SCANDINAVIAN SONJA HENIE LEGENDS

the No one had made Norway as well known across the globe as she had. In the USA, she was so famous that she needed protection Glamorous from the FBI. Sonja Henie conquered one male bastion after the other. But fraternizing with Nazi leaders and being brutally cold in business also made her known as a monster. Author monster Bodil Stenseth reveals the great story of the Queen on Ice.

2 Scanorama february 2007 Scanorama february 2007 3 legantly dressed all in white and with a smile weeks prior to the Games, during the European Championships to a position as one of Hollywood’s on her lips, Sonja Henie took her place on in Berlin, when Henie shook Hitler’s hand as he was standing best-paid film stars. the highest step of the victory podium. It there with his retinue on the grandstand. The press photo of the With One in a Million, the first of was February 15, 1936, and the Winter Olym- Norwegian figure skater and the German chancellor, taken in the a total of nine romantic comedies LEGENDS pics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen could have winter of 1936, captured the moment for all time. A short article for Fox, she skated her way into the marked the crowning glory of this young woman’s outstanding mentioned Hitler’s admiration for Henie and their meeting hearts of the nation. But to do so, the Ecareer as a figure skater. But it wasn’t to be. She didn’t attend afterward. But that the two became friends and kept in touch, as bubbly, brown-eyed blonde from the party afterward. Nor did she travel back home to Oslo. The claimed by the American Raymond Strait and Henie’s brother, Norway needed all the skills she 24-year-old – one of the first and the greatest female stars in Leif, in Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadows (1985), is just gossip. As, had learned during those years of the sporting world, a woman the whole of Norway knew simply indeed, is the claim that this event prompted the Norwegian fiercely competitive dancing on the as “Sonja” – would not set foot on Norwegian soil again for 18 newspapers to ask “Is Sonja a Nazi?” ice rinks. Discipline and stamina. months. She simply ran away. What is true, however, is that the photograph from the Euro- Training, training and more train- “Sonja Henie says no to 500,000 check for US tour” ran the pean Championships in 1936 would haunt her like a dark shadow ing still. In the 1920s, the adoles- headline to an article in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet on and nurture the myth of the icon who was also a monster. It is as cent Sonja had already captured the February 19, 1936 – the same day as reports of the Olympic if Norwe­gians and Americans are incapable of remembering attention of the media. She had her team’s triumphal parade through Oslo filled the first page. “I’ll Sonja Henie without recalling this infamous image. Yet count- own private trainer, and every day, never turn professional,” Henie said, referring to the check. The less other photos bear witness to the fact that virtually all of with the sole exception of the sum- sporting world of the day, which prohibited amateur athletes Europe’s crowned heads and heads of state more or less stood in mer vacation, she submitted herself from accepting money, was no stranger to financial scandals. line to shower praise over the Norwegian skating star. No doubt to two lengthy training sessions on the ice. It was also extremely Left page: Henie outside As Henie already had a number of them to her name, maybe the truth of the matter is that Henie was interested in politics, unusual for parents to take their daughter out of school so that her and her husband Niels the International Skating Union was making preparations to but only if politics could lend a helping hand to her career. So, in she could concentrate all her energies on an international career Onstad’s home Granholtet investigate new violations of the amateur code. But that wasn’t the winter of 1936, she sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to set up as an elite athlete. Her father, the furrier Wilhelm Henie, who in Landøya, Norway. the only reason the gold medalist fled. home “over there.” In the summer of 1940, the same year she was her constant companion as agent, adviser and general Mr Above: Henie and Clark Gable in 1948, at one of married an American and bought a home in ritzy Beverly Hills, Fixit, did not have the best of reputations. Indeed, the Henie her annual garden parties. uring the 1936 Olympic Games, Sonja Henie had Sonja Henie became a US citizen. family as a whole was an odd bunch, rather like Sonja herself. Henie was a brilliant host­ become a political pariah. Before the free skating She loved makeup and fashionable clothes, but there was no way ess and entertained many program on February 15, she had raised her right t was in the liberal market economy of Hollywood that she was like other girls. celebrities during the arm in an unmistakable Nazi salute. None of the oth- Henie made such a resounding success, not in the Nazified Hollywood years. Left: A beautiful woman Der Norwegian contestants had done so and, by all accounts, their German film studios of Babelsberg. But there were other he myth of the monster icon started to evolve as soon needs a fabulous car. reactions afterward were the reason she chose not to repeat the reasons behind her choice of the USA. There a woman as she had won her first gold medals as a figure skater. Henie poses in 1936. gesture on the victory podium. But the story really began two Icould be a vamp or a tomboy; she could be something other than In those days, hard training and serious competition the baby machine and hausfrau to which her sex had been were reserved for men. A woman determined to re­duced in Hitler’s Germany. Last but not least, there were big Ten­croach upon male territory was met by a wall of prejudice. But bucks to be made in American show business. Henie knew that. Henie did not give up. She performed a program of strength- Her strategy for conquering Hollywood reveals her as a shrewd sapping leaps and exercises on the ice that only men had attemp- Right: Henie and Onstad businesswoman. First she rented indoor ice rinks and gave per- ted previously. It was against the laws of nature. A woman who in Oslo in 1961, when formances of such startling flamboyance that the whole of Holly­ trained like a man, medical science claimed, lost her femininity they decided to donate wood became “ice-minded.” Then, one by one, the film producers­ and maternal characteristics. In addition, she developed mus- their art collec­tion to a fell into her grasp like fruits ripe for the picking. One of them was cles, and “muscle molls” were regarded as ugly. public trust bearing their Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century Fox. Few competitive sports were open to women at the time. Fig­ names. Below: The famous “What can I offer you?” he asked. ure skating had long been the only women’s event in winter picture of Henie’s “The leading role!” Henie replied. sports. Apart from Henie, there was only a handful of female shaking hands with “Anything, Miss Henie – apart from that.” stars in the international sporting firmament. All the more rea- Adolf Hitler in the But Miss Henie would not give an inch. The films must rely son for Henie to perfect the art of creating the right impression: winter of 1936. Joseph heavily on her dazzling displays of skating. She wasn’t prepared made up like a film star and touting her elegant, short-skirted Goebbles to the right. to settle for a supporting role or a walk-on part, and she was creations, she was the image of sweet, feminine charm. But her determined to negotiate until she got what she wanted. Zanuck brutal winner’s instinct and temperamental demeanor instilled offered her a fee, and she demanded four times as much. They fear into competitors, who described her as “dressed to kill.” met halfway. He was a bit slow on the uptake, she claimed in her Henie had become independent, tough and strong-minded at autobiography from 1938. She wasn’t much for shilly-shallying an early age. While still a young girl, she had put her father firmly and preferred quick decisions. The result was that Henie’s con­ in his place and taken over the reins of her own career. Behind a tract cost Fox 300,000 dollars, catapulting the ex-sportswoman smiling, female facade, she took on the social role of a man of the time. She shocked people with her deep voice and could swear like a trooper. Her experiences from the world of sport made her well equipped to cope with the rough and tumble of American showbiz. In Hollywood, she used men as her stand-in on the ice The photo from the European Championships in 1936 and made two films a year. And besides, her mother was always in tow, somewhere in the wings. would haunt her and nurture the myth of the “monster icon.” “I was almost overwhelmed by emotion,” Henie recalls in Mitt

