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Hey, history lovers. I'm Mike Rosenwald with Retropod, a show about the past, rediscovered.

They are the stars of the Winter Olympics, appointment viewing on television, their every move equally calculated and scrutinized. Who are they?

The figure skaters.

Every four years, one seems to become an instant celebrity, a bona fide diva, and a household name.

Today, I want to introduce you to the forgotten godmother of these skating stars.

She won three Olympic gold medals and ten world championships, and turned her star power into a career as one of Hollywood's biggest

movie stars. Her cement prints on the sidewalk outside Gromond's Chinese

theater in Hollywood include her palms, her stilettos, and her skateblades. Her

name was Sonia Henne, a Norwegian figure skater in the 1930s, nicknamed the Pavlova of the ice.

She was at the time an otherworldly superstar. The cameras followed her everywhere. So did

controversy. Henny was five years old, the daughter of a wealthy fur dealer, when her older brother got

a pair of ice skates for his birthday.

Henny cried until her parents bought her a pair of skates too.

From then on, they couldn't drag her from the ice.

Early on, Henny developed a balletic style that defined an era of figure skating. She floated around the ice smoothly and extended her frame into graceful lines during spins and twists.

By age eight, she was the junior champion of Norway.

By 10, the national champion.

By 11, Henney was skating in the Olympics, the 1924 games,

and the French Alps. She was so unprepared and nervous that she had to skate over to her coach

...