(Theme music)
(Violin bowing)
SOOK: With the lights sometimes, you can't even see the audience.
When you're out there, it's such a tangible thing.
You can just feel their response.
I can almost feel it as I talk.
COLLINS: I would dream about figure skating,
and that's all I wanted to do.
BUTTON: It was a variety show.
They would have comics.
They always had a pretty-girl- in-a-short-skirt thing,
the star and a handsome young guy, being the male star,
and then they would have pairs and fours and eights
and 30 girls all dressed up, doing kick lines.
It was an omelet of entertainment.
HAMILTON: You could go to an ice show,
and you knew that your kids would have a great time.
You'll have a great time.
It's gonna be
blown-out-of-your-seat spectacular.
This was the major form of entertainment
for the American public.
Hundreds of thousands of people
from all over would go.
It was huge. It was exciting.
BLAKEY: It was something we should be very proud of.
SHIPSTAD: It was all about being in the ice show.
We knew right where we were going.
We were gonna perform and perform and perform
and have a great career.
BLAKEY: The ice was all painted black.
There was a film of water over it,
so it was like a mirror.
And there were beautiful girls and boys
skating in white costumes all around Sonja Henie.
And I said,
"That's the most incredible, magical thing
I have ever seen in my life.
I have to do that."
I'm a former ice skater.
I worked for many, many, many years
performing in ice-skating shows all over the world.
But during all that time, I was collecting
the newspaper articles and the magazines
and going to see the shows and saving the programs
and everything I could find that had to do with skating.
COLLINS: Roy Blakey, the only one that has
a complete history of figure skating.
ZANOVA: He has the greatest collection
of programs...
skates...
costumes.
MARSHALL: It's a whole world of skating.
You won't know much about skating
if you don't know that world.
BLAKEY: Over the almost 70 years that I've been collecting,
this vast group of things that I have put together
has traced the history
of the theatrical aspect of ice skating.
In 1911,
the professional ice-skating show
was born in Berlin.
And it was seen by an American producer,
who brought the group to New York City
to his theater, the Hippodrome Theatre.
MARSHALL: They brought this show to the Hippodrome,
the wonderful 6,000-seat arena that had everything,
including a pool
where people would march into it and disappear.
It was phenomenal. There was nothing like it since.
BLAKEY: And the star of the show
was a 17-year-old girl named Charlotte.
MARSHALL: Her full name was Charlotte Oelschlager,
and Oelschlager was not a good name for publicizing her,
so they just shortened it to "Charlotte."
BLAKEY: She had been a child prodigy,
playing the piano in concerts,
but her health was not very good,
and the doctor recommended that she do some sport.
So they put her on ice and found out
she had a great talent.
She ultimately was brought into the ice-ballet company
as a young girl.
By the time this company left Germany
and went to the United States, she became a superstar.
She made the first ice-skating movie--
six episodes.
They showed one episode a week, so you had to come back
and buy another ticket to see what the story did.
When I was 14,
I was skating in the old Sport Palace,
and I saw Charlotte.
Unbelievable, you know?
She was like a goddess was. (Laughs)
BUTTON: Very beautiful, very exciting,
powerful, great projection,
but, yet, when you look at her skates,
they were made of the most delicate leather
with almost a balletic front to them.
She could point her toe brilliantly,
and I kept saying to myself, "Where is the support?"
She gave them to Dick,
and Dick has this wonderful pair of Charlotte's skates,
and the boots are silver to have matched
a particular exotic silver costume.
So, I'm not too jealous that he has
this wonderful, wonderful souvenir of the great Charlotte,
but I have touched them.
BUTTON: It's glove leather.
And this is terribly elegant and terribly loose
and very balletic and very supple.
They're a marvelous example of skates of that period.
And I will never let Roy Blakey have his hands on them
because he is like a true collector,
who is never, ever, ever
going to give up on his quest.
But you can right now, as far as I'm-- Bye.
(Laughs)
BLAKEY: After Charlotte and the Berlin Ice Ballet Company
made this enormous success, then ice skating became a fad.
And one of the results was that small--
what we used to call the tank shows,
a little portable ice rink about 20 feet by 20 feet
would be put in a nightclub
or a beautiful theater/restaurant someplace.
And they would do a miniature ice show.
TURK: They were always in a 5-star, 4-star hotel.
The audience loved those shows,
and for the hotel, it was great to keep people there.
BLAKEY: That was around, you know, 1915, 1920.
But prohibition came in in 1922--
knocked them all out of business.
And so they didn't have any of those kinds of shows
until 1933, when prohibition was repealed,
and they came back stronger than ever.
San Francisco, Chicago, New York--
All had, in their big 5-star hotel,
had an ice-skating production.
It was just fabulous.
Sonja Henie was a Norwegian ice skater
who broke all the records.
She won 10 World Figure Skating Championships
in the '20s and the '30s.
She won three Olympic gold medals.
Nobody has come even close
to matching her incredible success.
JOHNCOCK: She grew up in a competition lifestyle,
but she hated competition, she hated comparison,
and she was just living for the day
when she wouldn't have to be in the competition anymore.
COLLINS: Arthur M. Wirtz from Chicago,
he was the one that brought Sonja Henie over
to skate between hockey games and then saw her potential.
Whenever she skated, they sold the building out,
and when she wasn't there, the place would be half filled.
So, he made an arrangement with her
and started Arthur Wirtz's Sonja Henie Hollywood Ice Revue.
NORD: She and her family hopped on the train there in Chicago,
and they went to Los Angeles, rented the Polar Palace,
put on a show for two days, and invited
all of the celebrities in Hollywood to come.
She had that show put on
so that movie moguls could see her.
BLAKEY: And Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox came
the second night, and everybody got all excited backstage.
The story goes that they came running back and said to Sonja,
"Darryl Zanuck is here! Darryl Zanuck's here!
"What should we do?" She said, "Sell him a ticket!"
