Once Upon A Time

Reg Park and the storybook story

I had an older friend, the boyfriend of this wonderful girlfriend, who I thought was just absolutely beautiful. Her father owned the hotel on the Esplanade in St Kilda. She was Canadian and so she could ice skate. She was taking my friend ice skating and they asked me. So I thought, "Oh, this beautiful girl is going to ice skate, I will watch her go ice skating". As soon as I stepped on the ice I forgot about the girlfriend, the boyfriend who was a friend of mine. I ignored everything else except the ice. I was just absolutely hooked, to put it quite bluntly. And from that day to this I think I still am hooked. It's a career that has taken me all over the world and I did not dream of anything like that.

Reg Park 1950s, London. Courtesy Avis Barber.16

THE JET SET ARE BUSY anointing St Moritz the hallowed ski spot of wealthy scions and the internationally fabulous. The tiny Swiss mountain town with the big, glitz-infused name is well on its way to making winter getaways all the rage for the glamour-hungry and the paparazzi. Aside from Winter Olympics, business here revolves around the ski lodges and the storied Kulm, the slope-side Suvretta and the buzz-filled Badrutt's Palace. The grand hotels where heavy Alpine furniture is never out of style, piano players serenade the lounge-dwellers, and old- and new-moneyed denizens alike sip champagne under dim chandeliers.

Suvretta House has been in the family since Anton Bon opened it in 1912. Four hundred men and five horses working dawn to dusk took two years to build it on the Chasellas plateau. The storybook castle sits 1850 metres in the air amid a spellbinding winter landscape and views of Champfèr and Lake Silvaplan. Unthinkably luxurious, with all the dizzying prices, it has rooms for bridge and billiards, for smokers and tea enthusiasts, a library and a music salon, and several elegant, interconnected banquet and dining rooms.

Reflecting on the breathtaking scenery picture framed by the massive windows of the grand lobby, the young Australian is sure he took a wrong turn at the Hollow Hills and stumbled on Fairyland. "You have to come to Suvretta to train with my pupil Jeanette," wrote his big-name coach before Reg Park left Australia. He and Jeanette Altwegg, the Olympic bronze medallist, trained together in London. He is proud to be first from his country to medal, after placing second in the 1949 British Championships. But he never dreamed of skating outdoors on natural ice in the mountains and snow. "From now on," he thinks, "life is Fairyland".

Jacques Gerschwiler trained Cecilia Colledge, too, the Olympic silver medallist. By all accounts, he is brilliant at teaching school figures and unorthodox teaching free skating. Now, in his early fifties, he teaches princes and princesses on outdoor rinks at the big hotels.

"Well, I want you to coach me," Reg had said in an interview the first day he arrived in London.

"How much can you afford a week?" asked the former world ballroom champion. A pittance thinks the aspiring international.

"Well, I will tell you what I will do, seeing you are so keen..."

Suvretta House is brimming over celebrities from the arts, the movies, politics, and business. Nijinski gave his last major dance in the ballroom. Hollywood actor Douglas Fairbanks opened the ski lift. Gregory Peck, Evita Perón and many more enjoyed sports and fun on snow and ice, extravagant parties and balls, the amicable atmosphere, luxury and above all, discretion. Gerschwiler extends their legacy. He makes his name teaching British champions. But he makes his money teaching the rich and privileged how to have fun in winter wonderland.

"... Seeing you are so keen......how much can you afford?" asks Gerschwhiler, circling the hunted.

"How much do you charge?" counters the young skater, as if a hunter is circling.

"Well, do you know my fees?" The cheeky Australian says, no. He is always polite, but he does not give a hoot about English stuffiness.

"Can you afford thirty pounds?" asks the coach, still managing to conceal his amusement. Thirty pounds! Reg cannot believe the amount.

"I will work it all out, and I will let you know," he says, walking off to find a piece of paper. He thinks his Swiss coach might have found it rather refreshing to deal with someone who did not have money; a little respite from the long, snooty shadow of St Moritz's old winter gentry.

On the first day at Suvretta, his new coach says, "You have to have a patch of ice. You will be over there next to Jeanette." He glances over. Her patch is pristine. His coach should have said, "next to the precision drawing of overlapping eights". Its beauty glistening in the morning sunshine embarrasses him. Figure skaters are excellent at patterns. They earn ninety per cent of the marks, while free skating, the jumps and spins, is comparatively worthless. In forty-five minutes, his patch is a mess of scraped up ice and no figure. Fancy putting me next to the British champion, he thinks.

By the time the World Championships come around in March, his figures are reasonable. He places seventh out of twelve, the first Australian man to compete at the ISU Worlds, and the second to compete internationally after Pat Molony. Gerschwiler gives him faith in himself and a skating technique to last a lifetime. He teaches him control over his wild, flamboyant skating. "I am glad you are wild," his coach says. "I can tame you, but I cannot put life into you if you have not got it. I just love the way you enjoy every minute".

"Oh, you are from Australia," says the well-to-do lady, making sure he understands it is a put down. The banquet dinner after party at the Dorchester in London is a formal affair. "How did you come? By train?"

"Train?" he snorts. "No, I came by ship." He cannot even afford his Olympic dream. Ice skating is not for the poor, and he still has plenty to learn about its condescending airs and graces.

Reg turns down a ten-year contract with Ice Follies, the American show, and accepts a Claude Langdon contract for one hundred pounds a week. Belita, the former Olympian turned film star, will play Robin Hood in Babes In The Wood On Ice. The bigger shows offer secure employment, but to him, they operate like factories. He wants to be free to invent, to explore new avenues. So, he freelances.

"I will do a show, the Christmas shows," he says. "A different one every year from December till March. Then I will do a TV series or something not done before. Or off to Bulgaria to do a show nobody knows because I want to see Bulgaria".

