what did sonja henie die from

won her first ice-skating competition. Skater Sonja Henie 'Put A Dollar Sign' Behind The Gold Henie won Olympic gold medals in 1928, 1932, and 1936 before retiring from amateur skating. the world performing in ice shows and landed many lucrative endorsement Members of the audience paid up to $4.40 for the chance to see Henie. As a wealthy celebrity, she moved in the same social circles as royalty and heads of state and made Hitler's acquaintance as a matter of course. Death. Practicing as much as seven hours a day, she studied with teachers in Germany, England, Switzerland and Austria. At the time of her death, Henie was planning a comeback for a television special that would have aired in January 1970. Later programs included her famous hula sketch. Sonja Henie, Michael Kirby - Die Fledermaus! - YouTube She also planned to become a Hollywood actress and to accomplish on screen for ice-skating what Fred Astaire had done for dancing. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: Sports Figures, Hamill, Dorothy It would later house all of Henie's skating memorabilia. With Sonja Henie, Jack Oakie, Cesar Romero, Carole Landis. Her performance, skating "at home" in Norway's Frogner Stadium, earned her the first of ten consecutive world figure skating titles (and the distinction of being the youngest world champion until Tara Lipinski edged her out in 1997 by a margin of thirty-two days). 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. She made seventeen performances in nine cities and earned phenomenal box office returns. 1968 Sonja was diagnosed with leukemia. After a twirl on the ice with her pupils, Trudi consents. Sonja Henie. During the shooting of Second Fiddle (1939), she greeted the then Crown-Prince couple of Norway Olav and Mrtha during their US tour. Another accusation that hurt Henie's image was the perception that she was a Nazi sympathizer. With her third husband, the Norwegian shipowner Niels Onstad, she established (1968) the Henie Onstad Art Center, a museum of modern art in Hvikodden, near Oslo, Norway. No other skater before or since has dominated the sport as thoroughly as Henie did between 1927 and 1936. During her competitive career, Henie traveled widely and worked with a variety of foreign coaches. It was Selma Henie, he said, who ended her daughter's squabbles and made sure that things ran smoothly. When sheas a gold medal winnerpassed Hitler's tribune with silver medalist Cecilia Colledge and bronze medalist Vivi-Anne Hultn, neither she nor the others honored Hitler with the Nazi salute. Cite this article Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Complaints by Austrian skaters would result in new rules allowing only one judge per country for each event. She died on October 12, 1969 at During a career that spanned the 1920s, '30s, '40s, and '50s, the Norwegian skater made major contributions to women's figure skating, which would help propel the sport into the prominence it now enjoys as a dazzling, physically-challenging, personality-filled field. Sun Valley Serenade (1941), with John Payne and Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, received three Academy Award nominations for best cinematography, best music, and best song ("Chattanooga Choo Choo"), but her two releases in 1942 and 1943 marked the end of her contract with Twentieth CenturyFox. Knisley, Michael. She therefore made the best of it and won her third Olympic medal. In addition to traveling to train and compete, she was much in demand as a performer at figure skating exhibitions in both Europe and North America. Date of Death: October 12, 1969. But Henie stopped producing shows after an accident in 1952 prior to a performance. Sonja Henie, (born April 8, 1912, Kristiania [now Oslo], Norwaydied October 12, 1969, in an airplane en route to Oslo), Norwegian-born American world champion figure skater and Olympic gold medalist who went on to achieve success as a professional ice-skater and as a motion-picture actress. Sonja Henie, Skating Star, Dies - The New York Times She became a United States citizen in 1941. (b. skating routines. Three-quarters of a century later, in 2010 . A bubbly, smiling figure in her performances, she was in fact a fierce competitor who wanted nothing to do with her rivals. She continued to perform Following the success of Thin Ice, Henie showed her growing business savvy by getting Twentieth Century-Fox to renegotiate her contract. Sonja Henie: Sonja Henie was born on April 8, 1912 in Oslo, Norway. Henie won more Olympic and World titles than any other . Henie, already a precocious skier and swimmer, cried until her parents bought her a . At the height of her acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and starred in a series of box-office hits, including Thin Ice (1937), Happy Landing, My Lucky Star (1938), Second Fiddle (1939) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941). Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. Her program also included double axels, spins, twirls, and jumps. Her wide, dimpled smile, pixie eyes and blonde Nordic good looks made her a great favorite of audiences during the years of World War II. accent audiences loved her. An English translation, Wings on My Feet, was released in 1940 and republished in a revised edition in 1954. Modern figure skating is deeply indebted to Sonja Henie (1912-1969), one of the greatest athletes of this century. Henie died in her sleep on an ambulance plane that was taking her from Paris to Oslo to see a specialist. Encyclopedia.com. [2], Kestnbaum argues that although Henie's skating was "athletic and powerful for her day",[2] 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. Skating as a Sport "Tonya-no! She was the first At the time, she was only 11 years old and she had to punctuate her free skating routine with frequent visits to the sidelines to ask her coach what she should do next. After the hotel opens, Nora's uncle faces financial ruin and her romance hits a snag in the form of . Hemming, Roy. Could it be Ms. Hart seems a little "chilly!" Please pardon the periodic visual/audio glitches; the source. A little "meowing" before Ms. Henie takes the ice. appeared on the cover of Time magazine and her skates were immortalized Miss Henie had a home in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, an apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, and an estate overlooking the Oslo fjord. The pretty, blond skater stood out among the competitors in a white silk and ermine skating dress that had a short skirt. The Onstads gave Norway an art museum and 250 of their paintings in August 1968. It was not just the sheer quantity of her titles and awards or profits from skating in revues and from motion pictures that distinguished her, but rather the unique quality of her skating, her innovative influence on the development of women's competitive skating, and her overall creative artistry and ingenuity, for which she has secured a unique niche in the history of figure skating. She entered her first Olympic Winter Games the next year, primarily for experience, and took third place in the free skating competition. Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Grounds. Henie's first love was dancing, and she began to study ballet at age four; the ballet element in her later skating, both as champion amateur and professional, was always evident. She 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. She was a three-time Olympic champion (1928, 1932, 1936) in women's singles, a ten-time World champion (19271936) and a six-time European champion (19311936). Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. According to a quote in the New York Times, Henie felt that she was working harder than ever: "When I was in championship competition I was on the ice for exactly four minutes. Mitt livs eventyr, Oslo, Norway: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1938. She was a three-time Olympic champion ( 1928, 1932, 1936) in women's singles, a ten-time World champion (1927-1936) and a six-time European champion (1931-1936). At the age of ten she Wings On My Feet, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1940. She died on October 12, 1969 at the age of 57. She telegraphed her maid and told her to place a picture of her with Hitler, which he had autographed, in a prominent place in her house. Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 - 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. turn professional and tour with her own ice show. Born in Oslo on April 8, 1912, Miss Henie received her first skates from her father, a Norwegian fur wholesaler, on the Christmas after her sixth birthday. . Henie's connections with Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials made her the subject of controversy before, during, and after World War II. Henie married Daniel Reid Topping, an American sports investor from Greenwich, Connecticut, on 4 July 1940; they divorced in 1946. Sonja Henie - IMDb champion in 1927 and the following year she won an Olympic gold medal. But Henie will be best remembered for putting skating above the personal and political. in ice shows and even starred in her own television special. She was showcased in the Hollywood Ice Revue, which began in 1938 and continued for twelve years in cities across the United States. Henie was the greatest of all women figure skaters from the 1920s to the 1940s, and perhaps of the entire twentieth century. Less than a month later, she was married to a childhood friend, Niels Onstad, who had become a shipping magnate and art collector. The pictures were reported to have grossed $25-million. Henie would make eleven films in Hollywood, with the first six being the most successful. Her medal record consisted of Norwegian national championships from 1922 to 1934, 6 European titles (19311936), 10 world titles (192736), and 3 gold medals in the Winter Olympic Games of 1928, 1932, and 1936. Henie had turned down contract offers following the 1932 Olympics, but now set about in earnest to make a career as an exhibition skater and film star. success. When she became a professional skater in 1936, she set her sights on movie stardom and quickly turned herself into a top box office draw. Henie was also successful in Hollywood. 1974); James Robert Parish, The Fox Girls (1971); and James Vinson, ed., The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, vol. . She earned at least $25 million from her lucrative motion-picture career. She broke with her manager in 1951, and began producing shows on her own, but gave them up after a block of seats at a Baltimore armory collapsed before a show in March, 1952, injuring more than 250 people. Burial. [citation needed], After the war, Henie was mindful that many of her countrymen considered her to be a quisling. The idea of an ice skating movie might seem quaint today, but Henie starred in a number of them, most notably One in a Million, the story of a skater's rise to Olympic glory, and Thin Ice. Like many Hollywood stars, she supported the U.S. war effort through USO and otherwise. This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sonja-Henie, Sonja Henie - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). However, she made a triumphant return to Norway with the Holiday on Ice tour in 1953 and 1955. 1956- Jewelry takes people's minds off your wrinkles.

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