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(Sonja Henie's Hollywood Ice Revue of 1945-46) |
As a kid back in Baghdad, Iraq I remember seeing pictures in magazines of people in seeming motion on a white surface with a funny looking thing attached to their shoes. I had no idea what it was. When I came to America at age twelve in 1939 I knew a little bit about roller skating and nothing about ice skating. Little did I know that six years later I'd be skating in a Sonja Henie Hollywood Ice Revue. My coming to America in itself was due to a strange mixture of circumstance.Sometime in the early 40's I bought myself a cheap pair of hockey skates and taught myself how to ice skate. I practiced on the ponds and lakes in New York City which used to freeze in those days practically all winter long. It didn't take me long to discover figure skates and as soon as I had them on my feet I was spinning and jumping. That's before I even knew what a figure eight was. When I did find out what figure eights were, much to my regret I chose to ignore them. My recollections of the show are bittersweet. Droves of movie stars came to see us. I remember Joan Crawford backstage with her little pooch. I met and had a brief conversation with Caesar Romero. Van Johnson came to visit as well. The audiences were studded with celebrities. One in particular I remember seeing was Babe Ruth. 
When Sonja skated, Mama Henie would be the first and last to vigorously applaud. That struck me as being odd at the time, but in retrospect it seems quite the natural thing for a mother to do. We celebrated the New Year in Chicago, I believe. Sonja went from table to table greeting everybody. One of the unforgetable moments of the show was Sonja's Hula dance. It never failed to bring the house down and I just loved watching it.Getting back to myself, Joseph Gourdji, alias Joe Routhier, alias Joe Jacob, alias Joe Gourdji, full circle. Jacob was the name of my grandparents, with whom I resided in the States, and whose name I adopted. As a member of the ensemble I had poor control of my body, simply because I avoided the hated figure eights. I remember Bob Petrilo, a skater from the Center Theater, once saying to me, "You don't have an edge to your name and you're doing Axel Paulsons?" During the Sonja rehearsals, I was Catherine Littlefield's worst nightmare. She was the choreographer. If I had a dollar for every time she called me a son of a bitch I'd be a rich man. However I must admit that those expletives were never delivered with true hostility. During one performance I fell and slid across the ice from one end of the arena to the other. On another occasion, we, the ensemble were lined up in a straight formation, two opposite sides speeding towards each other. It made a nice effect as the two sides blended together and then separated, each side continuing in the opposite direction. The effect was accomplished by the skaters moving between the skaters in the other line. This one time, the girl coming towards me didn't know if she was to go through my left or right side and instead her head rammed me in the gut knocking me completely out of breath. I had to be carried off the ice. Perhaps due to my Middle Eastern looks, Catherine cast me in one of the numbers as a Hindu mystic. Four men carried me out onto the ice by the arms and feet and laid me down gently on a bed of wooden nails. It was never gently and more often than not I'd be about a foot off the bed before they let go. One time I landed half on the bed and the other half on the ice. As I maneuvered to get into a comfortable position the audience, all 35,000 of 'em, let out a loud and simultaneous laugh. It sounded like a clap of thunder. I'll never forget it. With me in the show you didn't need Freddie Trenkler. That's in hind sight, of course. At the time it wasn't funny at all. The potential was there, but with poor discipline, and lack of family support, I never made it. Many people including Gene Tesloff, one of Sonja's partners suggested I start my own revue capitalizing on my Middle Eastern background. What was I to call it, "Arabs On Ice"? The tour ended on a sour note for me. During the last rehearsal I fell and tore all the ligaments in my left ankle. It turned out to be a lifelong injury. That terminated my ice skating career as well as any other athletic career I might have envisioned.  That's me at bottom-right I spent the 50's in the family ready to wear business. I stayed with that until I had a nervous breakdown. During the 60's I was a computer programmer and systems analyst; during the 70's, antiques dealer. Becoming an antiques dealer was also the fate of Bob Petrilo who had a shop in Southampton, LI. In the 80's I worked as a fashion jewelry designer, and in the 90's I became a writer, got involved in community theater and continued my work in the crafts making one of a kind pieces of jewelry. Recently I developed a line of paper jewelry which can be seen on my website, http://www.geocities.com/soho/nook/4502/. In conclusion I must say that Sonja Henie's star power was unlike any other. It was so profound it made an indelible mark on all those it touched. The six months I spent in Sonja’s revue have eclipsed anything else I've ever done. Now, 54 years later people still sit up and take notice when told, "I skated with Sonja Henie." - Joseph Gourdji, January 7, 1999 |
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