With seven months until rehearsals, a local skater suggests he try John Neale for the summer. Neale does everything at the Westover rink in Bournemouth, except the costume design he outsources to London. No one knows how Johnny stays on budget. Reg decides to turn professional there in Ice Varieties, May to October 1950. Coincidentally, Australia's Pat Gregory is its star.

"Mum", he says into the phone in the ANZ Bank in New Bond Street, "I've decided to work as an ice skater in a show for one year. I have been offered this contract, one hundred pounds". Ivy thinks it is marvellous. Her friends call her Bobby. "And then I'm coming back and I am going to university to be an agricultural scientist."

"That'd be nice, dear".





"DO YOU WANT TO SEE A CLIP of Sonja Henie?" asks Mary Larson. The big lady has the 15-year-old boy under her wing in the back room of Fox Films in Lonsdale Street, Melbourne. "Oh, can I?" he enthuses. She runs the film through until the Olympian turned Hollywood star flickers on in one of her routines. To wide-eyed Reg Park, it is absolute magic.

Mary cuts out a frame with a pair of scissors and gives it to him. Back home, he makes a little light box and he soon has clips out of every one of Sonja's films. A photographer friend makes prints from them. Sometimes on the way out of work, he stuffs the best posters and promotional photos of Sonja under his jumper. With the world at war in 1943, skating means more and more. The Norwegian ice queen is plastered all over his bedroom walls, and he watches her films over and over.

Reg was born at Sandringham in Melbourne on the sixteenth day of February 1928. At four, when William and Ivy separate, his father moves back to New Zealand, where his grandparents live. His grandfather, the first president of AMP, arranges a job for him. Reg and Ivy move in with his English grandmother and aunty in a small house in suburban Armadale.

Every few years, polio erupts, and one day Ivy sends him to a farm outside Ferntree Gully with three other children. He walks two country miles to Lysterfield State School, learning about plants and animals on the way. For three years, Ivy visits every Sunday by train.

When he is nine, Ivy takes him back. They live a few miles from the city in Middle Park, and he still walks to school. One Saturday morning, a friend whose parents own the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda invites him to skate a few doors up at the St Moritz Ice Palais. He wanted to be an actor, but when he steps on the ice, he forgets about beautiful girls who can skate and everything else. He is instantly hooked, and suddenly able to express himself without anybody telling him how.

"I used to play," he tells friends, "Nine, ten, eleven years old, about then. Always imagining theatre. I used to build, and once I started ice skating, it all changed to ice skating rinks, and I'd build them out of junk paper because we didn't have any money. We were quite poor, and I just loved it. I don't know what it was, just this freedom of expression".

Ivy takes him to the London ice ballet Switzerland when it opens at His Majesty's Theatre in the city. A ballet of twenty-two ice girls and boys support world champion skaters. A furniture shop owner offers him a job for one pound a week in his first year at Melbourne High. "I can help pay for things in the war, Mum". He is fourteen. "Look, I don't mind as long as you're happy".

When Ivy remarries, they move into his stepfather's house in bayside Hampton. He studies commercial art at a night school in North Brighton and looks for work as an artist. Another friend connects him to the interior decorating service in George's department store in the city. Soon he has a job in their art gallery.

At fifteen, he finds work in the distribution office of Fox Films in Lonsdale Street. He still wants to go back to school. At night, he trams around the Bay from Brighton Beach to St Kilda to skate in competitions and the small St Moritz ice shows. He makes friends quickly and attends special training sessions between 8 and 10pm. He pays for a lesson a week from Betty Cornwall, Australia's first triple Ladies Champion and a national Pair champion with Jack Gordon. She coaches him for two-and-a-half years until she leaves for Canada. Then he takes lessons from Jack Gordon.

He decides to skate in the world championships one day.





BUZZING WITH OPERA AND THEATRE RAZZAMATTAZZ, the shopping and dining at Covent Garden is among the best in London's West End. The young man emerging from the market stalls stops to read an advertisement for Madame Butterfly, the first opera directed by Australian Robert Helpmann. The Royal Opera House portico stares down portentously, a Greek temple without a god. An earlier building on the site had one, too. Palladio revived the classical porch in the modern world. Copies litter the world in memory of those who have gathered and sheltered under them, from ancient times until today.

John Rich, the first theatre manager on the site, co-founded The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks here in 1735. These days the men's club celebrates the beefsteak as a symbol of liberty and prosperity a few blocks away. The Georgian theatre manager was first to stage The Beggar's Opera, which satirises Italian opera. History credits him with yet another of England's theatrical irreverences.

Before he started on this site, Rich ran the Theatre Royal, Lincoln's Inn Fields successfully for eighteen years. His players seceded from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, risking the despotic wrath of Newcastle, the interfering lord chamberlain. The two playhouses held exclusive rights through Letters Patent to spoken drama in London. Thousands patronised them every night and theatres quickly sprang up in towns and cities right across Britain. The royals tasked Newcastle with suppressing any plays or playwrights considered too critical of the ruling class.

A dancer, acrobat and mime artist, Rich was uneducated and barely literate. He had some curious affectations, too, such as pretending never to recall a name and addressing people with whatever monikers came into his head. Londoners considered his theatre second to Drury Lane until one day he combined a repulsive storyline in the popular commedia dell'arte style with a crazy chase called a harlequinade. It featured the adventures of Harlequin and Columbine, but with ballet, the raw energy of music hall, the sauciness of Victorian burlesque, and the acrobatic power of John Rich.