Always the businesswoman.
He was one of those people
that wanted to put one scene of her skating
in one of his musical films, 20th Century Fox films.
And she said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
"I'm going to be the star of the film.
"I'm going to be the actress-- star actress in the film,
"and I'm going to do my skating.
"And if you don't, you know, take that package,
"then we don't have a deal."
Her first movie was called "One in a Million,"
which was very apropos
for a woman who was one in a million,
and it was a blockbuster.
COLLINS: People would pay to come and see just her.
Forget about the show, she's the one that they would come to see.
And she would draw, in that era,
12,000 people a night and do probably 10 shows a week.
MARSHALL: You went, and you saw a beautiful, first-rate show,
but you saw a movie star.
You wanted to see a movie star in person.
You could look at her six times.
She did this. She did that. She did a pair.
She did the hula, which was magnificent.
If you've never seen, it sounds funny.
It was phenomenal.
I was 18 years old.
I was shaking in my boots when I met Sonja.
But I got a bigger hand than Sonja Henie.
I went over real big.
In Sonja Henie's show,
nobody goes over bigger than Sonja Henie,
so they sent me to New York,
dressed me in the most beautiful woman's costume.
So I had to wear this unfunny costume
for the rest of the tour.
And Sonja and mother was very happy,
'cause I didn't go over bigger than her daughter, Sonja Henie.
ZANOVA: I am so glad I did not join Sonja Henie's show.
All the girls she put in long skirts,
and she was the only one ever looking beautiful
and in gorgeous costumes,
and that would have been the end of me.
BAXTER: When you skated with Sonja,
you did what she did-- maybe not as good,
and that's the way she liked it.
She was trying to protect herself,
which is understandable.
NORD: First time I met her,
she came and watched me-- every move.
And in her next movie, I saw some of my arm movements.
But that's okay. I copied her.
I didn't know anything about skating till I saw her,
so that was fine.
I was flattered.
MARSHALL: Sonja Henie was a mythic figure to us--
a mythic figure.
She didn't always get the best men in her life.
There are a lot of people that can say that.
Someone who could make an industry
through the sheer force of her personality.
And Sonja Henie skating in Madison Square Garden,
and you're in the last row in that arena,
and she is smiling at you.
BLAKEY: At the same time, in Saint Paul, Minnesota,
there was a group of young skaters
who were skating out on the ponds
and entertaining their friends with their
comedy routines and their skillful skating.
Shipstads & Johnson were boys
that learned to skate on the rinks in Minneapolis.
BLAKEY: But they got so good out on the ponds
that they got a couple of gigs to go and skate
at the hockey games in Duluth or Wisconsin.
They had the offer to go to Chicago
and skate in the Hotel Sherman in their "College Inn,"
the famous "College Inn," one of the early tank shows.
They had an 8-week contract,
and so they took their little Minnesota group,
opened their show there, and ran for 18 months.
While they were there doing that,
they met a man by the name of Edward Mulkey,
who was a Chicago columnist.
He saw this show as the nucleus of a traveling show,
and he talked to Eddie, Oscar, and Roy about it.
Decided they could give it a try.
So they said, "Hey, kids, let's put on a show."
It was very similar to that.
They called the show "Shipstads"-- plural--
"Shipstads & Johnson Ice Follies."
SHIPSTAD: So, they got in this rickety old bus,
and this bus held the skaters, the props,
the costumes, the staff-- everything.
And their first date was Tulsa, Oklahoma,
whereupon they discovered that there was a flu epidemic.
So, opening night,
Oscar Johnson looks out the curtain.
Practically no one is there. The kids are all nervous backstage.
He says, "Don't worry, kids. We outnumber 'em."
And from that inauspicious beginning
became a huge success.
They almost never had a bad date.
You know, now, we're talking 1936.
And so, as you know, economically,
the country wasn't in such wonderful shape.
So, just to escape and see these spectacles
was marvelous.
STINE: They were very successful.
And they started to play in the eastern arenas:
Hershey, Boston, Pittsburgh.
They were invited to perform in Philadelphia.
They did so well in Philadelphia
that Madison Square Garden came down,
and they brought them into New York City.
And from there, it just grew, grew, grew.
When I started with the Ice Follies,
about 1943,
there were these wails and cries of, "Oh, it'll never last.
"They'll fade out."
I often think how wrong they were.
Skating was just going through a huge boom
in the late '30s and the beginning of the '40s.
People were lining up to buy tickets when they came to town.
So, the arena managers got together and said,
"Look, this is something great.
We should make our own show to play in our buildings."
MORSE: There was Ice Follies at the time,
which was a big hit, but they wanted more, more shows like that.
Ice Capades was founded in 1940 in Hershey, Pennsylvania,
by a group of 12 men,
who became known as the Arena Managers Association.
ZANOVA: John Harris got elected as president,
and they decided that he would run the Ice Capades.
STINE: Places that had ice rinks were practically controlled
by either Ice Follies, Ice Capades,
or Sonja Henie Ice Revue under Arthur Wirtz.
BLAKEY: A few years later,
a little show called Holiday On Ice
started up in Ohio
and was playing little smaller skating rinks,
and they even played in some nightclubs.
They were touring around with their own portable ice.
One of the three men who put the show together
had developed a 65'x125' portable rink
that they took mostly in the South,
in cities that didn't have an ice-skating rink
or a facility for freezing ice.
STINE: I doubt if he had a formal engineering background,
but he laid out the way it could be done
just by looking at an ordinary permanent installation
and saying, "How could this be made into portable sections?"
BLAKEY: So immediately there were four shows touring,
major shows touring, at that time:
the Hollywood Ice Revue...
Ice Follies...
Holiday on Ice...
and Ice Capades.
All of this started
when I was growing up in Enid, Oklahoma.
There was a very lavish roller-skating show
called the "Skating Vanities."