previous spread: henie onstad kunstsenter. left page: scanpix. top: henie onstad kunstsenter. scanpix. middle kunstsenter. 2: © 2006 estève/bus maurice henie top: onstad scanpix. page: left kunstsenter. previous spread: henie onstad livs eventyr (The Fairy-Tale of My Life, 1938). The reception

4 Scanorama february 2007 awaiting her when she first dared to come home to Oslo in the made the name of Norway as well known across the globe as she summer of 1937 was fit for a queen. “Was there really still so had done, boasted the press release from the Norwegian Embas- much interest among ordinary people? I had let my old sup- sy in Washington. In the USA, she was so famous that she needed Like so many other celebrities, Henie could survive only porters down by running away when they had expected me to pro­tection from the FBI. In the summer of 1939, her face return in 1936,” she writes. But she gives no clue to why she fled ap­peared on the cover of Time magazine. Inside, however, she by allowing herself to be destroyed as a human being. – whether this was for fear of a scandal about money or rumors was portrayed as something of a monster.

LEGENDS of her Nazi sympathies. The story of her early years as a child prodigy and the world Otherwise it was rare that Henie took the time to write. She number one on ice was spiced with both sugar and salt. Here was has left precious few private documents to give us a glimpse into the photo of Henie and Hitler, and the revelation that auto­ Henie’s postwar years were difficult ones. Audiences desert­ed “Even today, I can’t recall my thoughts during that final half- her thoughts and feelings. The little bundle of love letters that graphed pictures of Hitler and Mussolini hung above her bed in the movie theaters; TV entered American homes; her star was hour countdown before the curtain went up,” she said later. But remain reveals a sensitive, temperamental woman. Yet she did her Oslo home. She also had a reputation for being sly, grasping fading; and new, dangerous competitors were challenging the if she had been afraid that the Norwegians would cold-shoulder not avoid conflicts and refused to be daunted by problems. and greedy. Henie was not popular in Hollywood, even though domination of her ice show. With true business acumen, how­ her, she couldn’t have been more wrong. They flocked to see “Everything­ will sort itself out” was her motto. About Henie’s she had made the big time there. As the feature in Time confirm­ ever, she knew how to maintain appearances, no matter how bad Henie’s ice show, not only from the whole of Oslo but from the life in the public gaze, on the other hand, newspapers, magazines ed, “she was not only, in sportswriter Joe Williams’ words, things were looking. surrounding countryside as well. King Haakon and his fami- and press photos have no end to tell. But how much is true? ‘undoubtedly the biggest individual draw sports ever produced,’ “Miss Henie, who is known to be as cold at a business con- ly were there. The voices in the press were lyrical. Once again Hollywood’s publicists live by fabricating dreams, lies and half- but she was also Hollywood’s third-ranking box-office star.” ference as the ice she skates on, does not like to talk about the Henie had been forgiven. Or so it seemed. truths – something that Henie herself excelled in. The question Only Shirley Temple and Clark Gable earned more than she did. money she makes,” wrote Newsweek in the autumn of 1948. The is whether she had any real friends at all in the Hollywood gossip The magazine estimated that, in the course of her three years on following year, she married for the second time, once again to an asn’t she the woman who had that awful father?” and rumor mill, especially when you hear what these “friends” the professional circuit, Henie had netted two million dollars. American society lion. But otherwise it was “business as usual,” “Wasn’t she a Nazi?” “Wasn’t she an alcoholic?” later had to say about her. But, at the same time, the article went on to say that the film star and she was soon touring again, now with her own portable rink. “Wasn’t she a nymphomaniac?” The questions was past her prime. “I like the stimulation of flesh-and-blood shows. I even like I was peppered with while working on a biogra­ hen Henie appeared as Santa at a Chicago the headaches,” she confided to Will Connolly of the San Fran- phyW of her a few years ago made it patently clear that Sonja Henie or­phanage on Christmas