Under the stage name of Lun, Rich invented the English pantomime. Without speaking, he performed with extraordinary physical agility, emoting elemental desires for food, drink and sex. At the touch of his magic wand, he dazzled audiences with amazing transformations—palaces and temples to huts and cottages, men and women into wheel-barrows and joint-stools, mechanical serpents and flying vehicles. Actors played dragons, ostriches, dogs and camels. Men dressed up as women. For forty-three years, 1717 to 1760, Rich produced a pantomime, most running forty or fifty nights straight.

It was a lot fun, but some Britons saw panto as the downfall of Shakespeare and serious theatre. Not least David Garrick, the rival at Drury Lane, who had little choice but to follow. He limited his to Christmas holiday fun and frivolity, rather than be pilloried by critics. They opened as classical stories with opera and ballet thrown in and a comic "night scene" to finish.

Playhouses rarely retold the original stories straight. Plotlines were for comic or satirical effect, with characters and situations from other stories thrown in. Aladdin might draw on Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves or other Arabian Nights tales. Jack and the Beanstalk might refer to nursery rhymes and other children's stories involving characters called "Jack", such as Jack and Jill. Certain scenes tended to recur regardless of plot relevance, and the ending was usually absurd. Scripts adapted to allow the star to showcase their talents no matter how unrelated.

Commedia dell'arte enacted fairy tales dramatically, and later so did pantomime. For adults originally, but writers continued to adapt them for the young and still do. Children learn to deal with difficult times and certain social situations watching fairy tales. They trigger their imaginations, and help them to find their place in society. They represent the archetypes in their simplest form, simpler than myths and legends.

Dick Whittington and His Cat has been a favourite in Britain since 1814, especially at Christmas. Disney released animated shorts of Jack and the Beanstalk and Puss In Boots way back in 1922. Babes in the Woods in 1932. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for Christmas 1937, Cinderella in 1950, Sleeping Beauty in 1959.





"I WANT YOU TO DO A NUMBER to do with war," says Wendy Jacobs, choreographer of St Moritz ice shows. Reg plays an American soldier in a uniform his girlfriend borrowed from a warship docked at Port Melbourne. Jacobs pairs him with Shirley Carroll, his first skating partner, in Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep.

Figures are not his strong suit. Athletic and flamboyant, he loves dancing to music. He is always trying new things, music no one else dares try. His first piece in a championship is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. The judges are horrified, but he is undeterred. It is the heyday of Light Music, somewhere between classical and popular. He likes to skate to moody, dramatic pieces like Warsaw Concerto, tabloid concertos written for movies, and the BBC light orchestral music.

When the Nationals resume in 1947, Shirley and Reg win the Pairs title, and his partner retires from skating. He is nineteen when Ted Molony asks him to skate with his daughter, Pat, the Australian ladies champion. In Stockholm, she is the first Australian woman in the World Championships, also the Europeans in Davos. When she retires, he partners her younger sister, Gwen. She is his girlfriend.

Advised to get better coaching to get ahead, he trains at the Glaciarium with a former world champion and Olympic medallist who Jack Gordon brought over from Austria. "Felix Kaspar was a strange man," he says. "I think I learnt a lot from him, probably what not to do rather than what to do. He was a very egotistical man, and I was a very flamboyant skater. He was a brilliant skater. I just felt he did not have much interest in me, only the amount of money I was paying for lessons".

A second part-time job in a jewellery store still allows him to skate an hour before work, an hour at lunchtime, and the evening session. He does a few odd jobs. Handmade painted mugs are all the vogue, hand-painted silk scarves and parchment lampshades with painted flowers. And a paper run when he gets time with good tips in the best spot outside the pub.

Bill Taylor wins the national title in 1948, and he is second. He sends introductory letters to London for the British Championships. Still training with Kaspar, he wins the state title. In the nationals, he scores 3.7, 3.8 and one 4. He wins the 1949 title, but his score is not high enough to represent Australia. He needed a 4 in the final marking from two of three judges. "People will not admit it, but there is a big class distinction," he says, resigned now to enter the Worlds by winning the British title.

"Well, that is the end of an agricultural scientist in the family, isn't it?" says Ivy.

"Yes, Mum".

On the way to London, he passes the ship with the Ice Follie tour on board. It has taken Armand Perren ten years to collect a formidable array of international stars from around the world. The show runs for nearly three years, playing His Majesty's and the Palais in Melbourne, then other cities and New Zealand. From this time on, ice shows succeed in Australia.

Back home, a new national secretary discovers the mark required for the Australian Championship is not two-thirds the total, but 3.5. He telegrams Reg at sea, halfway to London. "I can go!" shouts the Australian champion. "I always wanted to represent Australia. I never wanted to represent England".

Reg throws a party in the evening.





THE SKYLINE ON THE CORNER of Leicester Square is theatrically Baroque. Lions and unicorns on the parapets signify England, but the classical facade borrows freely from the French Renaissance. Pairs of caryatids flank the windows, an idea dating back to ancient Greece. The quadriga on the openwork metal cupola is the chariot favoured for racing in the stadia of classical antiquity and the Roman Empire. Like the shows inside, the London Hippodrome's facade is an eclectic pastiche, the city's Folies Bergère, he thinks as he enters.

With a murmur of disbelief, the audience gazes back and forth between the young woman climbing the high diving tower and the little glass-fronted pond at the bottom. A hush falls over the auditorium as she reaches the top and steps onto the springboard. Confidently, she walks out to the edge, pauses to focus, and leans into a dive. Down, down, down she somersaults into the impossibly small pond. The audience erupts. No one sees the harness or high-tension wires, or even a splash.

The incomparable Belita is a professional dancer, actress, swimmer and champion ice skater. Her show Champagne On Ice is in four acts starting with a water ballet with other girls swimming. A stage act follows, then an all stage ballet with modern dance routines, and finally the ice. No one does ballet and dance like Belita. A life-long friend, she stays in touch and always sends a Christmas card, "Love B. When are you going to come so we can have a glass of champagne together?"

