Sonja Henie

Figure Skater

• Born: April 8, 1912
• Birthplace: Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway
• Died: October 12, 1969
• Place of death: In an ambulance airplane bound from Paris, France, for Oslo, Norway

Norwegian figure skater

Henie, the only female figure skater to win gold medals in three consecutive Olympics 1928, 1932, and 1936 changed the perception of female figure skaters. Her free-skating programs included a number of daring jumps and fast skating steps that were unlike anything attempted by her predecessors. By combining graceful dance movements with her athletic ability, Henie was largely responsible for creating the huge international interest in figure skating.

Areas of achievement Sports, film

Early Life

Sonja Henie (SOHN-yah HEHN-ee) was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. Her father, Wilhelm, had inherited a successful fur business and the family’s wealth enabled her to pursue whatever interests struck her fancy. At age five, Henie began to perform elaborate, if awkward, costume dances for her family and friends. When it became evident that her interest in dance was more than a childhood whim, her indulgent parents, Wilhelm and Selma, arranged for her to receive ballet lessons from Love Krohn, a well-known Oslo dance instructor who had once taught famed ballerina Anna Pavlova. Shortly after Krohn took her on as a student, Henie, inspired by her brother, Leif, ventured on to ice skates. Within a year of her first tentative strides, she was encouraged to enter a children’s competition. At seven years old, she was competing against youngsters who were much bigger and much older, but Henie won. From that moment, Henie and her parents were consumed by a passion to make her the best female skater in the world.

By the age of eight, Henie had settled into a highly disciplined routine that required her to practice at least five hours every day. Her father hired a series of academic tutors so that she would not need to attend school and a succession of skating instructors to help her refine her performance. For the next several years, she won a number of junior championships. With each victory, the expectations of Henie and her parents were raised to a new level. By the time she was ten, her family had built a “ritual of living” around her skating.

Although the ice was now her first love, Henie did not completely neglect her dancing. She and her parents were well aware that the grace of movement when displayed on the ice owed much to her ballet instruction. From time to time she returned for lessons with Krohn and other well-known instructors. Her skating had also taken on new dimensions with training sessions in various European locales, particularly those with indoor skating surfaces. Henie’s mother was her constant companion in these years and directed all of her activities.

Having won all the competitions offered in Norway by age eleven, Henie, with the concurrence of her family and Norwegian officials, entered the 1925 Winter Olympics in France. Although not expected to triumph over mature and experienced skaters, Henie, and especially her father, were disappointed when she finished last. Wilhelm berated Olympic officials for not giving enough consideration to the free-skating portion of the program, the portion in which everyone agreed that Henie excelled. This was the only time that Henie participated in any competition that she did not expect to win. Her preparation was complete. For the next twelve years (1925-1937), she won every major competition that she entered.

Life’s Work

Henie’s unparalleled string of victories began with the 1927 World Championships held in her hometown, Oslo. At fourteen, she was the youngest competitor, but she was now physically strong enough to carry her jumps and spins smoothly. Her success in Oslo propelled her to enormous popularity in Norway and throughout Scandinavia. To win a world championship, a skater had to excel in the school figures, required of all competitors, and to perform as flawlessly as possible in the free-skating segment. Henie built her reputation on giving a solid performance in the required figures and then thrilling the audience and the judges with a graceful, yet daring, free-skating routine. In all, she won ten consecutive world championships from 1927 through 1936.

These first-place finishes were her most remarkable achievement, but her performances in the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Olympics made Henie an international celebrity. Not only did she win the gold medal in each of these competitions but she also completely changed how female figure skaters were viewed by the public. Henie’s free-skating programs included a number of daring jumps and fast skating steps that were unlike anything attempted by her predecessors. Moreover, she introduced elaborate and skimpy (for the times) costumes. Her brilliantly colored outfits were often bedecked with furs and sequins. She wore ever shorter skirts to show off her well-developed legs, which Henie considered her best physical feature. This was quite a departure from the long skirts worn by earlier competitors.

During her years at the top of the amateur skating world, Henie maintained a regimen of diet and practice that kept her physically and mentally sound. She feared only two things: falling on the ice and losing. She was fastidious about her skates, her costumes, and the condition of the ice. Her skates were meticulously sharpened before every event, and her many assistants regularly checked the ice for hairpins and other objects that might pose a hazard.

After the 1936 Olympics, Henie retired from amateur skating. Her great popularity, which now extended to the United States, made her an entertainment commodity. Henie knew that she could sustain a long career by skating in revues, but her ambition was Hollywood. That ambition was realized when she attracted the attention of Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century-Fox Motion Pictures. Within weeks, Henie, her mother at her side, signed a contract with Zanuck. In all, she completed eleven motion pictures between 1936 and 1948, nine of them for Twentieth Century-Fox. In her first two films, she was paired with Tyrone Power.

As a film star, Henie proved to be as demanding as she was when performing on the ice. Her relationship with Zanuck was often stormy, but her films for Twentieth Century-Fox all made money, and the company continued to extend her contract. In motion pictures, Henie was perceived as an older Shirley Temple. With the story lines always very thin, Henie’s films were filled with music and skating. The best of her eleven films was Sun Valley Serenade (1941), in which she starred with John Wayne, Glenn Miller, Milton Berle, and Joan Davis. The film featured black ice, which was used to create an appealing mirror effect. Interest in the film musical waned in the post-World War II United States and so did Henie’s career in films.

