The Professionals

Jimmy Bendrodt and the Ice Palais Bears

The Association went back on its contract with me to provide teams. It pulled all its teams out of the Ice Palais, and refused absolutely to instruct its referees to apply the rule of the same in accordance with the International ice hockey code. Ask the Association this plain, straight question: Why did it refuse to give this guarantee? The Association's greatest referee, by the way, has resigned, or is resigning, as a protest against its conduct. Somewhere in the vicinity of 70 members, including the best players imported and local, have resigned, and now this truly Gilbertian collection of athletic nondescripts, instead of getting behind the game, are fulminating all sorts of threats against me.

Jim Bendrodt Portrait by Judy Cassab, Archibald Prize Finalist, Sydney, 1957.

THE SITTER FOR JUDY CASSAB looks elegantly focused on something, his appearance much like an elderly Fred Astaire or Somerset Maugham. A work in progress, blending in with the luminous walls of the painterly Sydney home like a chameleon. Cassab painted Packer last year, but this entry for the 1957 Archibald Prize is at least cultured. The imported silk suit, the red carnation buttonhole, the white silk pocket square, and the manicured hands are without a doubt at home with the Meissen porcelain and Bohemian crystal that J C Bendrodt collects. They lend emphasis to whatever it is that resides behind that resolute stare. Even at sixty-six, one reporter said, Jimmy Bendrodt looked like a man who had lived, but one with whom you did not mess. A former pro boxer and lumberjack, or so he said, with a penchant for bouncing drunks and a face that did not display a single scar from the weapon of choice during the vicious era of razor gang wars in Sydney. He is pugnacious when threatened.

Since that evening outside his own home, the menace of cutthroat razors intrudes upon his thoughts more often than he cares to recall. Two mobs occupied Kellett Street for hours. Maybe forty gangsters, leaning against houses, sitting in gutters, working up courage from bootleg beer and cocaine. Tilly Devine's armed crew marched on Kate Leigh's sly grog shops taunting her gang all afternoon and into the night. Throwing bottles, yelling obscenities, each waiting on the other to make the first move until eventually he leans out his first-floor window and tells them to stop.2 At thirty-eight, he is a 5-foot 8-inch, 10-stone 10-pound ex-pat dandy from Canada who looks like Fred Astaire. The bottles and death threats hurled through the window drove him back, and when he returned with his revolver and fired a warning shot in the air, everyone lost it. The gangsters inflicted maximum damage on each other with guns, bottles, stones, boots, fists and razors.2

J C Bendrodt, the prominent Sydney dance promoter, uses the off-seasons at the Glaciarium in Sydney for jazz and dance throughout the Roaring Twenties. Every night. The Charleston and Black-bottom crazes spill over onto the ice floor that hosts marathon dances and the professional dancing championships of Australia. After a quick fling with acting at J C Williamsons in Melbourne, Bendrodt taught dancing at Macdonnell House in Pitt Street, Sydney. Two decades of dancing, from 1919 when dancing meant jazz. You danced in the afternoons, in the evenings, at night in dimly lit cabarets, you danced until the small hours, and your feet ached, and you could scarcely hold your head up.3

Ice skating in Australia began as a social and recreational pursuit for those who could afford the time and money—society men and women and public school athletes. During the Twenties, ordinary Australians took up skating through the sports programs of the new government schools and universities and a growing public interest in winter sports. Proficiency tests helped skaters reach Bronze, Silver and Gold medal standards much like in winter sports nations. Enthusiasts skated in waltzing and ten-step championships and grand ice carnivals. Stylish young women followed the skating fashion trends of London and New York. Melbourne and Sydney were a part of a touring circuit of world-class skaters from Europe and North America, where ice skating was all the rage.