Reg performs two numbers in Ice Varieties in Bournemouth and another with a girl while still learning to make the audience enjoy it. Johnny Neale is a hard taskmaster. He dismisses the jumps a star really ought to do and tells him what he has to do. Spins have to be fast and finish like so, the audience clapping "Oh, bravo!" He crashes so often, each night the stagehands take bets on the number. Working hard and playing hard, he learns more in one summer than he ever will again.

The show choreographer suggests classical ballet to help his line. He takes a class every morning for the six-month season. It gives him command of parts of his body he did not have. He develops the feel of a dancer for the music, interpreting it better and adding another dimension to his skating.

Meanwhile, Eve Bradfield, who writes for BBC TV, is devising Babes In The Wood On Ice for 26-year-old Belita at Empress Hall in London. Robin Hood and his Merry Men find the babes in the woods then go under the sea to do the usual ice show acts. One hundred and fifty-five skaters perform in one thousand elaborate costumes with the help of a backstage crew of three hundred.

The show opens just before Christmas in 1950. It is an incredible experience, the first of its calibre for Reg. Perhaps there never has been an ice show as good because the producer is a woman, and her word is absolute law. She will not have anybody doing anything out of place. She knows her craft, and Belita knows hers. Robin only flies because Belita is so good at aerial ballet on wires. Which means he and the other merry men have to fly.

Playing Much the Miller's Son, he is on stage for every one of Belita's scenes. He learns how to act and to speak lines with a voiceover. Every week he earns one hundred pounds, five times his pay at Bournemouth, and three more Wembley shows follow. Puss In Boots On Ice, a reprise of Babes in the Wood On Ice, and Sleeping Beauty On Ice.

In 1953 in Nottingham, Reg finally takes the title of World Professional Champion. Sydney skater Bill Hinchy and Maureen Pain win the Pairs title. Reg does four ice shows for BBC TV and continues skating in the Wembley ice pantos, Humpty Dumpty, Aladdin, and Cinderella.

After Holiday On Ice and the Hilton Hotel in America, Pat Gregory was ready to give it away when Tom Arnold offered her a part in Rose Marie On Ice. It starred Canada's Barbara Ann Scott and a cast of two hundred. Gregory brought the house down as Wanda with her totem number and became famous overnight.

After the show, Pat returns to Australia to warm down in Armand Perren's Ice Follies. Reg returns, too. Perren wants to try a musical rather than variety and chooses Rose Marie. They use the costumes and sets from the original stage production. The wardrobe ladies hang them in the sun.

The Australian production opens just after Christmas 1954. It brings Gregory back to Australian audiences in her famous role. They open in Melbourne, then on to Sydney, and a return season. Their reviews are terrible, but the place is packed night after night, and the show runs for two and a half years. They become quite a family. J C Williamsons are happy with their investment, and the Swiss mountaineer makes enough money to buy racehorses.

Reg starts tap lessons with Ronnie Hay in Sydney, a former Tivoli choreographer. Hay is a hard taskmaster but talented. He also does Puss in Boots On Ice there at the Empire Theatre and His Majesty's Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand, then Spice and Ice.





IT WAS STORYBOOK LOVE between the young gypsy lion tamer and the son of an Italian draper. Sampion Boglioni soon "Frenchified" his name to Bouglione and followed Sonia to France, where they showed fairground menageries. A century later, grandsons turned them into a circus called, The Four Bouglione Brothers. Alexandre set the family name alight in the late 1920s with Buffalo Bill's Circus Stage Show.

The brothers took over, and their name is now inseparable from the Cirque d'Hiver, the Winter Circus. Jacky the gorilla drank only Perrier water and made hammocks out of the curtains in the hotels the troupe stayed. An anaconda squeezed the most attractive women a little tighter than the others. Coco, the foul-mouthed parrot flew to the hotel balconies and screamed "Help!" so loudly the police came rushing round.

The brothers staged three sumptuous pantomimes, La Perle du Bengale, La Princesse Saltimbanque and Les Aventures de la Princesse de Saba. Success after success followed with repeated performances in Paris and big top national tours.

In the 1950s, ice shows and circuses are popular all over the world. The Cirque d'Hiver has a one-ring ice show using a round tank in addition to their one-ring circus. A traditional ice show with chorus girls and comedy acts alternates with the circus ring. In autumn 1952, Reg joins the troupe to perform the ice show in Paris for six weeks and then in the major cities of France. He studies the language on visits to places untouched since the war.

At fifty, the circus owner is considered the gypsy king and his wife is a stunning 23-year-old Egyptian princess. She showers attention on the new skaters, and they lunch together regularly without her grumpy husband.

Reg leaves the show after five months to return to England for a television commitment. On his return some weeks later, he is warned to stay away from the circus,"Bouglione's on the warpath for you". They are about to depart on a tour of Algiers, so he goes straight to Bouglione's office.

"You having an affair with my wife?" the gypsy king demands, pulling a gun on Reg.

"I have not even seen her," he says, backing away in shock. "Only when a group of us go out".

"You have never been alone with her?"

"No!" he says indignantly, mind racing for an alibi. "I have not been alone with her". He has heard killing is lawful in the gypsy pecking order for a crime as treacherous as a betrayal of love. Nothing else matters but pride.

"Anyway, my girlfriend is in the show, and she is with us the whole time".

Bouglione starts to falter. Reg does not speak fluent French, and his agent resolves it. "You were lucky," he tells Reg, "because he could have killed you, and nobody would have questioned it".

Early in the tour, the Circus On Ice sets up at a sports arena in Amiens on the Western Front. The hills and plains of Flanders fields surround the city built around the oldest Gothic cathedral in France. It is full of historical monuments, many bombed by the Royal Air Force during the war. Guests are careful not to wander at night because half the building has gone. Some doors open onto space.