Eve in 1937, she made know I’m unpopular, and I realize now that I ought to have cisco Chronicle in November 1951. He had been warned, “Henie remains a monster icon. As if there wasn’t already enough infor- sure a photographer was there to record the taken a clearer stand earlier than I did,” Henie admitted is likely to blow her top at the slightest provocation.” Not only mation out there from acquaintances, close friends and relatives­ W occasion. Her new touring ice revue had just to the Norwegian journalist Jørgen Juve when he visited that, but she also had a reputation for slamming the door in the about her turbulent and volatile private life. That’s the other opened, and she needed some good PR. She had devised the busi- her in Hollywood in April 1946. After the war, she again face of an interviewer. side of the coin, the reverse of the medal. Like so many other ness concept herself: creating synergies through her films and Idemonstrated a startling lack of judgment. She was roundly crit­ Connolly, however, found her to be “nice as pie.” For the arri- celebrities, Henie could survive only by allowing herself to be shows to build the Sonja Henie brand. Some of the same song icized for thinking only of herself, her ice shows and her busi- val of the Henie ice circus, the San Francisco Cow Palace, usually destroyed as a human being. But, my oh my, what an enormous and dance numbers appear both in Happy Landing (her fourth ness interests during the time Norway had been occupied, a rodeo venue where cattle and horses skidded about in muck and amount she achieved in her 57 short years of life! She conquered film for Fox) and her ice revue, and she handpicked the dancers, in­stead of providing funds for the resistance movement and sawdust, had been transformed into an ice-covered lake. When one male bastion after the other. Even so, Henie was not feted musicians and technicians she needed for the tour direct from using her position in the USA as an advocate for Norway’s cause. one reporter quipped about Henie’s comedown – from Bucking- as a heroine by her contemporaries and is not feted today. Her the film set. The revues also meant that she could keep herself It was her indifference during the war years that her compatri- ham Palace to Cow Palace – she retorted without a moment’s impressive career is drowned beneath a slew of gossip, drunk­ in trim when she wasn’t filming. The Hollywood Ice Revue not ots could not accept, despite the journalist’s best efforts to ex­on­ hesitation, “Yes, but there’s more money at the Cow Palace. And en­ness and rumors of romantic dalliances. Hardly anyone even only transformed ice shows into a gold mine in American show erate her. Her own defense was that, for a long time, she had no I’m still the best cow you’ve ever had here!” has a good word to say about Henie the collector and patron of business, but it also generated plenty of extra income through reliable information about the situation in Norway and that Then came the fateful accident. During an ice show in the Bal- the arts, the woman she became in the final chapter of her most the sale of Sonja Henie products. Skates, sportswear, dolls and when she finally was enlightened, she had made generous dona- timore Armory on the evening of March 2, 1952, an entire section extraordinary life. pins were moneymakers she had already started peddling back tions. Stung by the realization that she had let her country down, of bleachers on the grandstand collapsed, injuring almost 300 in her sporting heyday. Now, at the age of 26, she had three she was plagued by her conscience. That’s the story as she tells people. Henie was on the brink of bankruptcy, but a mere four ca­reers – all with skating as the common denominator. So why it in her updated autobiography from 1953, which also includes months later she had managed to cobble together a new ice show Bodil Stenseth is a Norwegian historian and author living in Oslo. She has did she never become a modern-day female icon? Back home in photos from her visit to Little Norway, a training school for in the small Canadian resort of St Andrews-by-the-Sea. The fol- published various books, including a family history of Edvard Munch and a cultural Norway, she was so highly regarded that on December 6, 1937, airmen of the Free Norwegian Air Force, in Canada in the spring lowing year, 1953, the show toured Europe, starting with Paris history of Fridtjof Nansen. Her masterpiece on Sonja Henie, Kvinne på is, was

