49 Facts About Sonja Henie

Sonja Henie was a Norwegian figure skater and film star.

Sonja Henie was a three-time Olympic champion in women's singles, a ten-time World champion and a six-time European champion.

Sonja Henie is one of only two skaters to defend a ladies' singles Olympic title, the other being Katarina Witt, and her six European titles has only been matched by Witt.

Sonja Henie was born on 8 April in 1912 in Kristiania, Norway; she was the only daughter of Wilhelm Sonja Henie, a prosperous Norwegian furrier, and his wife, Selma Lochmann-Nielsen.

Wilhelm Sonja Henie had been a one-time World Cycling Champion and the Sonja Henie children were encouraged to take up a variety of sports at a young age.

Sonja Henie initially showed talent at skiing, then followed her older brother, Leif, to take up figure skating.

Once Sonja Henie began serious training as a figure skater, her formal schooling ended.

Sonja Henie was educated by tutors, and her father hired the best experts in the world, including the famous Russian ballerina, Tamara Karsavina, to transform his daughter into a sporting celebrity.

Sonja Henie 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.

Sonja Henie won her first major figure skating competition, the senior Norwegian championships, at the age of 10.

Sonja Henie then placed eighth in a field of eight at the 1924 Winter Olympics, at the age of eleven.

Sonja Henie won the first of an unprecedented ten consecutive World Figure Skating Championships in 1927 at the age of fourteen.

Sonja Henie went on to win first of her three Olympic gold medals the following year, becoming one of the youngest figure skating Olympic champions.

Sonja Henie defended her Olympic titles in 1932 and in 1936, and her world titles annually until 1936.

Sonja Henie won six consecutive European championships from 1931 to 1936.

Indeed, after the school figures section at the 1936 Olympic competition, Colledge and Sonja Henie were virtually neck and neck with Colledge trailing by just a few points.

The draw for the free skating [then] came under suspicion after Sonja Henie landed the plum position of skating last, while Colledge had to perform second of the 26 competitors.

Sonja Henie became so popular with the public that police had to be called out for crowd control on her appearances in various disparate cities such as Prague and New York City.

Sonja Henie opened up opportunities for figure skaters to use their skills to earn a living.

Sonja Henie insisted on having total control of the skating numbers in her films such as Second Fiddle.

Sonja Henie tried to break the musical comedy mould with the anti-Nazi film Everything Happens at Night and It's a Pleasure, a skating variation of the often-told A Star Is Born tale about alcoholic-star-in-decline-helps-newcomer-up.

Sonja Henie had by now developed a comedy flair and these films were all among the top box-office hits for 20th Century-Fox the respective years.

Eight Sonja Henie movies crossed the $100 million domestic gross mark.

Sonja Henie was among 250 female stars who were nominated for "50 Greatest Screen Legend" status by the American Film Institute.

At the height of her fame, Sonja Henie brought as much as $2 million per year from her shows and touring activities.

Sonja Henie had numerous lucrative endorsement contracts, and deals to market skates, clothing, jewelry, dolls, and other merchandise branded with her name.

Since Wirtz controlled the best arenas and dates, Sonja Henie was left playing smaller venues and markets already saturated by other touring ice shows such as Ice Capades.

In 1953, Sonja Henie formed a new partnership with Morris Chalfen to appear in his European Holiday On Ice tour, which proved to be a great success.

Sonja Henie produced her own show at New York's Roxy Theatre in January 1956.

Sonja Henie was drinking heavily at that time and could no longer keep up with the demands of touring, and this marked her retirement from skating.

Sonja Henie did try to make a film series at her own expense; a series that would serve as a travelogue to several cities.

At the time of her death, Sonja Henie was planning a comeback for a television special that would have aired in January 1970.

Sonja Henie was to have danced to "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago.

Controversy appeared first when Sonja Henie greeted Hitler with a Nazi salute at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and after the Games she accepted an invitation to lunch with Hitler at his resort home in nearby Berchtesgaden, where Hitler presented Sonja Henie with an autographed photo with a lengthy inscription.

Sonja Henie was strongly denounced in the Norwegian press for this.

Sonja Henie therefore made the best of it and won her third Olympic medal.

Sonja Henie is credited with being the first figure skater to use dance choreography, to adopt the short skirt in figure skating, and to wear white boots, which deemphasized the heaviness of skates and produced a lighter and longer appearance of the skater's legs that was "a focal point for judges' and spectators' gaze".

When white boots quickly became standard for female skaters, Sonja Henie began wearing beige boots because she wanted to remain unique.

Figure skating writer and historian Ellyn Kestnbaum credits Sonja 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".

Kestnbaum argues that Sonja Henie influenced female skaters' costumes that emphasized their wealth, especially her fur-trimmed outfits, which were emulated at the 1930 World Championships, held for the first time in North America, in New York City.

Sonja Henie incorporated dance elements into her figure skating, through the placement of spins, jumps, and choreography to reflect the mood of the music she used.

Kestnbaum argues that although Sonja Henie's skating was "athletic and powerful for her day", 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.

Kestnbaum states that although toe steps are used as "occassional couterpoints to the legato flow of skating movement", she argues that Sonja Henie might have overused these steps, calling them "mincing and ineffective".

Kestnbaum argues that the costumes Sonja Henie wore in her shows and films, which were short, revealing, full of sequins and feathers, and more reminiscent of the costumes of female entertainers than of the clothes worn in the more conservative world of competitive figure skating of the time, most likely contributed to the "showiness" that influenced the costume choices of later generations of female competitive figure skaters.

Sonja Henie was married three times, to Dan Topping, Winthrop Gardiner Jr.

Sonja Henie studied in Oslo together with Martin Stixrud and Erna Andersen who was her competitor and skate club member.

Sonja Henie was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in the mid-1960s.

Sonja Henie died of the disease at age 57 in 1969 in an ambulance plane flight from Paris to Oslo.

Sonja Henie is buried with Onstad in Oslo on the hilltop overlooking the Henie Onstad Art Centre.