Sonja Henie



Sonja Henie (1912-1969) was the daughter of a wealthy Norwegian family, whose parents encouraged their children to take up sports. When Sonja turned out to be gifted at skating, her parents got her the best tutors, which definitely paid off.

She won championship after championship, including three Olympic gold medals, and went on to a hugely successful career in films and live shows.

Her films were such hits that her old studio, 20th Century Fox, tried to replicate the success with Carol Heiss in Snow White and The Three Stooges, but those filmmakers had evidently not realized what made Sonja's films work.

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 * Fan Service: She popularized short skirts for skating dresses.
 * Genre Turning Point: Not just for figure skating, but also making ice shows popular in the US.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Wildly popular in the US, and other countries, but between World War II and the mid 1950s, she wasn't liked in Norway, due to her friendship with Adolf Hitler, and not speaking out in support of the Norwegian resistance. But when she finally came back, it was to cheering crowds.
 * Hair of Gold
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Cesar Romero was in a few of her films.
 * Impractically Fancy Outfit: Worn for some publicity photos, rather than worn on film as that would get in the way of her skating.
 * Non-Actor Vehicle: Though she has since pursued a successful film career by then.
 * Pimped-Out Dress: Her skating dresses of course.
 * Pretty in Mink: If someone wasn't wearing a fur coat in her films, she wore a fur trimmed skating dress.
 * In Real Life, her father and brother were furriers.
 * The Quisling: What she was perceived as in Norway during the 1950s.
 * She's Got Legs: Her outfits showed them off.
 * Sweater Girl: Before the trend took off in The Fifties, she was a pioneer of this trope.