she was dubbed a Knight of the Order of St Olav. No one had of 1944. kunstsenter henie onstad and Berlin and culminating, to everyone’s surprise, in Oslo. published in 2002. [email protected]

Marries the Norwegian ship- owner Niels Onstad. Together The Henie Wins the World title in New York. they settle in Oslo and begin Onstad Wins her first World Sonja Henie is Tours the USA and Canada, and building up an important Art Centre 1969 born on April 8, Championship and stars in big shows collection of modern art near Oslo begins to give solo just six days opens Dies from perfomances abroad. before the Titanic 1930 1956 leukemia Acts in her first film, hit the iceberg 1958 1968 on a flight Seven Days for 1928 from Paris 1912 Elizabeth, in Oslo Acts in her Wins her first last film, to Oslo on 1927 Olympic gold medal Hello London October 11 in St Moritz Publishes her auto­ 1937–56 Competes for the first biography Mitt livs time for the World title 1936 eventyr (The Fairy-Tale Tours the USA and 1961 of My Life) and the Olympics. Begins Europe with big ice Henie and Onstad 1918 Wins the European Championships in Berlin and training abroad 1925 shows of which she is donate their art meets Adolf Hitler. Performs in Chicago, Los 1938 Begins skating the star, the manager collection to a public Wins her first Angeles and at the Madison Square Garden in at Frogner 1924 and the owner trust bearing their names Stadion in Oslo. Norwegian New York. Signs a five-year contract with Fox and World War I ends Championship makes her Hollywood debut in One in a Million

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