The star of the show was a beautiful ballerina
on roller skates, Gloria Nord.
And Gloria was just a superstar.
I was skating in Oklahoma City.
And he came to see me backstage.
And, you know, I met a lot of people,
but he was so sincere and so interested in skating.
BLAKEY: In 1950, Gloria went to England
and became a giant ice-skating star.
She was the first ice skater to appear
in the Royal Command Performance for the Queen of England.
And she gave me her costume, the one that she's wearing
in this famous photograph on England's biggest magazine.
I was never going to give it away,
but there's not a person that deserves it more than Roy.
He'll take good care of it, better than I could do.
BLAKEY: That was the beginning.
I got the bug, and it has devoured me,
as you can see.
Back in the 1940s, when I was a kid in school,
my favorite thing was going to see the great movie musicals
that were so popular at that time.
One of the ones that I saw starred Sonja Henie,
and of all the movie musicals that I saw,
that was the one that changed my life.
There was kind of an obstacle
in that we had no ice skating in Enid,
so I had to become a roller skater.
And I would get on the bus every weekend
and go to Tulsa, Oklahoma,
to take my roller-skating lesson.
And from there,
I began to make some forays into skating competitions.
But the whole time, the whole thought was,
"I've got to get on the ice
and get into an ice-skating show,"
like I had seen in the movie.
The ice shows in the '40s and '50s
were the biggest attractions in a city.
It was the biggest event of the year.
It really was.
TURK: Follies was a very clean, family-oriented show.
Very good. They did wonderful business.
Capades: They were a little more spectacle,
a little outrageous and wild,
but they had wonderful skaters in them.
Holiday On Ice sort of combined both.
I think they had a little something for everybody.
SHIPSTAD: I mean, it caught on like wildfire,
and it is true Americana,
true original entertainment in America.
It was thrilling for people, and it was live entertainment.
The public didn't want everything so,
you know, blood and thunder.
We just did it smoothly and romantically,
and we were a hit.
SHELLEY: The ice was full of skaters,
these fabulous costumes.
The live orchestra would hit, and you're like,
"I can't believe what I'm seeing."
HAMILTON: And very few entertainment entities exist
where it's pure family entertainment.
There's nothing provocative.
There's nothing boring.
It's just broad in its appeal.
Captivation of big ice-show extravaganzas
kind of had that world of there was something for everyone.
If you wanted to really see a great skater jump and spin,
some of that was there.
If you really wanted to see a variety
of magic and beautiful tableaus, you know, you'd see that.
If you wanted to see something funny,
you'd have the funny stick men and all these great comedians,
like Frick and Frack--
amazing, amazing, fun characters.
FLANAGAN: I dressed like a woman,
and I wore balloons up here.
And I would fall on one, and I'm lopsided like this.
So I would push it over there. I'm lopsided over there.
I'd push the balloon in the middle,
and I could stand straight.
And at the end of my number,
I would fall down and break my breast,
so I was flat-chested at the end of my number,
and I got big laughs.
FLANAGAN: See what I got from it?
MAN: Oh, my gosh!
That's from doing that back bend
like that for 50 years.
HAMILTON: My first ice show was in Boston Garden.
I think it was before I even started skating.
I remember watching Freddie Trenkler,
and I thought, "That's it." I loved that.
I mean, if I could ever do something like that in my life
to make people laugh like that...
I'll remember that performance for the rest of my life.
I mean, it really touched me.
STARBUCK: We'd go back to our ice rink on Monday morning
and try to imitate them.
We wanted to be Aja Zanova
and Richard Dwyer and Jill Shipstad.
Oh, I wanted to be Jill Shipstad.
Of course, I always idolized those beautiful, magical beings
out on the ice in the ice shows and Ice Follies.
And, you know, when I was young and would be in the audience,
I remember the blades flashing below the curtains.
STARBUCK: They were just fantastic--
all the great stars that we were seeing in those shows.
I finally got the opportunity to get on the ice
when I became a student at the University of Tulsa,
where there was an ice-skating rink.
Shortly thereafter, I was drafted into the Army
and taken off to Germany.
I was very lucky fate took me to Europe.
I learned that there was an ice-skating show
sponsored by the U.S. military in a leave and recreation center
in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
I went by the nightclub and left a note,
saying I would like to come and audition
for the Casa Carioca Ice Show.
So, I went in, and she said,
"I think I can use you in my show."
She sent me a contract.
And the U.S. Army kept me
until midnight of my 2-year service.
And the next day, I took off for the Bavarian Alps
and my new career as a professional ice skater.
Well, that was every dream I had ever had in my whole life
coming true before my very eyes.
Everybody wanted to be a skater in that era.
And that's how I got introduced to it--
by going to the Ice Follies with my family--
my mother, dad, and brother and sister.
And we just loved it.
And next thing I knew, we were at the ice rink, having fun.
SHIPSTAD: As the boys progressed,
instead of taking the money, they put it back in the show.
And they got the best costume designers they could get,
the best set designer they could get,
the best skaters they could get.
And the show became known
as a very wholesome but glamorous vehicle.
ZANOVA: Roy Shipstad, he was billed as the debonair.
He skated with a top hat and tails
and just wowed the ladies.
Just so elegant and so smooth.
Of course, I'm very fortunate to be in the Shipstad family.
And my mother was known as the sweetheart of the ice.
And, of course, my father was a debonair.
And they did a pair together, as well,
so they worked together.
They were that ideal American couple--
down to earth but also very glamorous.
And, actually, at a certain point,
it was a trio, though no one knew about it,
because I was in my mother, ready to come out.
Ice Follies started out as family entertainment.
All the girls wore white gloves.
It was perfectly acceptable for young girls
of middle- and upper-income families
in Minneapolis and Saint Paul and that area
to go and travel with the Ice Follies
because Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Johnson
were very family oriented,
and you did not stay with the company long if you acted up.
And the parents could be assured
that they were being well looked after.
