Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Who the Heck Was Sonja Henie?
Norwegians young and old know the story of one of their most leg-
endary public figures, Sonja Henie (1912-69). In America, however, only
an older generation of devotees of late-night television might be able
to identify this former figure skater and movie actress who won gold
medals for figure skating at the 1928, 1932, and 1936 Winter Olympics.
Henie was born in Oslo, the daughter of a furrier. Having learned
skating and dancing as a child, she became the youngest Olympic skat-
ing champion when she won her first gold medal at age 15. She
became a professional in 1936 on her tour of the United States, per-
forming in ice shows as late as the 1950s. The bright-eyed, bubbly
blonde managed to parlay her championships into an effervescent but
short motion-picture career. She was hardly an actress, but she had a
smile that was enchanting, and as long as her pictures featured ice-
skating, she was relatively harmless in front of the camera.
Naturally 20th Century Fox ordered writers to tailor film properties
for her, to keep the comedy and romance light, and to get her on those
skates as much as possible. Often she was teamed with top-rate stars,
such as Ray Milland and Robert Cummings in
Everything Happens at
Night
in 1939, or Don Ameche, Ethel Merman, and Cesar Romero in the
1938 film
Happy Landing.
The year 1939 also saw her teamed opposite
Rudy Valee and Tyrone Power in
Second Fiddle.
Only Shirley Temple and
Clark Gable outranked her at the box office that same year.
Although she would continue skating, Henie's movie career had
faded by the mid-1940s. In 1940, the year Hitler invaded Norway, she
published her autobiography,
Wings on My Feet,
which included a pic-
ture of her receiving congratulations from Adolph Hitler, surrounded
by high Nazi officials. It was the occasion of the 1936 Olympics, and
Sonja Henie represented Hitler's concept of the “superior” Nordic
woman athlete.
This cozy action with the Nazis brought condemnation from the
newspapers of Norway. Furious at the press, Henie defended herself.
“How can they say such things?” she said at a press conference. She
practically spat out the words, “Nazi-shmatzy! Hitler is the German
leader. I was honoring Germany—not the Nazis. I don't even know
what a Nazi is.”
The associations with the Nazis tarnished her reputation during the
war, but the outcry against her died down in the postwar era. Norwe-
gians came to view her more as an international skating star and a
national heroine than as a Nazi sympathizer.
In 1960 Henie retired to Norway with her third husband, Niels
Onstad, a wealthy Norwegian businessman and art patron. In 1968
they founded the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter (p. 120) near Oslo, as a
showcase for Henie's extensive collection of modern art. The next year,
at the relatively early age of 57, Norway's most famous daughter died.
She was aboard an aircraft carrying her from Paris to Oslo for medical
treatment. At the time of her death she was 1 of the 10 wealthiest
women on earth.
