Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library
"Skating under real moonlight with soft ocean breezes is a delight hard to express in words!" - unnamed member of the Los Angeles Figure Skating Club, "Skating" magazine, 1939
Businessman A. Frank Ruppenthal made his fortune in St. Louis, serving as the President of the Minit-Rub Corporation, which sold a topical analgesic similar to Vick's VapoRub. In the mid-thirties, he made his first venture into the world of ice sports, taking over the franchise of the St. Louis Flyers hockey team. It was through hockey that he connected with George Humiston. Humiston was the President of the Associated Piping and Engineering Company. He and Herman Vetter had patented a new ice refrigeration process. They were so confident in their product that they were able to convince Ruppenthal to invest two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to build an outdoor amphitheater-style rink in the blazing California sun.
Photo courtesy Los Angeles Public Library
The Tropical Ice Gardens were built in 1938 at Wilshire Boulevard and Gayley Avenue in Westwood Village, Los Angeles. A two-hundred and fifty-ton refrigeration plant was constructed to service two ice surfaces: the main rink (110 X 210 feet) and the children's rink (60 X 40). The main rink itself could accommodate up to two thousand skaters. A steep hill west of the rink was terraced to provide seating for up to ten thousand spectators.
The Tropical Ice Gardens had every modern convenience: a café, sportswear and skate shops, dressing and club rooms and showers. There were also projection rooms where lighting effects could be used to illuminate the ice. It was the first year-round artificial outdoor ice rink in North America, predating the famous rink in Sun Valley by six months.
Before the Tropical Ice Gardens even opened, it was the talk of the town. Two months before the grand opening, Irene Dare, the child star of the film "Everything's On Ice", was invited to test out the ice. A week before the grand opening, the Westwood Businessmen's Association hosted a dinner party and 'pre-show' at the rink. The one-thousand-person guest list included well-to-do philanthropists, businessmen and film stars. Just two days before the rink opened to the public, Mother Nature dealt the rink a considerable challenge. The November 26, 1938 issue of "The Los Angeles Times" noted, "The fires burning in the hills surrounding Westwood put the new Tropical Ice Gardens skating surface to its severest test yesterday, but despite an increase of 20 degrees in the temperature, the refrigerating plant withstood the test without the least difficulty. With this source of worry eliminated, everything is in readiness for the opening of the new institution."
The Tropical Ice Gardens opened to the public on November 28, 1938, with a performance of the ice revue "St. Moritz Express". The Swiss-produced show featured an international cast, including Frick and Frack, Adele Inge, Eric Waite, Lois Dworshak, Gloria Nord and Red McCarthy. During the production's one-month run, the temperature reached an "unprecedented winter peak of 92 degrees". A January 1939 article in "Gas" magazine recalled, "One day recently, when the beaches, customarily deserted at this season, were crowded with people escaping from the inland heat, Herman Vetter, refrigeration engineer who installed the plant, checked temperatures in and above the ice. The ice itself registered at 28 degrees... and at two feet the temperature was 124 degrees! He concluded, with apparent justification, that they would be able to hold the ice during the summer."
On March 8, 1939, three hundred people were on the ice when a fire broke out in the rink's wooden engine room building. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the fire caused approximately ten thousand dollars in damage to freezing apparatus and machinery. Incredibly, the rink only had to close for about a week.
Donna Atwood
In early 1942, a roof was added to the Tropical Ice Gardens because the rink was seen as something of a 'sitting target' in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Though the decision to cover the rink was a necessary safety precaution, U.S. Champion Theresa Weld Blanchard noted after it was added, the Tropical Ice Gardens "lost much of its charm". The All-Year, Mercury and Los Angeles Figure Skating Clubs all practiced at the rink and various women's gyms held skating classes. U.S. Champions Eugene Turner and Donna Atwood both practiced there.
Maribel (Vinson) and Guy Owen took the ice at the Tropical Ice Gardens in "Ice Frolics"; Belita Jepson-Turner wowed in "Ice Revels of 1943". A Columbia newsreel was shot there, featuring Tinsel Town A-listers like Mickey Rooney, Rita Hayworth and Ann Sheridan. MGM triple-threat Jane Powell met her husband Geary Steffen there when she was taking skating lessons. However, the big name that was most associated with the rink was none other than the queen of the ice herself, Sonja Henie.
Sonja Henie, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. Photo courtesy Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
In November of 1945, Sonja Henie and Arthur M. Wirtz secured a long-term lease on the Tropical Ice Gardens under the name Sonja Henie Ice Palace Cooperation. Though a 2009 LAist article attempted to rebut the fact that Henie had a stake in the rink, this was something that was widely reported internationally in Associated Press articles and noted in Henie's biography "Queen Of Ice, Queen Of Shadows".
Van Johnson and Sonja Henie
Not long after Arthur M. Wirtz and Sonja Henie took over the lease, the Tropical Ice Gardens were renamed the Sonja Henie Ice Palace and renovated to enlarge the seating capacity. The big grand re-opening was on February 15, 1946, and featured seven performances by Henie herself, including her famous hula dance. Actor Van Johnson filled her dressing room with orchids that night. The February 16, 1946 issue of the "Los Angeles Evening Citizen News" reported, "Once again the 'darling of the rinks' won the hearts of an appreciative audience of 8500 at a premiere opening of the Sonja Henie Hollywood Ice Revue of 1946 at her Westwood arena. Before a typical Hollywood first-nighter of filmland stars, Sonja gracefully demonstrated her silver-bladed skill... combining intricate spins and whirls of ballet." The "National Ice Skating Guide" confirms that the manager of the rink under Henie and Wirtz's management was none other than Bert Clark, a former manager of the Polar Palace who was employed by Henie to act as her stand-in during rehearsals with choruses when lighting and camera angles were tested.
Photos courtesy "National Ice Skating Guide"
The good folks at UCLA can be thanked for the demise of the Sonja Henie Ice Palace. The land that the rink was constructed on had previously belonged to the government but fell under the jurisdiction of UCLA's Board of Regents. Though the government had made upwards of ten thousand dollars a year from the rink during the forties, they decided to give the land to UCLA so that they could build a medical research center. The Sonja Henie Ice Palace closed unceremoniously in 1949 but the rink's ultimate demise was to be a dramatic and unexpected one.
On May 4, 1950, Southern California was inundated with brush fires, dust storms, gales and rain. Workers were in the process of tearing down the Sonja Henie Ice Palace when a big windstorm hit Westwood Village. An article in the "Los Angeles Mirror" noted, "Bob Sims... was on the skeleton of the roof when the trusses and wall frames began to sway and crack in the wind. He tight-roped along a truss to a ladder, 75 feet away, and got down safely just as the structure fell."
Today in Westwood, where they once did layback spins and loops, you can find places to park your car and restaurants that sell soups. Though it looks like any other quiet little neighborhood you might stroll through without really noticing, Westwood was once home to an ice rink worth remembering.
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