Whether that was totally true or not, I don't know.
I've heard some stories.
SHIPSTAD: You know, every year, we would play Winterland,
which is the auditorium in San Francisco.
And we'd rehearse the show there,
so it was a long time in Winterland.
So, I remember my mother telling me,
"Dear, did you know you were conceived in Winterland
between shows?"
And I thought about what that entailed.
I thought, "My goodness! What a story!"
ZANOVA: I defected from behind the Iron Curtain, 1950,
after I defended my world title.
And then, when I stayed in London,
they tried even kidnapping from the Czech government.
They tried to run me down with a car
and all that kind of scary stuff.
Roy Shipstad brought me to America from London.
The same year that I joined Ice Follies,
which was 1950,
Richard Dwyer was signed up.
I was 18. He was 16.
DWYER: When I joined the show,
there was probably 97 to 100 people traveling.
We had 32 Ice Folliettes that did the precision.
ZANOVA: They gave Richard the number
that Roy Shipstad was doing for many years,
so Richard Dwyer became the elegant, the smooth,
with the top hat and tails.
DWYER: And I came out in my top hat and cane,
and then a wonderful Ice Folliette
would bring me out a dozen red roses,
and I would proceed to go and give
some lovely lady in the audience the roses.
In the years I was with Follies alone,
I probably gave away over 13,000 bouquets.
And I always would try to give roses
to a more grandmotherly type.
The first ice show I ever saw was Ice Capades
because my father knew John Harris really well,
and he promoted several of the Ice Capades dates.
ZANOVA: Mr. Harris called and said, "What are you doing?
You're not with Ice Follies anymore."
I said, "No, Mr. Harris."
And he said, "I want you to join Ice Capades," just like that.
And I said, "Okay."
Mr. Harris found out that I was a Catholic,
so I was called every Sunday morning,
and I had to go to church
and then do a show matinee and evenings.
We had a priest that traveled with us.
Our first year in Boston,
the priest had confessions in a telephone booth.
ZANOVA: It was a regime.
STEELE-BIETAK: We were his children.
He cared very much about us, but, also, very strict.
It's a big company.
It has to be run with an iron fist.
TURK: Ice Capades leaned heavily on other theatrical forms--
the Russian ballets.
They would do an Oriental fantasy.
And the part about that
was that a costumer just went mad
when he was given that.
They were given a subject, and, oh, my God,
he could start researching and do the wildest things you've ever seen.
Some of the greatest designers in the world
designed those things.
I mean, that was an art form in itself.
SHIPSTAD: All the girls wore wigs,
so they all had matching hairdos.
They were all beautiful and slim,
and the costumes were just fabulous.
TURK: We skated to music of George Gershwin,
Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Everything we did was the finest, like costumes--
...Falco, Saint Laurent.
I mean, everybody was the top-- Billy Livingston-- brilliant.
We didn't do anything half-assed.
MARSHALL: Ice Capades was very Hollywood.
It was very modern, it was spectacular,
but it was production value.
JOHNCOCK: A big ice show extravaganza--
big, big, big.
ZANOVA: It was absolutely fantastic.
The opening nights in Hollywood--
I mean, we had stars galore in Pan-Pacific.
And there would be a red carpet
with every Hollywood star showing up for this.
SHIPSTAD: The TV cameras would be there,
and the paparazzi would be there.
ZANOVA: It was such glamour.
BLAKEY: In the Ice Capades company,
the longtime stars were Donna Atwood and Bobby Specht.
EBY: Donna, she could do about anything.
I was always amazed at the roles that she could perform.
They were so different, all of them.
Belita, she was so strong of a skater,
but at the same time, very ballet-- balletical.
She combined both.
Cathy Steele--
When we saw Cathy come out, she was so, so graceful.
BLAKEY: But the skaters
who got the most publicity of all in Ice Capades
were the old smoothies.
The Olympic champions could come and be the guest stars,
and the people who got the publicity
was the old smoothies.
(Laughter)
Oh, here you are
in your beautiful schoolmarm wedding dress.
Yes. Beautiful!
Oh, this is sensational.
Put your hand here. This one?
This is the one, and this is the one.
Now, you have to pull this to shoot that up.
Love the sounds.
Ohh!
Do it one more time.
? ?
BLAKEY: I bought a small 35-millimeter camera in the PX
because I was taking every free moment I could get
to travel around Europe
and was taking pictures all along the way.
And one of the other skaters
took me to the military service center
and taught me how to develop my film and print my pictures.
I was really hooked then.
I said to the choreographer,
"I really need to think about getting back home
because I would be able to use the G.I. Bill
to get some education."
And she said, "I have a contract for you
to go into a show in Chicago."
The Conrad Hilton Hotel
had a beautiful, elegant theater/restaurant
where they had an ice-skating show.
Every morning, I would get up at 8:00
and sleepwalk to the photography course that I was taking.
Seven nights a week, we did two shows a night.
Our last show was at 11:00 at night.
We finished at midnight.
We'd go have a bite to eat. We'd come back.
I would set up my lights
and get everything all set up in a hallway
or in a meeting room or in the ballroom,
and we'd start taking pictures about 3:00 in the morning.
And we'd finish about sunup and go and have breakfast
when everybody else was going off to work.
So, I really became
a semi-professional photographer at that time.
We paid for everything 100% ourselves--
makeup, skates.
And in hotels, we used to stay and pay $1.50, $2 a night
for our rooms.
90 people-- we'd travel on a train.
STEELE-BIETAK: Everything had to go on the train--
all the costumes, the props of course, the stage.
And then of course the people were in sleepers.
BLAKEY: Train trips were very volatile.
We were cooped up for three days on a train in a Pullman car.
Relationships were made and broken on train trips.
We were all 18, 19, 20, and the liquor was there.
We were always drinking. We were always partying.
What else we were gonna do in a strange city?
We had the Halloween party. We had the Christmas party.
