Buzz
John Harris, the shrewd and prosperous heir to his father’s diverse entertainment empire, believed he had found the perfect way to enhance his hockey business during the Great Depression. During intermissions at professional games held at his Pittsburgh arena, Harris would invite Olympic figure skater Sonja Henie to take to the ice. Henie’s graceful, flawless performances would entertain the struggling crowd, offering them a little extra value for their ticket prices.
By 1940, Harris had refined his original idea: Rather than simply filling in gaps during intermissions, he envisioned a full-scale production where skaters like Henie graced the arena throughout the entire hockey off-season, enthralling audiences with elaborate on-ice performances, juggling, music, and expressive storytelling. Alongside nine other arena managers, Harris founded the Ice Capades. Over the course of the next six decades, this touring spectacle would spread across the country, popularize ice skating, and make Harris an extremely wealthy man. It even led to a deal with Disney, bringing the company’s beloved characters to the ice—a collaboration that ultimately marked the beginning of the end for the show.
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Born in 1898, Harris gradually shifted his focus away from his father's interests in movie theaters and other entertainment ventures to concentrate solely on Duquesne Gardens, the Pittsburgh-area venue where he organized rodeos, hockey games, boxing events, and other crowd-pleasing spectacles. After witnessing the success of his ice skating halftime shows, he quickly began to organize a touring company to bring the idea to the next level.
Enlisting Olympic trainer Rosemary Stewart to guide new recruits, Harris assembled a team of 150 performers. There were a few curious requirements: Harris demanded that no female performer be shorter than 5-foot-1 or taller than 5-foot-5; the skaters would live and travel under the supervision of chaperones and a nurse; they'd earn $65 a week, but would be expected to care for their own costumes, which could cost as much as $450. (One skater had her entire week's salary docked for the audacity of sitting down while wearing her elaborate outfit.)
The Ice Capades initially made a meager $174 profit in 1940, but word spread, and the tour quickly gained traction. Harris recruited acts like Trixie the Juggler, who skated without dropping a single ball, to join his roster of regular performers. The show featured adaptations of Broadway hits and complex skating routines. Harris envisioned the production as a Broadway-style showstopper, but on ice. By the 1950s, the show had grown so popular that portable ice makers were hauled to baseball stadiums and other venues without rinks to create an ice surface for the performances.
Donna Atwood, who was only 15 when she joined the Ice Capades in 1942, rapidly became the company’s top star (and eventually Harris’s wife). She toured with the show for 17 years, achieving such fame that newspapers could report the news of her pregnancies simply by stating that “Donna” was expecting—no last name needed. Atwood even served as a model for Disney animators, inspiring the sequence in the 1942 film Bambi, where Bambi and Thumper glide across a frozen lake.
The official partnership between Disney and the Ice Capades began in 1949 when the two companies agreed to feature Disney's licensed characters and stories in Ice Capades productions. While the costumes were designed more for practicality on the ice than to faithfully replicate the characters, figures like Mickey Mouse could sometimes be unrecognizable. Nonetheless, the collaboration was a success, and Disney continued to appear in Ice Capades shows through 1966. (When Disney launched its own stage tour in 1969, critics mockingly referred to it as “Disney on Wood.”)
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By that time, Harris had already sold his stake in the Ice Capades for $5.5 million. The show increasingly relied on the talents and fame of Olympic figure skaters seeking new opportunities after their competitive careers. Dorothy Hamill, the breakout star of the 1976 Winter Olympics, joined the cast, while Peggy Fleming chose to sign with the Ice Follies, a competing performance. Overwhelmed with nerves, Hamill fell twice during her debut with the Ice Capades.
“It was worse than the Olympics,” Hamill confessed to the media, explaining her falls as a result of performance anxiety. However, Hamill soon became as synonymous with the show as Atwood had once been, and the Ice Capades created a platform for athletes to leverage their Olympic fame into long-lasting careers.
By the end of the 1980s, the Ice Capades were losing their appeal. Following Hamill’s example, Olympic champions like Scott Hamilton signed with other promotions, which weakened the show’s ensemble. Meanwhile, Disney had launched its own Disney on Ice tour in 1981, captivating younger audiences with beloved characters (and the tour continues to this day). More crucially, the popularity of figure skating had soared thanks to shows like Ice Capades, which helped elevate the sport from a niche interest to one of the Winter Games' major attractions.
Although Hamill was no longer in her peak athletic condition, she still believed she could contribute to the stage show. In 1993, she, her husband, and a business partner purchased the Ice Capades, rescuing it from impending bankruptcy. Hamill’s vision was to transform the show from its traditional revue format to a more narrative-driven experience. Her first production was set to be Cinderella, and it would also mark one of her final projects.
Less than a year later, Hamill—who sustained a broken rib in 1994 when her Prince character pulled her too forcefully during a waltz—sold the struggling company to televangelist Pat Robertson’s International Family Entertainment. By 1997, financial support had dried up, leading to the cancellation of two tours. In an era dominated by cable TV and the real-life drama of the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding rivalry, public interest in professional figure skating had dwindled. What remained was snatched up by Disney, which could offer everything from the California Raisins to Donald Duck skating on ice.
“I try not to view the Disney productions as rivals,” Hamill remarked in 1994, just before the sale. “They’re in a league of their own. We don’t have skaters dressed in oversized costumes. Besides, the folks at Walt Disney have always been kind to us. When we performed at The Pond in Anaheim, they even gave me the keys to Toontown.”