Two old ladies who live on the premises run the hotel. The owner, who lost her husband in the war, loves it and its lifestyle so much, she keeps it going. One night she returns from the underground cellars with rare wine hidden from the Nazis during the occupation. "What better time to drink than with my circus friends," she smiles wickedly.

One night, Reg sails over the edge of the small ice floor and lands on the arena floor, almost breaking his neck. He is not injured, but he has learned a lesson. He admires skaters who work on small ice. It is a refined technique you can learn, he thinks, wanting to conquer it—finding momentum from just two steps, not twenty, and putting more artistry in the jumps than skating prowess. The morning after, he works four or five hours until he can control it. Small ice floors are less demanding, less physically exerting. From then on, he prefers them.

At the Lido Paris, the dance floor opens up for a sheet of small ice to rise and replace it. They have an adagio pair and a man and woman soloists. They ask him to audition, but he cannot commit. The French tour finishes blessed with good fortune, leaving Reg very fond of France.

"I went on to study the French language a lot," he says. "I went back there later to do several shows, one in Paris. I did Sleeping Beauty in a bigger arena again in Paris, and another television show".

After Reg leaves his coach, Gerschwiler, Alison Smith coaches him for a short time. Eventually, he settles on Carlo Fassi whose students include several World and Olympic champions. Fassi is a figure skating icon and master of its politics.6





"WILL YOU DO CINDERELLA for Tom Arnold this summer? A cast of about twelve on the pier at Ramsgate?" The offer is an audition for choreographer of the next Tom Arnold ice show at Wembley. Ice goes into nearly every one of Arnold's summer shows around England. Ramsgate is seventy-eight miles from London— a provincial English seaside town—not his cup of tea. The end of the earth, he thinks.

At 35, Reg Park expects to return to Australia to coach, and so he is pleased to discover he gets along with the show director when they meet. After accepting the offer, he sets about changing the whole concept. Living in a delightful apartment overlooking Ramsgate harbour, he rehearses from nine in the morning till ten at night for five or six weeks. The chorus must finish by a set time under Equity rules, but he works on with the stars until late.

In May, Reg and Austrian Karin Frohner finish fifth in the 1965 World Professional Pair Championships. He met Karin in the Vienna Ice Revue. She finished ninth at the 1960 Winter Olympics and won bronze at the 1962 Europeans. Although fifteen years his junior, they are "a bit romantically attached". She lands the contract to play Cinderella and Reg is the Prince. The show is a bit of a giggle for him, performed in a tiny little hall on Ramsgate pier with waves splashing all around. But it is another success for Tom Arnold.

In winter, he signs on as choreographer for the Wembley ice show, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Tom Arnold Jnr, the godchild of actor-composer Ivan Novello, is very snobby and theatre mad. But they click well, and Tom often wines and dines him at West End restaurants after the show.

"Well, what did you do today?" taunts Reg. "How many millions did you spend, Tom?"

"I bought these beautiful cufflinks for about..." he replies with mock pomp, and they laugh at the standing joke.

"Oh, you poor little rich boy".

Educated at Pembroke, Oxford, Tom does have a fortune, but they get along. When his father dies about the second show in, his mother, Helen, takes over. Arnold's is a theatrical empire; musicals, plays, everything in the West End. The King of Pantomime staged his first in London in 1937, a production of Aladdin, and claimed to have staged four hundred in his lifetime. Now Gerald Palmer is boss, and he and his wife do not have children. They want to adopt Reg.

In the second year, Reg places fifth with a West German in the World Professional Championships in London. The BBC want him for a TV series of eighteen shows, a different one every week. Top variety performers such as Lulu are guest stars. The BBC begins televising Ice Cabaret on 30 August 1968. Reg skates and choreographs the production routines.

The TV series runs for eighteen 40-minute episodes over two seasons (68-9). The regular performers include Ray Alan, the Fred Tomlinson Singers and Jacqueline Harbord, Sally Ross, Janet Mahoney, Bernard Ford and Diane Towler skating. Reg considers these his top-line skaters and holds onto them for Wembley productions because they know his work.10

The BBC set up a dedicated rehearsal studio with a permanent ice floor. They have one day off a week, then orchestra rehearsal and the take. They rehearse and set all the numbers, a minimum of three each week, in four days. Reg and the female lead do solos, and the guest star sings.

Polovtsian dances one week, Rhapsody in Blue the next, then Bolero and so on, anything famous and suited to ice. They write original numbers for the opening and use songs from musicals for background with a different theme every week. The work is his best and most artistically satisfying. It is also his most financially rewarding, earning rerun fees for choreographer and star.

A second BBC TV series, Champagne On Ice, runs for six 45-minute episodes over two seasons (70-1), again choreographed by Reg and directed by Colin Charman. It stars Reg and Jacqueline Harbord with The Mike Sammes Singers and a Corps de Ballet. Performers such as Mungo Jerry, Paul Anka, Frank Ifield and The Hollies guest star on the shows.11

When Reg meets Pablo Marquez, he is working in London to improve his English. They start a relationship, and Reg teaches him to skate and even takes him to India in the chorus of Ice Holiday (1970). The International Ice Spectacular choreography follows in South Africa (1971-2) and the Paris Glacé Varietes choreography for a tour of France (1972).

Reg does ten shows at Wembley, starting as the choreographer, but soon producing the show and sometimes skating the lead. Snow White, two seasons of Sleeping Beauty, three of Cinderella, Dick Whittington, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and the Beanstalk, Robinson Crusoe and finally Aladdin in 1974-5.

