New Show in Manhattan

Hats Off to Ice (produced by Sonja Henie and Arthur M. Wirtz) gave Manhattan's vast Center Theater its fifth polar pageant in four years. Though any of these monster skating parties could pardonably be mistaken for any other, Hats Off--with its glossy look, its smart showmanship, its varied skill--is one of the best.

The way the skaters run, dance, sing, chase girls, climb ladders, turn cartwheels, there really seems no reason why life itself should not be lived on skates. Yet it is the actual skatin --the grace of Carol Lynne, the teamwork of the Caley Sisters, the precision of the ice ballet--that gives Hats Off most of its lift; the big, exotic production numbers are pretty enough, but they induce more Persian or Hawaiian languor than they mean to.

Topnotcher of this, as of previous Center shows, is Comic Freddie Trenkler, whose magnificent technique is directed entirely to madcap ends. One moment Trenkler-- running on skates, but not skating--tears feverishly around the stage as if simultaneously fleeing a cop and pursuing a burglar. The next moment, he streaks straight toward the audience, stops dead on his heels at the very lip of the stage. If rivaled by such other ice-comedy classics as Frick & Frack and The Four Bruises, Trenkler's act outranks them in one respect--it is done solo.

Tiny, 31-year-old ice-blue-eyed Viennese Skater Trenkler learned to skate as a child on frozen snow. He learned to skate fast by hanging on to cars like other small boys all over the world and being chased by policemen. As a young man he had won a number of competitions when, one day in Budapest, he noticed that a guy who couldn't skate for beans, but was highly accomplished at pratfalls, kept the crowd in an uproar. Quickly deciding that slapstick paid off better than mere skill, Trenkler went out and bought a pair of baggy pants. He studied music-hall comics and adapted their tricks, next thought up tricks of his own. He decided to concentrate on clowning because, he says, "clowning and figure skating are like trying to be a crooner and singer at the same time." Making good as a clown, he came to the U.S. in 1937, clicked immediately. Today he earns about $500 a week, which is tops for a single act.

Trenkler's greatest trick--his astounding "heel-stop"-- was born of a bad moment. Whizzing across a Vienna lake, he suddenly saw a great gaping hole directly in front of him, frantically dragged his heels and lifted his toes, applied the brakes and was able to stop just in time. It is still a tough job: "I have to stop on a dime--and I don't mean a nickel." Three years ago, at the Center, he "missed the dime," pitched over the footlights, broke his leg.

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