World-famous Sonja Henie, and Sadie Cambridge and Albert Enders popularised the sport during the 1920s. Henie attended her first Olympic games in 1924, won her first Worlds in 1927, and gold at the Olympic Winter Games in 1928. Public interest progressively gathered momentum through newsreels, touring ice show spectaculars, such as Ice Follies and Sonja Henie films. The ice rinks in Melbourne and Sydney were hubs for all winter sports, extending out to the frozen lakes on Mt Kosciusko and Mt Buffalo. Skaters enjoyed healthy exercise indoors, particularly dancing on ice to resident bands and orchestras. They competed in egg and spoon races, relays, barrel jumping, ice hockey. Skated in fancy dress balls, watched or joined in ice shows and exhibitions by local and overseas ice skaters and dancers, played ice cricket, ice croquet, ice polo. Speed tests, three-legged races, balloon and stick races, and skipping were often in the program of events.

The Palais Royal dance hall opened in 1923. It held 5500 people with 3000 dancing to Billy Romaine in the Hall of Industries at the showgrounds. Bendrodt imported many other bands and acts in the face of government and union obstacles, including black minstrels. He set up a company, took up horse racing and breeding, and later brought jazz pianist Frank Ellis and his Californians from San Francisco. Thousands of fans regularly flock to his dances.

He opens the palatial Trocadero at the height of the Great Depression. It is the first purpose-built ballroom in Sydney with an orchestra led by Frank Coughlan, the father of Australian jazz. Cream tablecloths and scarlet napkins. Glistening cutlery and glasses. Elaborate floral centrepieces of cream, pink and scarlet carnations, white magnolias, frangipani and tuberoses. High-backed chairs of padded cream velvet.4 Ordinary people pay a small admission charge to cut a rug in stylish, high-class luxury.

Renewing a love affair with Melbourne money after the new Palais de Danse opens on the St Kilda foreshore, Jimmy promotes his Palais Royal dances and bands in both cities and plans Ice Palais rinks in both. He intends to open the new Ice Palais during the Commonwealth Games in Sydney in 1938. The local ice hockey association also want to participate in the big event. Negotiations begin between Victoria, Canada and Britain. They break down when Canada asks for one pound per day per player for out-of-pocket expenses. Leo Molloy at the Melbourne rink pulls out, leaving the Sydney rinks unable to afford it.

On January 25th, Royal Ice Skating Palais Pty Ltd lodge plans to alter the Royal Hall of Industries into an ice skating rink. They propose a new concrete floor in the centre of the large hall and underfloor excavation for cooling equipment, including piping, machinery rooms and a snow pit to keep the ice frozen. The concrete slab on sand measures 193 by 197 feet or 18,721 square feet in total.22

When the Palais Royal dance hall re-opens at 8 pm on Friday, June 10th, 1938, it has magically transformed into the opulent Ice Palais featuring Canadian figure skating stars and an imported ice hockey team called the Bears. "The Ice Palais Welcomes You," in wicked scarlet, greets skaters beneath the glassy surface of the freshly cut ice. Murals of mountain scenery adorn the walls, and the ceiling is a star-studded midnight blue. A wide rust-coloured carpet all around the rink is covered cabaret-style with tables. Dunbar Poole, who retired from Sydney Glaciarium a few months earlier, is back to manage the new rink, and spectators watch fashion models parade on the ice to the swing of the Billy Romaine 14-piece band. Clarrie Hislop, British champion Freddie Tomlins, and Norwegian Junior champion Inger Kragelund skate the exhibitions Sonja Henie declined.

Skating is well and truly in the public spotlight. If you can walk, you can skate, screams the Ice Palais slogan. Ka-ching! Ka-ching!


BIG NEWSPAPER ADS taunt locals and promote the Ice Palais Bears as unbeatable. A week before, the Bears captain Tory insults ice hockey international Jim Brown. "Australia is a long way below international ice hockey standards,  he says. There is too much individualism and not enough teamwork in Australia. It would cost £500 (about $40,000) to bring a leading overseas coach to Australia for a season, but the result would be worth it. Australia would then be strong enough to send a team to England, where the standard, although high, is just short of Olympic requirements." Brown wryly points out that England currently holds the Olympic championship, even though its national team includes five Canadians, like many other top Olympic ice hockey nations who can pick from the best players in the world. Brown believes Australian ice hockey is competitive with the mid-ranking nations in the sport.10

