to the missing Nobel laureate than the reporters realize. Hans was himself very athletic; among his diverse pursuits, he was a former world champion in bicycling. playing tennis and she excelled at ice-skating. Mitt livs eventyr, Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1938. Omissions? Henie began skating when she was six years old. This adaptation formed the basis for Henie's free-skating program at the 1928 Olympics at St. Moritz, where the blonde-haired, five-foot, two-inch Henie, at 104 pounds, presented flawless figures and a free-skating program that included a combination of double "Axel Paulsens" (as the double axel was then called) and nineteen spins, twirls, and jumps. With Sonja Henie, Jack Oakie, Cesar Romero, Carole Landis. As Sandra Stevenson recounted in The Independent, "the closeness [of the competition] infuriated Henie, who, when the result for that section was posted on a wall in the competitors' lounge, swiped the piece of paper and tore it into little pieces. It was her only film shot in Technicolor, but it was not as huge at the box office as her other films and also proved her limitations as a dramatic actress in her only dramatic film. She is mentioned by Ty Webb, Chevy Chases character in Caddyshack, as a possible but unavailable substitute for Rodney Dangerfields character (Al Czervik) in the final golf wager round before Michael OKeefes Danny Noonan is chosen. at Graumann's Chinese Theatre. She was 57 years old. [18] She died of the disease at age 57 in 1969 in an ambulance plane flight from Paris to Oslo. Wintertime (1943) - IMDb She therefore made the best of it and won her third Olympic medal. Sonja was 57 years old at the time of death. Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other . first pair of ice skates when she was six. And most importantly, she hired the best skaters and choreographers and paid them handsomely. Henie is credited with many "firsts," including being the first international sports star, the first superstar among figure skaters, and the firstand still onlywoman to win three Olympic gold medals in figure skating. Years later, a fairer, staggered draw was adopted to counteract this situation".[4]. With her third husband, the Norwegian shipowner Niels Onstad, she established (1968) the Henie Onstad Art Center, a museum of modern art in Hvikodden, near Oslo, Norway. Sporting News (February 14, 1994): S21. -- Sonja Henie OSLO, Norway -- She was the first to spin, the first to jump, the first to be crowned a figure skating ice queen. Sonja Henie - Facts, Bio, Favorites, Info, Family | Sticky Facts [citation needed] She then placed eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Winter Olympics, at the age of eleven. Sonia Henie, as controversial as she was legendary Globetrotting by Troubles in Henie's film career were not mirrored in her popularity as a live performer. Barbara Ann Scott, who became a Canadian heroine at 19 when she won figure skating gold at the 1948 Winter Olympics, succeeding Norway's Sonja Henie as the premier women's skater in a sport . A surprised panel of judges awarded her third place in the free style portion of the competition, but her poor showing on the compulsory figures lowered her score dramatically. In cooperation with promoter Wirtz, Henie honed her skills as a producer of ice shows as well as maintained her prowess as a skater. Henie did not appear in these shows, but rather was an advisor and financial partner. The international star had managed to keep her illness a secret and was seen with her husband at an Oslo theater less than two weeks before her death. Hjordis Olsen, an amateur skater at a private club, drilled Henie in mastering the mandatory school figures. 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." Her innovations and unparalleled determination would fuel another ten years of amateur successes, including a still unmatched Olympic record. Said to have had a keen business sense, she early acquired the nickname Little Miss Moneybags for her habit of prudent investments. Her autobiography Mitt livs eventyr was published in 1938. Jimmy Sutton (Tyrone Power), the press agent sent to Bergen to fetch her, at first treats her merely as Entry No. 20th Century-Fox and debuted in, - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana
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