We had the after-show show party.
It's like going to college your freshman year.
You're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna do a lot of things.
You're probably not gonna get the best grades.
TURK: Those are show-business things.
Those are crazy goddamn people that have a love for each other,
and you bond immediately.
If you're in a show, you bond.
You don't know you're doing that, but that's what you do.
KERRIGAN: You're touring and training
and with the same people day in and day out,
getting on buses and planes.
And being with the same people year after year.
You have so many memories and stories.
And of course most of them probably aren't even on the ice.
EBY: There was a press party in every city.
There was a newspaper man on one side
and a radio man on the other side.
BEARD: We had to wear stockings and heels
and be dressed up all the time
so we looked glamour when we got into town or where we left.
EBY: You had to smile, no matter how bad you felt or whatever,
and the show must go on.
FUNAKOSHI: That was kind of the way of life at that time,
and I think they kept good control on all of us.
EBY: Every skater has to be weighed in.
FUNAKOSHI: There was a dollar fine
for every pound that you were over.
BEARD: If you're late to the show
or your skate falls off, then you're fined.
MILLER: Any number of things--
There was a fine for this and a fine for that.
MORSE: Peeking through a curtain could get you a fine.
I skated behind a curtain once. Boom, I got a fine.
MILLER: Fines came out of the paychecks,
and they were deducted, whether you liked them or not.
TURK: We were never separated, ever.
On the road, we all went to our rooms.
We met downstairs at breakfast.
After the rehearsals,
we'd put our bags down and went and had dinner.
We were never apart.
Oh, is this great?
Ted's trunk.
Barcelona, Frankfurt, Holiday On Ice.
Oh, this is just incredible.
Wow! Packed.
Oh.
Well, there's Morris Chalfen, Red Square.
COLLINS: Then along comes this little guy
from Minneapolis, Morris Chalfen.
BLAKEY: Morris Chalfen--
It was very shortly after he came into the organization--
was made president
and began to enlarge the Holiday On Ice show.
COLLINS: Number one, he was a tough, tough guy.
He really was. Boy, he was a tough guy to deal with in business,
but very, very fair.
BLAKEY: With the influx of Morris Chalfen's money,
they were able to build more of the portable rinks.
And, therefore, they didn't have to have days off
between each engagement.
They could send one rink ahead
to be ready for the cast and the orchestra
when the show was finished in the previous town.
He was able to send the show to Mexico.
In 1947, they played in Mexico City
in a gigantic outdoor stadium.
19,000 people a night came for 19 nights.
Huge success there.
Then they went to Guadalajara,
where they put their ice rink in a bullring.
Well, the Mexicans went crazy.
They not only could see ice skating for the first time,
but here was this glamorous American ice-skating show
with the beautiful American music that everybody loved,
so it was a huge success.
That was his first step in world domination.
JOHNCOCK: Then he went to Europe.
STINE: Proliferating the shows,
spreading them out, going worldwide.
Mr. Chalfen had a vision.
He really believed that the ice show
had a universal appeal.
You could take a show literally
anywhere in the world-- anywhere.
BLAKEY: They've been back to Europe every year since,
since 1950.
In 1953, they branched out and went to Asia.
Big hit in Japan.
Japan loves theater,
and they fell in love with the ice show.
We never had a chance to see the ice show before.
It was the first time.
I dreamt about it, of course-- "I want to join the show."
Then, well, I had a chance.
After my five years in Chicago,
an offer came to go with Holiday On Ice,
which, at that time, had five or six different units
touring around the world.
And I was with them for seven or eight years
and performed in shows in about 40 different countries.
BUTTON: I heard that Holiday On Ice
was going to Russia.
Nobody went to Russia in those days-- nobody.
And nobody knew anything about, really, the Soviet Union
or what communism was about.
And I wanted to go.
Morris Chalfen, that sly devil-- he said,
"Well, I don't know if he can-- I mean, can he still skate?"
So I had to go and audition for him.
And, boy, was I ready, and did I roar around the rink
and knocking other skaters down,
and I did all the best things that I could do,
and he offered me to go for six weeks for $200 a week.
And I took it because I have always believed
in doing what I want to do
and worrying about the money later.
I went, and I had a ball.
BLAKEY: It was the height of the Cold War,
and we were being sent over as a cultural exchange.
I mean, this was an opportunity that no one else had.
In Kiev,
I got up at the crack of dawn one morning, and I thought,
"Well, I'll sit here, and I'll take pictures
of the women pushing their wheelbarrows
in their big boots and their babushkas on.
A policeman said to me,
"Why do you take bad pictures here?
Why do you take bad pictures?
You know, you have poor people in your country."
A crowd of people came around.
They thought I was just taking
only the old people and the poor people--
photographs of them.
And I said, "No, I took the palace.
I took the circus. I took the ballet."
And I tried to explain to them
that it was a whole, you know, picture of their country.
And the two turned to me and said,
"You can take pictures of the park.
You can take pictures of the river.
You can take pictures of the exterior of your hotel.
But if you want to take pictures of crazy people,
wait till you get back to Brooklyn."
Of course, we played Poland and Czechoslovakia,
Hungary, Russia.
Wherever we played, East Germany was so different
and so sad at those times.
We had many people wanting to talk to us
and look at our clothes,
but there were always people watching us and watching them.
They tried to contact and be friendly with us,
but they were being watched,
so they couldn't very well do so.
DEETLEFS: We were so happy
to be able to join Holiday On Ice and leave.
I mean, it was fantastic.
It was golden opportunity to leave the country, of course.
We got a false passport for my child.
I smuggle him out.
And I got 14 years' sentence--
stealing child from the government.
Sad story is that even some of the skaters were agents.
Each show had somebody there who was reporting back,
so I didn't go back to Czech Republic for 20 years.
BLAKEY: I will never forget how the audience came down
at the end of the performance with flowers
and with notes for us and wanted to shake our hands.