Each game sells out. The Bears win ten of eleven games and tie the other. After the first three challenges, they have 22 goals to 5 against Panthers 3-2, Glebe 8-3, and Monarchs 11-0.9 Fans know the long-awaited game against St George is the acid test. St George might have four players in Bears class: Jimmy Brown, Percy Wendt, Jim McLachlain and an NHL Black Hawks one-gamer, Tom Coulter.9

The game is played hard with furious body-checking and a very high skill level. Only defending players are allowed to body check in their defensive zone, and only against an attacker in possession of the puck, never in the back, not gathering momentum, not within 5-feet of the boards, and not with the knee or elbow or stick pushed out in front. The Bears hold St George scoreless to win, 1-0, Robertson netting the match-winning goal assisted by Fielder. The crowd repeatedly hoot St George and count them out each time they break the checking rules. Referee Norm Turner sends off Tom Coulter and Stu Fielder and cautions others.12

Robertson falls and hits his head heavily against the boards. He recovers after a few minutes but falls again, and the back of his head hits the ice. He is carried off but returns at the start of the second half, only to be knocked out for the third time, recover again, and score the game-winning goal. Turner orders several St George players off in the second half, and there are as many as eight prone on the ice in a melee at one time.12 The regular hockey journalist says it was a shame to see Robertson, the Bears star, targeted and "continually bashed to the ice surface by illegal play".11

Jim Brown, the St George captain, plays despite bleeding internally from a game a few days earlier. Both Percy Wendt and Widdy Johnson are strangely quiet and later side with Bendrodt. One newspaper says Tom Coulter is best on the ice, despite his illegalities, and Robertson, Clifton and Fielder were not far behind. Tory and Brown were "good without rising to heights".11 Carson in net for the Bears played with a shattered nose from his last encounter protected by a baseball helmet but did not have to face any shots from close range due to the quality of the Bears skating defense. Scotty Fraser in net for St George stopped three certainties.

Jimmy Bendrodt objects to the officiating and writes to both the St George club and the association. On receiving the letter, Brown said it contains a strong suggestion that Coulter is guilty of dirty play which the writer should withdraw. "It is about time some stand is made before the game is ruined," he says. "Strong efforts are being made to commercialise the sport, much to its detriment."13 Tom Coulter reminds everyone he has his reputation back home to protect, as both a player and a referee. Bendrodt requests two referees with no rough play at future games at the Ice Palais.

It might have come to rest there, except for the executive officers of the association who go namelessly to the Truth newspaper with a rebuttal of the two referee idea. The shadowy figures got personal instead, "Bendrodt might be an expert at dancing, but he was not in a position to tell men of years standing how to run the great sport of ice hockey. The IHA of NSW has existed and prospered without the aid of Mr Bendrodt...fighting for a vital principle that it is the controlling body and that it and its referees will not be told by a comparative newcomer and promoter that a game is too rough."14

Bendrodt shows players how to depart the state association to form their own. The dispute turns nasty, leaving Percy Wendt, Widdy Johnson, Bede Moller and other top players out of the state side, out of the sport for a season, and probably the war years. It spreads to Victoria, affecting the state captain, Ellis Kelly. The state association executive threatens Bendrodt and the breakaway players all it can, imposing punitive measures through its affiliation with the Australian Olympic Federation, and player suspensions from two to five years duration.

State secretary, Ted McCabe, issues a statement published in the Truth newspaper which reiterates its earlier position less arrogantly and says there is no foul play. Hypocrisy such as this must have been hard to stomach: "Ice hockey in New South Wales was an amateur sport, and the association would not agree to it being exploited for financial gain."15 About fifty players and officials sign a pledge of loyalty to the association.

"If I allowed the position to continue," replied Bendrodt, "it would simply develop into a donnybrook when any team with very little knowledge of ice hockey, but with skates and boots, and armed with lethal sticks, could go in and bash the brains out of anybody. I brought here the finest team of ice hockey players; in fact, the only team of international standard that Australians have been privileged to see. I issued a challenge to all Australian teams whose appearance was guaranteed by the Ice Hockey Association. It said that the games would be played strictly in accordance with their rules. Their rules mark you, not our rules! And their referees, not our referees!