The BBC televise Aladdin On Ice with Reg in the title role and a cast including Australia's Carie Richardson and her adagio partner Joop van der Sluijs. Godfrey Charles was the voice of Aladdin. One afternoon, Christopher Molloy, his understudy, is singing one of Reg's big solos And This is My Beloved from Kismet. Singers have to say something appropriate if their skater takes a tumble. "Jesus Christ!" blurts Molloy into the live microphone when his skater falls. Skating past the singer's booth, Reg looks up and mouths one word. It rhymes with "front". 30

The Wembley ice shows are the highlight of his career. He skates all the male leads, and they are well known. Even when he had trouble with his legs, the boss still wanted him in the show. Once he convinced him to play the ugly sister in Cinderella. He could not do the solo work correctly in Sleeping Beauty, so he deliberately made a mess of his makeup and his skating. The kids hissed and booed, and he enjoyed it more than playing the pretty Prince.





FRANCESCO MARQUEZ, Pablo, is on the telephone from Spain. In 1971, after the World Professional Championships in London stopped, Reg asked him if he could get it in Jaca, his hometown at the Pyrenees feet. Reg develops an itinerary, and Pablo presents it to the mayor. The event moves to Jaca in 1974, sponsored by the International Professional Skaters Union.3

Six professional judges cast scores out of ten, but differently. Everything counts, and no single judge scores everything. There is one just for choreography and another just for musical impression. One does the artistic impression, and another does the jumps. One the spins, one the steps. For public impression, the average mark of ten audience members chosen at random is used. They have sponsors, big prize money, and the backing of Spanish television.

Reg and Pablo assemble an ice show company and hire the ice equipment from Tom Arnold at Wembley in London. It does not work. Worse still, they postpone the Balboa opening to the same night as the World Cup in Jaca. Everybody stays home to watch the television, and no one goes to the show. It tours San Sebastian and Saragossa before opening for the summer in a beautiful theatre in Majorca. Again, the ice does not work, and they have to cancel the opening three times. Eventually, they get it going, but the false starts proves fatal, and they have to close a month into a three-month booking.

"It was a financial disaster because the cast was costing a fortune. So, he went on with the show, and we parted company. He did not give a damn about losing the money. He could not have cared less on his side. I was very moral about all the kids because I knew them. Among the cast were my TV kids and some stars I had worked with before".

Heavily in debt, he retires from show skating and does choreography. The first show is for a few nights at Wembley in late May. Already one of rock's greatest superstars, Rick Wakeman's world tour for his album King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table includes an ice show. Twenty-seven thousand people pay to see it over three nights. It sells out and raises publicity for the prog-rock album, but ultimately loses money.

Later in the year, Reg choreographs Whitehorse Inn On Ice and skates the male lead. They tour France in the first of two shows he does to repay the debt. He returns to Wembley to do Dick Whittington On Ice for Christmas 1975. The following year, he does Sleeping Beauty On Ice, his last at Wembley. For decades, Tom Arnold's ice shows have been the greatest spectacle in London theatre.

Now with an enviable reputation in the ice world, Reg flies to Jaca every year to judge world-class professional skaters. The organisers ask him to send Australian competitors, and he skates in two or three himself when there are none. It is a prestigious event with television coverage in Europe.

Reg returns to Melbourne and coaches for nine months away from business failures. The father of one of his students wants her to star in a show, and they decide to stage Sleeping Beauty On Ice at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne. Opening night in the lead up to Christmas is "the hottest week in kingdom come," and the rented ice equipment will not work. This time, with ten thousand dollars, split equally with the father of the skater in a limited company, he does not feel as bad when it falters. "Pantomime skates on thin ice," screams the headline when the ice equipment bursts into life the other side of Christmas. The show runs for a month starring Yvonne Visser, Grant Goddard, Barbara Sheehy and David Argue.

"It was brilliant, and the Dutch skater was brilliant, the whole thing. But unfortunately, I was not a businessman, I did not have it all tied up. I thought, I would never do anything again".

He sets up the El Circo Ruso Sobre Hielo back in Spain, re-hiring many of his London TV and show skaters. He continues as the show director then returns home to Melbourne in 1980. "We're opening a rink," says the voice on the telephone. "Will you come up and set up our skating school?" The new ice rink at Phillip in Canberra is no Wembley, but within four years, he has coached about eight skaters to the nationals from scratch, and some skate at higher levels. After the second year, he does an ice show, a miniature Wembley, with a hundred kids and big themes.

In 1981 and 82, Velinka Arraez, a sixteen-year-old Melbourne skater, trains at Jaca with head coach Alison Smith who coached John Curry. It is Reg's idea, and he arranges it all. Velinka's mother chaperones the Spanish-speaking skater. The standard of the Council-operated rink and facilities in the foothills and the beauty of the place are striking. Reg is larger than life. In 1985, Velinka moves to Canberra and works at the Phillip rink for ten years.

On Jaca's tenth anniversary, Reg is not a judge, but the guest of honour. Pablo introduces him to a guitar concerto, which he uses to choreograph the opening ceremony. Twenty-four ex-world champions start at five in the morning and finish by eleven. They spend five hours without a break for one televised appearance. It receives a standing ovation. People cry. "It clicked, a most satisfying point in my career. I have loved the music ever since. I had people skating who had worked for me for years, some on TV, some with the John Curry Show".

One day Pablo has a terrible heart attack and cannot work for two years. The Championships grind to a halt. They lose sponsors, and the break proves fatal. Sixteen times between 1974 and 1998, the Campeonatos del Mundo de Patinaje Artístico Professional Sobre Hielo featured skaters from over thirty countries. The organisers hired Reg Park to judge "practically every one". Among the other Australians who competed there were Russell Marshall, Yvonne Visser, Robyn Burley, Glenn Neate, Belinda Coulthard, Sally Patton, Billy Schober, and Mark Basto.