We all went out to the edge of the ice
at the end of the performance.
But the really magical, magical point in the show
was the finale.
Everyone came out with a big flag of a different nation
and went around the ice.
It was beautiful to see all of the colors going around
and all the flags of the countries.
Then everyone went to the edge of the ice with their flag...
and down the middle of the ice came the two tallest boys
with an American flag and the Russian flag.
The audience was so excited to see that--
two countries that were supposed to be such big enemies
could be friends.
COLLINS: We went to Argentina...
MAN #1: Cuba, England, France...
...Czechoslovakia... WOMAN: Italy.
...all over South America. It was unbelievable.
Caracas, Venezuela.
MAN #2: Bangkok, Hong Kong.
KATO: Japan. COLLINS: Nairobi.
Singapore. Rio de Janeiro.
New York.
COLLINS: Around the globe.
And literally we played in soccer stadiums, bullrings,
over Olympic swimming pools, on a barge in the River Seine.
So there wasn't anyplace that we couldn't go.
It was exciting that we always got to meet the kings,
the queens, the princesses.
King and queen came from Kuala Lumpur.
ANDROS: Elvis came backstage.
McGAFFIN: The king and queen of Thailand came,
and not only came to see the show--
they brought their children the next day
so that they could have a skating lesson.
Khrushchev came to the show,
had champagne and caviar for everybody afterward.
Nehru came to the show.
Princess Diana of Wales. King Constantine.
You sort of get very blas� about it after a while.
It was just kind of a fairy tale.
What was happening in the country at the time,
with all the incredible protests that were going on,
the protesting against the war.
Vietnam at that time was--
They say it was the living-room war.
For us, it was a hotel-room war.
The assassination of Martin Luther King,
Robert Kennedy-- all of these things.
And yet we were still in the magic world of Ice Capades.
Friendships were numerous, far, and wide.
If you happened to be a single young lady at that time
and you wanted more than a friendship,
you weren't going to find it in Ice Capades.
Don't get me wrong. There were young men in the show.
But they were very much sought after by both sides.
Being that I was a-- let's say--
nervous, theatrical, boy-crazy type,
and I couldn't sing, couldn't dance, couldn't act,
but I wanted to be in show business, this is where I decide
I'm gonna run away with the ice show.
THURAU: American girl wanted to marry me,
and then, English girl, too.
And they find out, my girlfriends,
and they know that way he is-- you know, he is different.
That was the wonderful element of all of our young people
coming from Canada,
coming from California and Boston
and wherever they were all coming to join.
MORSE: Everybody could just be themselves.
The boys were just very flamboyant, and nobody cared.
It just looked like a very good time.
There was this great--
like, "Wow, you're a good-looking guy,"
or "You're a great-looking girl,"
and "You're black,"
and you may be still unclaimed
about your sexuality or whatever,
but we're here for one element, and that's to entertain.
And what's the world of show business?
A world of show business is just that-- to be yourself,
'cause if you can't, how are you gonna perform in front
of thousands of people?
And the show hit places
of really renowned racism, you know, in the South--
Birmingham, Knoxville, Memphis--
places like that.
And here I was, the first African-American
featured performer in that world of ice shows.
That was actually magnified, of course,
when we hit the cities
and things in interviews, and people-- the curiosity.
You know, "How did you become a figure skater?
You're not playing basketball. You're not playing baseball.
You're a figure skater. How come?"
Yet, at the same time, when I--
my moment was on ice to perform, people got it.
They saw that I was a good skater.
They saw that I was having fun.
They saw that I was entertaining them.
It was my first year as manager of Holiday On Ice.
And I was in my office
at the Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis.
It was Shriners Night,
so there were a lot of people there with their grandchildren.
MILLER: At that time, I'm still a treasurer.
It happened to have been payday, so I had been there,
giving out the paychecks, you know?
And I was then watching the show.
The finale was on; the music for the finale
was "When the Saints Come Rolling In."
And I was talking to an usher
where I was standing to watch the show.
I had known him from the years before, you know?
And I told him I was gonna sneak out a little early.
He said, "I'll see you tomorrow, God willing."
COLLINS: The pinwheel was on.
The pinwheel just passed this area.
I turned around. I took exactly two steps.
The building blew up, and his head flew by me.
COLLINS: The gas couldn't get out of this room,
so it just erupted and blew big concrete chunks,
seats, and everything,
and threw them forward onto the ice.
KING: I ended up on the other side of the headers, turned around and looked,
and I remember seeing this column of flame.
I remember seeing bodies and concrete in the air.
Underneath the stands in the back,
in this one particular room held the popcorn machine,
and they were fueled by propane,
which, at that time, didn't have any smell.
You couldn't smell it if it was leaking, which it was.
That accident is the reason
that propane now has a fragrance, an odor.
It did not up until that time.
And luckily none of our skaters were hurt.
They were all traumatized.
A lot of skaters went to the hospital the next day
and donated blood,
which, you know, that was a nice thing for them to do.
COLLINS: In the history of Holiday On Ice,
that was the biggest tragedy in the life of that show.
It was literally unbelievable.
BLAKEY: My last tour with the ice-skating shows
was in Japan.
I said to a friend of mine in the show,
"You know, it'd be so great, since the show is ending now,
to take a boat and go around to San Francisco,"
and thereby I would have completed
an entire circle of the Earth.
So, everybody came to see us off.
And we went to Honolulu, where we got off the ship
and stayed a month...
until the next ship of that line came by to pick us up.
And then we went to San Francisco,
and I had my complete circle of the Earth,
so that was marvelous.
At the end of that, they flew us back to New York.
So, I thought, "Well, what am I going to do now?
I'm going to become a photographer."
That was already kind of established.
Well, my New York friends,
they said, "If you really want to photograph theatrical people,
people in the theater,
New York is the place to do that."
And my 3 days stretched into 25 years.
That was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time.
