Werner Groebli

“Mr. Frick” - King of Skating Comedians

April 21, 1915 - April 14, 2008

by Alexandra Stevenson  

In an earlier, more innocent era, generations of skating lovers looked forward to the annual visit of Ice Follies. The family audiences did not buy tickets hoping to see triple Axels – there were none. They expected and got wondrous costumes; colorful, flashy lighting; glamorous, graceful women who held amazing positions while spinning into a blur; and sophisticated, debonair men who soared into spectacular half turn Russian splits.

 

For many the highlights of the show were the comic antics of Werner Groebli, known as Mr. Frick, who died earlier this month just a week short of his 93rd birthday. The New York Times once gushed in describing Groebli as “a master skater whose knack for comedy and instinct for effect make the technical know-how of brilliant skating a tool for greater artistry.”

 

One impressed spectator was a young Debi Thomas, who became twice US champion, 1986 world title holder and 1988 Olympic bronze medalist. Asked how she began skating, Thomas would relate the following story: “I begged my mom to take me to the ice show and Mr. Frick became my idol. When I started to skate I would charge around the rink shouting, ‘Look mom, I’m Mr. Frick.’”

 

Thomas said, “He heard about that and when I won the world championship in Geneva, he contacted me, and we finally met. We joked about him showing me how to do the cantilever, which was his signature.”

 

It is not an easy move. With his feet pointing in opposite directions, his body would bend backward from the knees until it was parallel to the ice with his head so far down, the jaunty feather on his alpine hat, sometimes touched the ice. Groebli would go into this seemingly impossibly contorted position with great speed, sometimes traveling under an obstacle and often managing “accidentally” to knock water out of a bucket, sometimes just inches from a startled spectator in the front row. He was also known for his robotic, toy soldier moves.

 

Groebli began skating every winter on natural ice in his birthplace and hometown of Basel, Switzerland along with a neighbor's kid, Hans Mauch, who would become "Frack". Groebli, who had a university education and won the Swiss Junior championship, said he and Mauch initially thought of calling themselves, "Zig and Zag" but then decided on Frick and Frack. They felt they needed to hide their identities when they began performing at local carnivals so their parents would not be embarrassed by their “not-classy” shenanigans. "I was to follow a career in architecture, and Frack's parents wanted him to be a banker," Groebli said in an interview in March 1999. Frick is a small town near Basel.  Frack means frock coat in that region's local tongue. They were also known for such tricks as skating past each other as they went to shake hands but then catching their feet together and pulling themselves backwards till they met.

 

Sonja Henie’s first movie was released at the end of 1936 and it spurred a mushrooming interest in the entertainment value of skating. A British producer saw Frick and Frack performing their act in St. Moritz and signed them for a show in London titled Rhapsody on Ice which played at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1937.  That led to a booking for another show, The St. Moritz Express, which was organized for the opening in November 1938 of the Tropical Ice Gardens in Westwood Village, CA.  It was a 23,000 square foot, all-year outdoor ice rink with a seating capacity of 12,000. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “neither sun nor desert wind shall keep us from skating,” and declared the audience for the opening night would contain, “leaders of the screen, society and sports world.”

 

“We performed there till it melted,” said Groebli. Was that a joke? “You decide,” was the answer. The show then went on the road, playing several engagements up the US West Coast. (The Tropical Ice Gardens was torn down in 1949 to accommodate UCLA expansion.)

 

In 1939 Frick and Frack were engaged as headliners with Ice Follies. Their annual tours all over North America made them beloved by that generation. Life magazine termed the duo, “The Clown Kings of the Ice”. Over the years their names became so recognized, they were adopted as a saying meaning two people who can not be separated. Frick and Frack is an entry in the Random House Historical History of American Slang.

 

In 1943, they appeared in a movie, Silver Skates and the following year in another, Lady, Let’s Dance which gained two 1945 Oscar Nominations for composer Lew Pollack in the musical song category. One of the songs was called Silver Skates and Golden Dreams. Frick called them, “B-movies, but they played the whole world.”

 

The duo often wore Alpine garb and assumed roles of country bumpkins. The routines did not vary greatly from year to year but audiences appeared to enjoy that familiarity. Mauch, who died in 1979, left the act in 1954 because of a debilitating bone condition. But Groebli continued with other partners. He appeared in many television programs including The Ed Sullivan Show.

 

It was David Thomas, Groebli's skating partner 1973-78, who announced the death. He said Groebli was a master of spontaneity. "If the spotlight was off the mark, he would do a silly little dance to find it. If he fell, he would jump up and look around to see who tripped him."

 

Groebli retired in 1980 after an accident when he was 65. He had given an estimated 12,000 performances for Ice Follies all over North America. (The last two years were with the merged Ice Follies and Holiday on Ice show.) In 1984, he was inducted into the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame.

 

Off ice, he was always making jokes. Frick declared that he got his strength from the grapefruit he ate every morning. After a brief pause, he would add that the grapefruit was always sprinkled liberally with Bourbon. At any publicity gathering, he would pretend to be a cheapskate, making outrageous statements like claiming he always wore his skates when he flew so he would not have to pay excess baggage.

 

He even told jokes about his wife, Yvonne Baumgartner, saying their courtship began in earnest only after he noticed she ordered a sandwich and not a steak when he took her out. In fact, he was an astute real estate dealer who had homes in both Zurich and in Palm Springs, CA. 

 

After his wife died in 2002, he gave away all his skating memorabilia, much to the U.S. Figure Skating Museum in Colorado Springs. Ironically, for a man who made his living from carefully engineered and skillfully executed fake falls, it was a misstep resulting in a broken leg in the garden of the nursing home where he spent his final days which led to complications and his death in a hospital just outside of Zurich, Switzerland.  He is survived by his sister, Gertrud Zuberbuhler.

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