It's another centenary - the sparkling doyenne of the silver skates, Miss Sonja Henie!
Born in Oslo one hundred years ago today, young Sonja and her family were very ambitious, and she was groomed for competitive sports - tennis, skiing, horse-riding, and finally ice-skating - from a very early age. She entered her first Olympics (in 1924) at the age of eleven, and won her first Olympic gold medal at fifteen. She went on to win gold again in the 1932 and the controversial 1936 Olympics, and won no less than ten consecutive World Figure Skating Championships.
But Miss Henie had her sights set upon even greater fame - Hollywood, and in 1936 she signed to 20th Century Fox for a lucrative contract. In all she made fifteen movies, of varying degrees of quality and commercial success, while still performing her glittering ice revues across the globe. However in the mid-50s her heavy drinking forced an early retirement. In the 1960s she was diagnosed with leukaemia, and in 1969 she died, on a flight from Paris to Oslo, aged just 57.
Facts about Sonja Henie:
- She was the first to adopt the short skirt costume in figure skating, wear white boots, and make use of dance choreography.
- During WW2 her apparent friendship towards the Nazis in the 30s backfired on her reputation, and she was denounced as a quisling by many Norwegians.
- However, as a naturalised US citizen and Hollywood star, her ice shows earned her up to $2million a year in the late 40s and early 50s - one of the wealthiest women in the world for the time.
- She had affairs with Joe Louis, Tyrone Power and Van Johnson and, laughably, Liberace claimed they were planning to get engaged but "work pressures" meant it never happened...
Waiters in the St. Moritz Grand Hotel Dining Room watching Sonja Henie ice skating. Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1932
Despite her reputation as being "difficult", those allegations of Nazi sympathies and even of cheating in various championships, Sonja Henie was a true star - and has left us a camp legacy with her movies...
Class.
Sonja Henie obituary in the New York Times