COLLINS: Around '62 and '63,
the ISU would run a tour in Europe
every time the championship was over there.
So, we looked at it-- Morris Chalfen and I--
and said, "Well, my gosh,
if they can do this tour in Europe,
why can't we do the same thing in America?"
Champions on Ice was started in 1969,
although it wasn't named Champions on Ice at that time.
The championship that year was in Colorado Springs.
We grabbed all of the top skaters--
gold, silver, and bronze,
and a scattering of other skaters--
and took them on the tour.
STINE: Champions on Ice don't do spectacle at all.
They are just a series of solo performances.
They don't have large choruses like 32 girls or anything.
It was nothing like that.
COLLINS: They just had their own little cassette of music.
There was no lights, no props, no scenery.
Compared to the ice shows, it was really a laugh.
But it was different.
You had a chance to see
the greatest skaters in the world,
all packaged together in a show.
The new genre was star after star after star after star.
I don't think there was ever
such an array of champions at one time.
The crowds were going wild,
and the pictures and the cameras were like--
the whole audience was a disco ball of flash bulbs.
It was extraordinary. You'd take them out to great restaurants.
You'd put them in phenomenal hotels.
The travel was always a little bit challenging
because you had such a gigantic cast,
but it was fun to do as a tour because Tommy was an entertainer.
And he'd make everything about being on his tour enjoyable.
COLLINS: The ice shows, as we can remember,
would always have a star--
Dorothy Hamill, Peggy Fleming.
Well, once I developed this tour,
the skaters made so much money just on a tour that I had,
they didn't have to skate 40 weeks for an ice show.
None of them would join an ice show.
And all of a sudden now,
you've got Disney on Ice... you know?
Where'd that come from?
In 1979, we heard from Arthur Wirtz,
who my father had known for many, many years.
And he was interested in selling Ice Follies and Holiday On Ice.
And he had owned Ice Follies
and the domestic North American Holiday On Ice.
I tried to learn and study, and I went to the rehearsals
and tried to understand what was happening.
And then in 1980
I produced Ice Follies and Holiday On Ice.
It was a great show, and it was a big spectacle.
And I'm going around to all these different cities
to see it.
And the business is just not there.
And one day-- I was there Saturday,
and we would do three shows on Saturday--
I looked up at the house
and I saw the reflection of a lot of eyeglasses,
and I saw a lot of gray hair, which I didn't have at the time.
And I realized that there were very few families coming.
So I knew I had to do something to get families.
And I knew if you could tell a story,
you could start to build and create emotion,
and emotion gives a connection from the audience
to what you're doing, and times were changing.
So, I go to Disney, and I said,
"What if we turned an entire show over
to all the Disney stories and characters,
and we called it 'Walt Disney's World on Ice'?"
And he said, "Well, that might be intriguing.
We sat down. Two weeks later, I had a deal.
Summer of 1981, Walt Disney's World on Ice was born.
THOMAS: As a skater, none of us knew what to expect.
We just-- we had no idea.
This was all new material--
and to be a part of the magic of Disney...
The curtain opened opening night,
and to go out and see that building completely full
was a shock to us, as performers.
It was amazing.
FELD: So, that was the beginning of a long-term relationship.
It took off. It was huge.
It was one of the greatest successes of all time.
The business was so much greater
than what it was with Ice Follies and Holiday On Ice
that over time we decided
let's devote all of our attention and focus
to Disney on Ice,
and let's try and really build that and grow that.
Unfortunately, that was sort of the end of Ice Follies
and Holiday On Ice in North America.
When you're standing on the podium at the Olympic games,
you're proud, you're happy, you're thrilled, you're scared,
you're sad, you know,
because everything you've ever been has now ended.
So, when it was time for me to turn pro,
you know, where do I go?
And my choices were only two-- the Ice Capades or Disney.
If I went with Disney, I'd be probably a character,
and I knew that Kenny Feld, you know, would do right by me,
but I never would have been me.
I would have been a character.
Or I'd always be an extension of the brand,
but I would never be able to brand myself.
So, I agreed with Ice Capades to do 20 weeks.
And it was funny, because Dick Palmer,
the president of Ice Capades-- he told me-- he goes,
"It's a good thing you won the Olympics, 'cause you're
too short to be in a line."
(Laughs)
He was right.
I mean, the only way for me to get into an ice show
would be to either win the Olympics
or come in as a comedian,
because I could never-- I couldn't even qualify
to be a chorus boy in Ice Capades
'cause I was too short.
I never missed, ever, anything with the Ice Capades.
And at the end of that season, Dick Palmer came up to me,
and he said, "Congratulations. You never missed a show.
You never missed a press opportunity.
You did a great job.
I just really want to express to you how grateful I am
that you did this great job.
But...
we're going through a sale.
We have an investor that's bought it.
A private investor has bought the Ice Capades.
And looking over the assets, they don't want your contract.
You are... done."
What am I gonna do?
My manager, Bob Kain, he sat me down on a beach,
and he goes, "You want to start a tour?"
And I go, "Yeah."
He said, "Do you have an idea of what you'd like to do?"
And I go, "Yeah."
Your fantasies are never supposed to be
presented to you as an opportunity.
And I always thought about, "Wouldn't it be great if
you took the Tom Collins model
and you made it artistic?"
It was a great thing that Tommy had such a big cast,
but, to me, you know, as an audience member, I'd like
to see my favorite skater more than once.
And wouldn't it be cool
if they skated with other favorite skaters?
So our idea was it was still gonna be
the big cavalcade of champions type of tour
and to make it an artistic evening,
a theatrical evening.
We did five cities in the Northeastern United States,
and it had momentum.
And every year, we'd do a few more cities.
And we just started to grow.
We had the professionals that brought their "A" game
every single night to the ice--
Kristi Yamaguchi, Katarina Witt, Torvill and Dean,
Gordeeva and Grinkov, Kurt Browning in there.
