Lee, Jack

BORN MAY 1ST 1927, Jack Lee started skating in Sydney. A self-taught show skater, he began professionally as a headliner at twenty-two with Vince (Pedro) Labb's Ice Follies of 1949. It opened at the Easter Show at the Sydney show grounds with Lee, Fay Quick, Pat Cook and Bob Hinds in "the world's only all-weather portable ice rink which measures 14 by 14 feet and can be frozen in eight hours". Their set included The Dream Waltz with Pat, a Chaplin-esque comedy sketch featuring a drunk on ice, and Top Hat Foursome with "old and new dances so soundless that one could almost imagine them dancing in the clouds".

Lee traveled around Australia for years with the tiny rink under Vince Labb's banner, taking skating to centres it had never been—Rockhampton, Bathurst, Maryborough, Narrabri and others. By 1954, he performed on the tiny "tank" with Ann Paterson, Bill Munro and Nola Gault, and his solo included a spin at "500 revolutions a minute". In 1953-4, he skated in Armand Perren's Hot Ice in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne with about thirty-seven other ice skaters, including Pat Gregory, Geoff Thorne and Graham Argue.

On arrival in London at the end of 1954, Lee discovered a skating title was a prerequisite for acceptance into ice shows. In 1955, he was runner-up in the British Professional Championship which led to a contract with Tom Arnold, Europe's biggest ice show producer, for the 1955 season of Dick Whittington On Ice at Brighton. The next year, Lee won the British Professional Championship. It helped him land a part in The Spice of Life and Hanns Thelen's Scala Ice Revue in West Germany later that season, where he was a soloist.

Lee skated in the Casa Carioca Ice Revue in Garmish for three years, and in 1969 he was part of the cast in the Disney TV movie Hans Brinkler, filmed in Norway, where he also taught the main actors to skate. He went on to South Africa, then performed his last show in New Delhi, India with Australian International Reg Park. After seventeen years abroad, Lee returned to Sydney to coach and perform with show skater, Pat Gregory, in her show IceOrama.

"I remember Jack so well from his years working with Pat Gregory's ice show," recalls Pat's daughter Tracey-Lee. "He was a lovely man, a great performer and a total professional. Mum and Dad valued him very highly. His solo was always the spot after the Opening production number, and he always began with a butterfly jump. His music for years was an upbeat version of Sentimental Over You, a dynamic and exciting start to the show. He also partnered Marji Redvers (née Halliwell) in various adagio numbers, again dynamic and exciting. Offstage, I remember him as a lovely man and a real gent, always".

Nicknamed "The Human Spinning Top" and "Rubber Man", Lee taught many top skaters at Canterbury Ice Rink and elsewhere including Australian International, Michael Pasfield. One of the first Australian men to master triple jumps in competition, showmanship was always vitally important to Pasfield's skating, and he attributes most of the style to his first coach. "I loved Jack so very much," says another pupil, Denise Hall. "As his student he was a fabulous coach and a wonderful man. He was a joy to watch as he really loved skating. You could see it on his face every time he did a performance. He adored his miniature poodles and his Mum. We would always start and finish our sessions with a hug. Loved him".

Lee excelled in spins like the cross-foot and corkscrew, and show tricks like the butterfly, stars, piston rolls, Arabians, split jumps, and Russian split jumps. He performed into his Fifties in Pat Gregory's shows, then retired to Erina on New South Wale's Central Coast, where he continued to coach for years.

This skating career spanning well over six decades ended at Erina in 2012 when Jack Lee died at the age of 85. The Central Coast Figure Skating Club set up the Jack Lee Trophy Competition "to recognise his outstanding lifelong contribution to the sport of Figure Skating". His skates are on display in the bottom left hand window of the Skate Shop at Erina Ice Arena. "He was an inspiration to many skaters in Australia," wrote the Club's Vicki Coleman, "and will be remembered fondly for his wonderful smile and his magnificent spins".