"After the fourth game, it became obvious that the spectators were antagonised. The press described the brutality and grossly illegal tactics of the game. I have forgotten more about ice hockey than the gentlemen who run the association know. Among their players here and in Victoria are 25 at the most who could possibly make a third rate amateur team in the junior grade at home. As a result of my activities and investments of thousands of pounds in ice hockey, the association has had its greatest chance. It threw it away because of personal animus, petty spite and jealousy."16

Bendrodt's final word on the matter is a bet— £100 (about $8,000) to nothing that the state association cannot assemble a team to beat the Bears.


THE YOUNG SWIMMER representing Canada at the 1938 Commonwealth Games in Sydney is from Kenora. When Jim Prentiss contacts the young goalkeeper for the Kenora Thistles back home, Russ Carson seizes the day. He makes contact with the owner, who agrees to sponsor four Kenora players to visit. Two are first-line Clayton Flyers, Northwestern Canada Allan Cup finalists the previous winter. The Allan Cup is the amateur men's ice hockey championship trophy of Canada. They fill out the line-up with four young locals and two Canadians already in Sydney, who agree to take on all three roles of captain, coach and manager. The association accepts the team application for affiliation.

For the first time in Australia, two rinks host the ice hockey premiership season. Games seem slower and less exciting on the new 61 by 30m rink than the smaller Glaciarium. The promise of more Sydney ice time suggests a bright future, but as Syd Tange will reflect when he looks back many years later, "who could foretell what lay ahead?"

The Bears ice hockey team are amateurs, says Bendrodt. The local association smirks and says they are pros and bans them from local leagues. They grew up in foreign Leagues more advanced than anything made available to Australians by their associations. Out here, they are in a league of their own, whether or not they are pros. Watching defeat by double-figures is not a sport, but Bendrodt says he only wants to show local fans, players and controlling authorities the potential of fast, skilled, world-class competitors. He wants the Bears to play at the Ice Palais and not the Glaciarium because he alone is sponsoring the visit. The association agrees, and it causes no problems with the rival rink. Juniors play matches at the new rink.

The Bears wear the colours of the Trocadero, the colours of Canada. Jack McNaughton, Vic Freeman, Arthur Billington and George Curtis have less hockey experience combined than a state player but play well enough to give a Canadian a rest. A cynic might say that demeans the local game. The two Canadians who played in local Ice Palais teams are George Barlok from Saskatoon, a state player and centre for the West Panthers, and Ken Tory from Northern Alberta, centre for East Monarchs.

The Kenora players are goalie Russ Carson, Stewart Fielder, Frank Clifton and Donald Spike Robertson. All but Carson played with the 1935-6 Kenora Thistles.8 Spike played for the Thistles each season from 1935-6 until '37-8 then disappeared from 1938-9 until 1949. So did Clifton and Fielder on and off, although Fielder never returned.8 All four visit Australia in the off-seasons and stay for quite some time. Carson remains the rest of his long life. Spike Robertson, the sandy-haired and helmeted left-winger, is the Bears most spectacular player. Captain Ken Tory, a 6-foot 4-inch power forward, easily brushes aside local opponents. The Canadians are all tall, very fast and combine well.


WHEN CANADIANS Balork and Tory make the state team, Victoria issues an ultimatum: withdraw them, or the Goodall Cup is off. "We refuse to allow another state to dictate the personnel of our team," an association executive tells the press with the assurance there are no rules in the books prohibiting the playing of Canadians. The Victorian association and the local Glaciarium management decide the Melbourne rink will not be available for interstate games if Canadians play. When the dust settles, each side is allowed one. Fred Turner, the Canadian Trade Commissioner in Melbourne, coaches Victoria with Canadian ex-pat Spot Lloyd winning most outstanding player in at least one game. The NSW association play Balork and try to have British speed skater Freddie Tomlins race for them, an English boy who had just won the NSW title. Victoria protests again, and local Jack Douglas replaces Tomlins. Hap Holmes of four Stanley Cups fame accompanies the New South Wales team to Melbourne to see "the standard of play, possibly returning with two American professional teams".19 Everyone is on the make. After a tie, New South Wales win 2-0, 2-1.