Rosalynn Sumners was there for 13 years.
We had all these amazing-artist skating stars
that all had Olympic credentials,
and we just put them out and... standing ovations.
It was just unbelievable.
And then we had a few disasters
that kind of put us in a light, a new light,
with the whole scandal going into the '94 Olympics
that brought so many more people to skating.
I mean, we were just the beneficiaries
of all this attention, and we were the place to go.
COLLINS: The Kerrigan/Harding thing--
that changed the face of figure skating.
And what those two young ladies did for figure skating--
it really put it in the big time.
January 6, 1994, Cobo Hall, Detroit,
around 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon.
The media really took off.
It changed the world of figure skating.
It was unbelievable-- the business.
I've got the stars. Disney's got the kids.
Instead of sitting there watching these big productions,
all of these bodies out there in costumes,
people would rather just take my kids
to see a kids' show totally.
And you want to see skating, go to Champions on Ice.
We slowly, slowly
took everything away from the ice shows,
and that's what happened.
It's sad. It really is sad.
And nobody knew about it at the time, you know, really.
And nobody meant to do it. It just happened.
HAMILTON: Tommy's tour-- the size of it, the expense of it--
you know, he needed those big gates to survive.
And then I saw things sort of showing little signs of wear
and just started--
the whole business model of the sport changed.
I happened to be with him, having dinner in Minneapolis.
And we sat down.
He goes, "Sold my tour this morning."
And talking to him,
he just says, "Hamilton, it'll never be the same."
And I thought, "There's got to be something that can be done.
There's got to be something."
When they suddenly build a new arena
that now has 30,000 seats,
and that's 30,000 seats to fill with a one-week engagement--
it doesn't work.
The arenas got bigger, and the shows got smaller.
FELD: You have to retain the good,
and then you have to expand upon that,
and you have to retain what's right for today
and what's right for tomorrow, and you evolve.
SHELLEY: I'm not a very competitive person,
but I always knew,
if we skated well, we would have opportunities.
We would have chances to perform.
STARBUCK: That's what motivated us to work hard,
to get up at 5:00 every morning
and study ballet and study acrobatics
and all the things that you have to do.
It was all about being in the ice show.
Those incredibly talented kids of today,
who are so well-trained and at the top of their game--
maybe they didn't get
a world medal or an Olympic medal.
The only thing that there really is out there
besides Stars on Ice is Holiday On Ice in Europe.
The cruise ships all have ice shows.
And sometimes theme parks will have an ice show,
like Knott's Berry Farm in California.
And then there are artistic companies,
like Ice Theatre of New York,
which brings in dance choreographers
and other artistic people
to bring some new ideas to the skating rink.
BLAKEY: An entertainment organization
in Amsterdam, Holland, bought
the European Holiday On Ice companies.
Robin Cousins, who was one of their guest stars,
became their choreographer and the director of the show
and continues to this day.
COUSINS: The show consists of the usual variety vignettes
with flying and acrobatics.
Wonderful-- I have to say wonderful skating.
We have great principal skaters, good ensemble,
a smaller cast than has been the norm for Holiday On Ice,
and one of the few surviving entertainment shows on the road.
BLAKEY: It's ironic that
it's no longer to be seen in the United States,
but you have to go to Europe to enjoy Holiday On Ice
as we remember it.
COUSINS: People go, "Oh, my God. I used to see that years ago,
and my grandparents went to see it."
The core of the show has not changed.
How it's presented to the people has.
The base value--
glitz, glamour, excess, fabulousness--
is never gonna change, I hope.
SHIPSTAD: It's hard to impart the enormity of it now,
but I think we're at fault.
We are at fault if we don't look back to it
and know it's important
and know how much it meant to people.
Bursting at the seams here.
BLAKEY: I need a much bigger place--
a much bigger place.
BUTTON: Roy Blakey's collection--
I worry about it finding a home.
BLAKEY: And we don't want it to just disappear.
We want it to be in a place where people can see
the wonderful posters and the beautiful programs
and know that all of this took place
and how wonderful it all was,
so that people know that it did happen,
know who made it happen,
know where it took place, and how these great pioneers
totally changed the face of entertainment.
I think the ice show does, for a lot of us,
define our lives.
It really was our growing-up time,
and we went through growing-up times
with these other people.
COLLINS: I think I've been blessed
just to be in the ice business my whole life.
How lucky we were in those days to think that ice skating
had given you this opportunity to travel all over the world,
get paid for it,
get to meet all these princes and royalty.
Well, it's wonderful when you're young--
you travel a lot and see the world.
MORSE: I just cannot believe that people will not be able
ever to experience that again-- either to see it or to live it.
It was sure fun while it lasted.
KING: When I left the show, it was very lonely.
I'm like, "Where are all the people?"
We laughed a lot, cried a lot.
Wonderful. We had a lot of fun.
And we just made the biggest hit across America.
A wonderful, wonderful career, all because of ice skating.
STEELE-BIETAK: At the time, when you're young,
you don't know how great it is, but I sure appreciate it now.
Can't explain how it felt. It was a ton of fun.
TURK: Ice Capades was my life...
and I'm gonna cry right now.
And when that show was up, it's like,
"It's the end of my life. This was my family.
I thought we were gonna be forever, ever, and ever."
I enjoyed it because it was a feeling of bringing pleasure.
ZANOVA: I loved it, and I still love it.
I'm still sort of with one skate in it, you know?
You see those people? They're smiling back at you.
You know that they're having fun,
and that's a very rewarding feeling.
EBY: The beauty of what ice skating can be,
what it was like.
BUTTON: Isn't that what theater's all about?
It remains in your mind.
BLAKEY: I will be forever grateful for all of those years
that I spent touring with the ice-skating shows
and the experience of performing all over the world.
Yes! That's right.
? ?
"The Fabulous Ice Age" is available for purchase
at fabulousiceage.com.