MATTHEWS, Pat

BORN JUNE 19TH 1925 in Melbourne, the only daughter of Rupert and Pauline of Aloha St Kilda Road Melbourne, the Victorian mansion built in 1890 that became The Willows restaurant and reception centre. [1] Her father owned a station in Hay, New South Wales, but he was a solicitor's clerk who played first class cricket for Victoria at university. A captain of F Company, 5th Battalion AIF, [2] he received the Military Cross during World War I "for conspicuous gallantry during operations".

Matthews began skating at Melbourne Glaciarium in 1935 at the age of 10. "I held the Victorian and Australian skating titles when I was just 14," she said. "By the time I was 16, I'd already begun thinking about a career as a ballet skater. Then came the war and what few shows we put on in Melbourne were almost discontinued. I did some work as a skating instructor, but spent most of my time working at the American Red Cross Canteen." [569] The GI Joes there told her about John H Harris' Ice Capades, and so began her correspondence with the show's producer. [3]

A gold medal skater, Matthews is the 1939 Victorian and Australian Speed Skating champion, and runner-up to June Weedon for the 1939 Australian Women's Figure Skating Championship. [4] In 1940, she skated on the stage of His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne after the show "Switzerland" with Patricia Molony, the Victorian Junior Champion, and Betty Cornwall, a former Victorian champion. A soloist with Nancy Thompson at the Glaciarium ice carnival, she became the 1940 state Figure Skating Champion, defeating Patricia Molony and Gwen Hallam at St Moritz ice rink. [570] Molony went on to become the first Australian competitor in the World and European championships in 1947.

But war put an end to Matthews' competitive skating, as it did for many others. The Olympics cancelled, she spent 3 years in the Red Cross instead, then turned professional. The contract with Ice Capades, the biggest ice show in the USA, came in February 1946. Her passage to America cancelled, she and her mother eventually flew the 12,000 miles by clipper plane to audition in whatever capacity the producers could use her, "even if it's only selling peanuts." [569] The only Australian, she soon became one of four stars of the 150-strong company that toured most of the big North American cities, 48 weeks of the year.

At 5ft 7in tall, she weighed 8st 10lb. We know, because the company regularly checked. All the skaters had to keep up the same weight, and very few drank or smoked. [571] Speaking frankly, she said show skating was completely different to competitive skating, and Ice Capades girls were hand-picked mainly for personality and appearance, then taught to skate if necessary.

Back home with her parents for 6 weeks in 1948, she trained at Melbourne Glaciarium, then off to Pittsburgh for Ice Capades rehearsals, expecting to return for good at the end of the tour. But in December she starred in Ice Cycles of 1949 in Hollywood, and then in August 1949, she married show skater James Wright of San Francisco in London. Wright also performed in the show, and they held their reception in her dressing room at Empress Hall between performances. She stayed on as the star of Ice Cycles of 1950, somehow finding time in July to again return home to train, perform and choreograph her routine Birth of a Butterfly which featured in the London show in 1950.

Her choreography took her to Captain of Cadets with Ice Capades in the early 1950s, then ballet captain. Harris, the show's producer, dubbed the chorus line Ice Ca-pets and listed their vital statistics in the early programs with Playboy-like precision. Former Ice Ca-pet, Deborah Brandt called it "a Las Vegas revue on ice for families". In those years, the ice show achieved the same ideal sought by Broadway showmen such as Florenz Ziegfeld: exhibitionism fused with all-American kitsch. It enjoyed years of smashing box-office success before its decline during the 1980s, and its ultimate demise in 2000. By then, there were few in the figure-skating world who mourned its death.

Matthews' marriage ended in divorce, and she later married accountant Theodore Allen Balzer from Des Moines, Iowa. After a 13-year skating career barnstorming North American civic centers, she raised a family in California and died there in Sacramento on June 7th 2011, survived by three children from her last marriage. Far, far away from the streets of East Malvern and Melbourne Glaciarium where her dream began.


Selected Cuts of Ice Cycles of 1949, Empress Hall, Earls Court, London.