The Waterbury Democrat., 1943-12-09
Oscar Johnson By HARRY CRIMSON NEA Cnnrfe Edifor

show as an amateur presented her famous Dying Swan and was fol- lowed by the comic, Heinie Brock, who adlibbed satire, The Dying Duck, and was chased down the corridors-Skates, costume and all by Papa Henie failing a hefty walking stick.
 There was the time in San Fran cisco when Eddie and Oscar mak- ing an exit and Roy an entrance, crashed head-on in the darkness and were revealed by the spotlights in heap-au three out cold.
 Eddie Shipstead and Oscar John son got the idea for the fabulous Ice Follies, the first of the shows on skates, as winded youngsters standing in & tunnel entrance to the surface of Madison Square Garden, listening to the approval of 8 hard-boiled crowd following their Bowery comedy number be- tween the periods of a hockey game. That was in 1926.
 GREATEST ATTRACTION
 Since the au-professional Ice Follies was founded in 1886, it has been seen by more than 6,000,000 patrons, grossed $12,000,000.
 The attendance mark shows the Ice Follies surpasses the drawing power of any major league base ball club, any college football team, all theatrical ventures, in- cluding the circus.
 Almost without notice in usual nelS, the enterprise has developed in its attraction of audiences from the bare handful which witnessed the first performance in Tulsa in 1886 to an annual attendance Of more than 2C00,000.
 Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Os- car Johnson, two of them still in their 30's and the other just shave over 40, are solely responsible for the creation and development of this phenomenon. Three young Scandinavians from St Paul par layed figure skating into 8 million dollars.
 Incidentally, figure skating is the only competitive sport that has been transposed into the enter tainment world successfully. It has been tried with other sports but always failed.
 FROM PROSAIC FIELDS Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Oscar Johnson quit high school to become bread winners to help feed the many mouths in their families. The careers they chose were quite prosaic. Oscar was junior chem ist for coke manufacturing com- | pary. Eddie was a typewriter was an attendant in a parking ga rage.
 Every Sunday throughout the long Minnesota winter they spent solid seven hours skating together.
 Roy became an instructor in Du- luth as Oscar and Eddie, whose bent was to the comedy side, began series of transforming expedi- tions. Along the rail watching Roy was a youngster from Superior who had a basketful of trophies and medals as a speed-skater. After watching Roy from afar Bess Ehr- hardt determined to learn the 1n- tricacies of the silver-bladed art. AMERICAN SUCCESS STORY In 1940 Oscar and Eddie were giv- en a contract to produce a small hotel show in Chicago. A week or so after they opened, a comedy girl applied for a job ill the skating line. It was Bess Ehrhardt. Within two months she was able to do a pair with Roy and was shortly co-star- red.
 Bess Ehrhardt is now Mrs. Roy Shipstad. She has retired from skating for short while, after hav- ing been one of Ice Follies' top stars for eight years, to await the arrival of her baby next spring.
 The hotel show gave Eddie and Roy Shipstad and Oscar Johnson the necessary bankroll to start out on their real venture. So in 1886 after banding together small group of 28, they climbed into a bus that carried all their props and costumes, as well as the personnel and started tour that has never stopped.