At the end of the season, the Ice Palais Bears play a select team Australia with Victorian representatives Ellis Kelly, Johnny White, Spot Lloyd and Colin Mitchell.7 The Bears beat the New South Wales All-stars, 9-4, and the Australian team, 5-4 and 8-3 later that month. They return to Canada on Remembrance Day, and officials here say: "The visit greatly assisted in raising the standard of the game in Sydney. Their tactical work and positional play have been something new to Australian players who have not had the opportunity of witnessing games played overseas, and much has been learned of methods not previously exploited."17

Inter-rink hockey matches between the Glaciarium and Ice Palais are a feature of the 1939 and 1940 seasons. Russ Carson suggests Harry Kleiner converts his dance hall to an ice rink. The St Moritz Ice Palais at St Kilda opens, beating out Bendrodt, who earlier announced the Carrier refrigerating equipment for a new Melbourne rink was coming from America. St Moritz is the new flagship for Victorian ice sports, and the focus of Australian ice hockey shifts there for many decades. The southern state brings about an enduring ascendancy for the first time since the Australian game began in Melbourne in the early 1900s.

With no ice hockey at the Ice Palais in 1941, the Glaciarium owners scale back, and two of five ice hockey clubs merge to strengthen the league.5 The state association replaces its executive. In 1942, the Ice Palais building joins the war effort, reopening in 1948 with 4500 people. It closes its doors for the last time in 1952. The original building still stands at the Sydney Showgrounds.

Employees remembered Bendrodt as a hardened boss, willing to reward initiative or bend the law. Tried in August 1939 for minor fraud involving payments to employees, fined in 1951 for understating taxable income in the early 1940s, and forced to admit to a royal commission in 1952 that Prince's regularly ignored State liquor regulations. Lavish entertainments at the restaurant were criticised in wartime, though Bendrodt claimed that American troops had benefited. Giving racing away in the early 1950s because it involved too much distress, he campaigned against cruelty to animals, and in 1956 opened the Caprice, a lavish, floating restaurant at Rose Bay, which became a Mecca for celebrities. It is known today as Catalina.1

After the war, Bendrodt published his first volume of short stories in a limited edition of one hundred copies. "Spike" is a recount of the Ice Palais Bears versus St George game at the Ice Palais in Sydney on 11 September 1938. Preserving the nicknames of Spike and his enforcer Pinky, the details are the same except for "the Swede...a giant of a man... Where they got him from I never knew, but he was surely a doughty champion". There was no Swede on the opposing team, just former NHL Black Hawk, Tom Coulter.

Spike flew in the RCAF then helped resurrect a team that participated in the Thunder Bay Intermediate Hockey League in the 1950s under the Kenora Thistles moniker. As 1953 Intermediate Champions, they had the privilege of competing in the 1954 World Championships. But they had already committed to touring Japan in 1954 at the invitation of the association. Spike and the Thistles played off against the best Japan had to offer in Osaka and Tokyo. They defeated the Japan College All-Stars 23-1, the All Japan team five times (11-2, 4-2, 9-3, 8-2, 12-7), Nikko Electric 17-2, Hokkaido All-Stars 8-1, and the Kanto All-Stars 13-6.

The Bears visit was a defining moment in ice hockey in New South Wales. Despite the public controversy, the violence, the suspensions, and the resulting breakaway association, the Bears did inspire young locals to try the sport—players such as Phil Ginsberg and Geoff Thorne. Thorne made friends with Spike, and the Canadian taught the young Australian every trick until eventually, Geoff grew into a second Spike.

Support from the Canadian association prompted Australia to apply for IIHF affiliation, which came within the year. Melbourne got a second rink, and Russ Carson moved in after orchestrating it from beginning to end. Carson got his Olympic Dream, although the ghosts of the Ice Palais Bears and Rabbits still haunt the Australian game.

J C Bendrodt retired quietly to Darling Point, where he died on 17 February 1973. He was no angel, Jimmy, but as with many successful entrepreneurs, important people backed his ventures. Over the years, he compered radio broadcasts of ice hockey and did more for Australian ice sports than anyone since the founder, H Newman Reid. First in the early 1920s, then again from 1938 until 1952.

Ice Palais Hall of Industries, Sydney Showgrounds, Australia, May 1939.18