During the entire time that she made films, and for some years after, Henie toured in her highly successful ice revues. Her boundless energy, her incomparable costumes, and her flair as a performer never failed to charm her audiences. She appeared on television in the 1950’s, but she kept these appearances to a minimum for fear of draining appeal from her touring shows.

Henie’s work ethic and showmanship brought her acclaim and wealth (she earned more than forty-five million dollars), but they did not protect her from criticism and personal disappointment. During World War II, she was accused of having an overly friendly relationship with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Henie was a favorite with Hitler and was his guest on more than one occasion. At one point she made the mistake of skating onto the ice in Berlin, stopping in front of Hitler’s box, and giving the Nazi salute with a loud “Heil Hitler.” Later, when Nazi troops invaded Norway, some of her countryfolk questioned her loyalty. Although her brother Leif said that Henie shared Hitler’s views on race, she appears to have been essentially apolitical.

With her arrival in California, Henie’s private life became more public as she broke free from her mother’s direct influence and threw herself into a Hollywood lifestyle. Her sexual exploits became legendary. Her most publicized affair was with Power, whom she met on the set of her first film, One in a Million. Henie was married three times: first to Dan Topping (1940-1946), then to Winthrop Gardiner (1949-1956), and finally to Niels Onstad (1956-1969). She had no children.

In later years, Henie gained the reputation for being an astute businesswoman; in fact, much of her financial well-being came as a result of investments made by her business manager, Arthur Wirtz. For her part, Henie’s main interest was in collecting fine jewelry and, with Onstad’s guidance, modern paintings.

Although she continued to enjoy celebrity status, Henie’s revues declined in popularity in the mid-1950’s. Competition from other ice shows and poor performances from Henie quickly brought her professional skating career to an end. Now in her early forties, Henie began to lose her enthusiasm and her timing.

Her last years were spent in relative obscurity with her husband, Onstad. Together they established (1968) a center for modern art at Blommenholm, outside Oslo. For the last twenty years of her life, Henie was estranged from her brother, Leif. The two, once close, had argued about financial considerations. In 1968, Henie began to train for what she had hoped would be a successful return to the ice. Within weeks after she resumed training, Henie was diagnosed as having a virulent leukemia. She was never told the true nature of her illness. On October 12, 1969, Henie died on an airplane en route from Paris to Oslo, where she was going for medical treatment.

Significance

Henie, more than any other individual, was responsible for creating an international audience for ice skating. She accomplished this in amateur and professional realms. By bringing ballet movements into her skating routines and by wearing daring costumes, she made figure skating appear glamorous and graceful. So much did she overwhelm audiences that judges were forced to give more weight to the free-skating portions of international competitions. Her gold-medal performances in three successive Olympics set the standard by which future female figure skaters would be judged.

International ice-skating competition could never be the same, especially for women, after Henie. Future stars on the ice would have to emulate her single-minded devotion to conditioning and practice, and they would have to learn to cope with celebrity status. Simply being a splendid skater no longer guaranteed success.

On the professional level, Henie’s revues simulated the staging of a Broadway production. Other ice shows quickly adopted her production standards. Since the late 1940’s, traveling ice shows have been a staple in American and European entertainment. Henie had less impact on Hollywood. Her motion pictures were basically old-fashioned musicals on ice, and she never had the opportunity to develop as a serious actor.

Bibliography

Gelman, Steve. Young Olympic Champions. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964. This book is a compendium of uncritical sketches of Olympic champions. The chapter on Henie emphasizes the importance of dance to her success.

Henie, Sonja. Wings on My Feet. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1945. This is Henie’s own account of her life to 1940. In the second half of the book, Henie provides instructions for young skaters. Includes many photographs of Henie.

Hines, James R. Figure Skating: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Henie’s contributions to the sport are outlined in this history of figure skating.

Johnson, William O., Jr. All That Glitters Is Not Gold: The Olympic Game. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972. Johnson’s work is a general and irreverent examination of the Olympic Games in the twentieth century. It emphasizes the commercialism and materialism generated by the games. He notes that no one used the games more effectively in this regard than Henie.

Lussi, Gustave, and Maurice Richards. Championship Figure Skating. New York: Ronald Press, 1951. Lussi, a well-known skating instructor, notes the impact of Henie in popularizing ice skating, particularly in the United States. Most of the book provides a lesson in skating.

Strait, Raymond, and Leif Henie. Queen of Ice, Queen of Shadow: The Unsuspected Life of Sonja Henie. Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.: Stein & Day, 1985. This is the only English-language biography of Henie. The book relies heavily on Wings on My Feet in discussing Henie’s early years. It is essential reading, but the authors have produced an unflattering account of Henie’s life. Readers should be wary of the book’s many unsubstantiated contentions.

Wimmer, Dick, ed. The Women’s Game: Great Champions in Women’s Sports. Short Hills, N.J.: Burford Books, 2000. A compendium of magazine articles, interviews, and book excerpts exploring the lives and careers of female athletes, including Henie and later champion skaters Dorothy Hamill and Michelle Kwan.

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