"NOW LISTEN, GUYS," begins the address to the US Army hockey team at GI Garmisch in the Bavarian Alps. Never before have so many odd shapes assembled in the ballet studio. Garmisch is a spectacular wedding of Bavarian good-nature with Olympian mother nature in a paradise-like setting of mountains, valleys and lakes unspoiled, if not enhanced, by the integration of GI Garmisch. Reg had agreed to run ballet classes for young children to make a little extra money. Now the CO wants his hockey team. He read somewhere ballet was good for training ice skaters.

"I have a strange thing to ask you," the Commanding Officer had said. "Will you coach our ice hockey team?"

"What, in classical ballet?"

"Yes".

"You will have to order them to do it. These guys, ice hockey players, if I get them to do a classical barre ballet, they will be going, 'Ho, ho, ho, not for me,' you know".

"You want to win that trophy?" he asks the GIs, assessing the prospect with a quick visual of their physical condition. "We need to improve your reaction time. We have to build up the core strength in your muscles, and this is how we are going to do it."

The international show skater coaches the team for three months. He is tough, he works them, and nobody complains. Nobody misses a class. He develops strength and flexibility, from their ankles through the calves, knees, thighs, glutes and abdominals. They could be dancers by the end if they wanted. They will be ready for the quick mental reactions demanded by ice hockey, and capable of things they never dreamed.

When the war was over, the United States built recreation centres in their zone of Allied-occupied Germany. With the worst behind them, locals marvel at the Americans, so casual, so lavish, and so different. Some even adopt their chewing gum and cola culture. After Rose Marie On Ice and the Tivoli shows, Reg needed a change. Pat Gregory got her introduction to American ice shows through a worldwide network of Terry Rudolph contacts. "Write to her and see," she told him, and sure enough, the producer agreed to take Reg at the Casa Carioca. He discovers another Fairyland at the ski resort of Garmisch and its sister town, Partenkirchen.

The Americans built the Casa Carioca nightclub right next door to the Olympic ice skating stadium. The one Adolph Hitler had built for the controversial 1936 Winter Olympics when the two towns merged. Nestled in the Werdenfels, a valley so flat many locals commute by bicycle, the new nightclubs and American-style hotels provide the troops with a recreational lifestyle like home. The Bavarian empire of the US Armed Forces extends to managing local hotels and re-training German staff. Bavarians nickname the merged community Ga-Pa.

The Army hired Terry Rudolph, a former American dancer of Hungarian heritage, to produce and direct nightly ice shows at the Casa Carioca. She models them on English repertory theatre, shrewdly creating a springboard to ice show stardom. Only three or four local skaters perform, the rest are internationals. The servicemen stay in the hotel on a three-day leave, enjoying the show, and dancing to the hotel orchestras. American food and drink are served American-style. Everything is American.

After a year of work, Rudolph brokers a contract for her skaters in one of many hotel ice shows spread all over America, the biggest at the Conrad Hilton, Chicago. She earns an agent commission on contracts that might run three or four years on lucrative salaries. She loves the work, but she is also an astute businesswoman and makes a lot of money. She cannot skate, but she is a dancer, and everybody is the better for it.

The Casa Carioca has a live 17-piece German orchestra, a dance floor that retracts to reveal a 30 by 40-foot ice stage, and Mama Rudolph's costumes. Mama is a strong woman. No one dare say a bad word about her work. "If it was good enough for so-and-so to wear," she says, "you are going to wear it". Mama buys old costumes from the Conrad Hilton in Chicago, pulls them apart, and transforms them into magnificent creations.

The English-speaking girls love to date. Some marry and go back to the States. It is a good place for homesick GIs to see a little bit of home, but some prefer authentic German hospitality. Psychology works in reverse, and many finish up marrying German girls.

Skaters do an hour of ballet to start the morning, then an hour of acrobatic class. They either learn it all, or Rudolph replaces them when their contract is up for review. A two-hour rehearsal might follow, all the parts, solo work, pair work, and chorus work. Everybody does everything in a cast of twenty-five to thirty-five. She sends them off to the cosmetic surgeon to have a nose job, have the eyes fixed, or the ears. She is mad about having the boys' ears done if they stick out. She does it with everybody, turning everyone into beautiful people.

Reg and Rudolph develop a kind of a love-hate relationship. She wants him to have a nose job. Halfway through his stay, the Commanding Officer asks if he can carry on the show. "Oh God, is she leaving?" Yes, he replies, it will be a good salary, a good job. He does not know the CO is just trying to get rid of Rudolph because he does not like her. Until one day Rudolph corners him and drily says, "You are trying to take my job".

Most skaters pass through the Casa Carioca before becoming professionals. Terry Rudolph is a defining influence on the presentation of his performance during a formative part of his career. Reg returns to Australia for Ecstasy on Ice and two Christmas performances of Robinson Crusoe On Ice at the Tivoli. But the Casa is now a base, and he has a room there always. The pay is peanuts, but long-time cast members can buy things like liquor dirt cheap in the American PX store.

The Ga-Pa GI ice hockey team wins the trophy.





THE FIRESTORM MOVES at 20km an hour, the fastest rate of spread of a forest fire anywhere. It is unstoppable, and fire chiefs know it will burn through the pine plantations and into Canberra. "No one needs to get out," they say on the radio. The next minute, police are banging on the door of his home in Doyle Terrace, Chapman, and the top of Cooleman Ridge is on fire. "Get out! Get out! Get out!"

Reg is 73. Tall gums go up in flames behind him as he drives off with his cat. A tree comes down across the entry to his garage. If his car had been there, he would not have gotten out. Neighbours trapped in their houses. It is terrifying. A mini-tornado comes around Lincoln Close and tears the insides out of the remaining homes. The car lifts at the back, and he thinks, this is it, on my way out.

By five at night, houses have burned down in Chapman and five other suburbs. Four people are dead, four hundred and thirty-five are injured, and five hundred homes are gone. All he has left is the car and his passport.

In the aftermath, the Manzano family and the secretary of his skating association are among the first to help. He has to go to the world championships in Washington with Miriam in a few weeks. Two other students are skating internationally. He does not know where to go. The community rally around, and he decides to stay in Canberra, his home of more than twenty years. Eighteen months later, he lives on the pension in a small replacement house he had rebuilt from the insurance. He has no garden, the topsoil is gone, but he paints and does solo exhibitions between bouts of depression. Close friends say trauma has triggered the early onset of dementia-like disorders.

The coroner report finds authorities failed to attack the fires early or provide adequate warning to the community about the growing danger. They underestimated the scale of the firestorm. George Negus follows four families in a six-month ABC documentary tracking the aftermath. Reg is one. It is a kind of therapy.

It had taken a lifetime of travelling before Reg finally settled in Canberra in 1980, bought a house, extended it, and filled it with memorabilia of his life. His idol Sonja Henie covered his walls again, this time surrounded by everyone he had skated with, his friends, the places he has been. He worked the camera from the PX store in Garmisch particularly hard, creating thousands of slides of his life, his trips to Europe with Ivy, every show he ever did. Ivy moved in after his stepfather died. The kids from the ice rink adored her. He had a cat and a garden.

In their younger days, Reg and Pablo lived a quiet life in London and travelled together. They were a couple for eleven years until around 1990. Reg did not re-partner. Childless, he felt his coaching connection with kids and the Christmas Ice Follies shows kept him young. He designed, created and choreographed the ice spectacular every year, overseeing and guiding every aspect—sets, props, costumes, story and music—until the late 90s.

A coach and mentor of Sharyn Renshaw for years, she recalls following him at the front of a single line in the opening show at the Canberra rink. Stepping onto the ice when the music started, he tripped and ended up on his feet facing her. "We cracked up, struggling to keep the tears back, laughing the entire number. He was a friend, fun-loving, caring and full of life. We visited his mum and helped in the garden, headed off to the beach together. They are times I have always cherished."

Reg coached many skaters to the national and international level, including Miriam Manzano from eleven in the mid-80s. He was unprepared for the loss of his mother. He painted to fill the void, taking classes with Canberra artist Bernard Hardy. Ivy was more like a sister to him deep down. Not a very happy woman because of what she went through, particularly marrying into a family that did not accept her.

"She is backing me all the way," he would say. "She has always been for me. Whatever I did, she agreed. Years later, I brought her to London, and she saw me in the shows. I think I made her proud. It was one of my happiest moments". He did not like his English stepfather, Leslie Whitty, although he was grateful he was good to his mother. Reg bought their first house and a car.

In the 90s, Miriam Manzano won her first Australian Senior Ladies title and began to compete overseas. In 1999, the local skating association created the Reg Park Artistic Trophy, drawing competitors from all states. It aims to advance the art of figure skating. Reg also won the Australian Year of the Elderly Persons Achievement Award and the Australian Sports Medal in 2000.

In 2004, the national association inducted Reg into its inaugural Hall of Fame. He coached many skaters until his retirement in 2009, including Stuart Beckingham and Kacie Shelley. Miriam Manzano retired in 2006 as a six-time Australian Senior Ladies Champion. Also coached by Liz Cain, Colin Jackson, Magda Mayer and Kathy Casey, Miriam won nine Australian Championship medals, and she was a four-time medallist on the international podium. Manzano ranked in the top sixteen at the 2002 World Championships in Japan and the 2005 ISU World standings top ten.

Reg met Cayla Pothan in 1982 and coached her for twelve years. "His mum and I were both born on the same day," the skater says, "and celebrated our birthdays together until she passed away. Reg gave me away at my wedding in 2003". Cayla helped in his garden, visited frequently in later years and regularly talked about skating, gardening, students and mum at the nursing home. "Reg taught me to stand up for myself, to garden, to be a better person. He was the best listener, friend, comedian and wonderful human—the father figure I never had".

In 2007, the local skating association honoured Reg with Life Membership for "his contribution to the sport of figure skating in the ACT". The ACT Sport Hall of Fame honoured him five years later. "He was such a talented, visionary, extraordinary man," says Debbie Carlisle, another former pupil. "I have no doubt Reg instilled many important life values in me".

"Skaters who worked with Reg were his family for so many years," recalls adagio skater Carie Richardson. Their love for him ran deep, and sometimes he was the Best Man at weddings. "Joop and I considered him a close friend, and he chose us for several of his shows".

Reg Park had been in the ice show at Wembley so often, wrote a London theatre critic, he may as well change his name to Wembley Park, the nearest tube station.26 Avoiding the "factory shows", as he called them, Reg was proud to freelance for most of his professional career and never be out of work. He came to international attention, making a living in the sport he loved.

He spoke German, French and Spanish and continued to study the languages in retirement. Ironically, he was prone to falling and spraining ankles in an era when recovery could take weeks, not days, and a year or more for breaks. Happily, he found he could skate through pain as soon as he heard the music. He considered this an innate ability of natural performers, unlike those who, though technically brilliant, were just not theatrical. He never let his understudy on. He was always the centre of attention and unrelenting in support of figure skaters.

Reg competed in the World Professional Championships seven times and twice in the Pairs event. He skated for seventy years, from age eleven in 1939 at the new St Moritz Ice Palais in Melbourne, until he retired in Canberra at 81 in 2009. He died in Canberra at ninety-one on 27 September 2019. At rest with his mother, Bobby Whitty (Ivy Clarke), at Norwood Park in Canberra, the local skating community celebrated his life at a special event.