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Holiday on By RON STOCK Staff Writer annual appearance Jacksonville Cohseu While precision and . *j?· the same holds true 101 hind the scenes. Wednesday nigW,Wn the audience on trips ranging from scenes of the "Roaring 20's" to visits into jungles and Latin America. Glimmering, Daxriing Bedecked in glimmering ooShimes uijUbt -n a^y^J dazzling colored lights, tne sSerfkept the viewers busily awaiting each new act. Behind the scenes, prop men readied canes or lire plugs or whatever was needed a, the skaters, working in Shifts, spun onto the ice for their acts. Some skaters were required ^%g tunes to fit the mood Wardrobe person**1 assist ed the skaters whm*they keep track of the act ny m"t"a fast moving show, here through Sunday. Some 4500 persons turned out for the opening night. Seasoned by W%W jrm ances, the entertainers play it me.Pt the timing perfectly, tin \ WEDNESDAY MORNING, APRIL 16, 1969 COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, KY. A Review Holiday on lee Glitteringly Exciting By JEAN DIETRICH Courier-Journal Critic ?√ß Would you ever have expected to see the Ziegfeld girls gliding around on ice skates in those voluptuous costumes? Or enough Jean Harlows to cover a stage? Or a chorus line of Charlie Chaplins? Holiday on Ice, which opened last night at Convention Center, has all of them and most everyone else you can think of?╟÷ when you think of the show biz that used to be. And as memories tend to be gilded, so is this 1969 edition, which hits the high spots of entertainment from the 1890s through the 1930s. Nothing that's come to Louisville this season has had quite such a spectacular opening. Convention Center was packed to the rafters?╟÷not only with the families you might expect?╟÷but with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and all those little Cubs who'd arrived by the busloads. To such tunes as "In Old New York," and "The Merry Widow"?╟÷the New York of the 90s was recreated, with the company whirling about the ice gorgeously costumed in blue. Enter Lillian Russell and Diamond Jim Brady (Helga and Jorge Valle) to do the kind of daring pas de deux on skates which all the Holiday stars do in infinite and breathless variations. After that not applause, or rather along with the applause, a stamping of those thousands of feet that shook the building. These terrifying tremors continued to grow with-, each succeeding number. I rather imagine the real Lillian and Jim, as well as Eva Tanguay, the Castles, the Cohans and the Dolly Sisters would have found the appreciation of their own day terribly puny by comparison. Glutted With Impossible Scenes change in Holiday as rapidly and as glitteringly as the skaters perform. One moment the tiny Cooks, Kim and her brothers Kris and Kelly, are doing lifts and leaps impossible for their ages, 8 and 6?╟÷but they're doing them. Next an enormous "Ole Houn Dawg" is skidding and cavorting over the rink?╟÷and again almost bringing the house down with a cacophony of tiny shrieks, which are not so tiny when multiplied like that. There is "Connie and Glyde" taking it on the lam in a car that belches fire. Then the jungle erupts in a voodoo dance. And what's THAT? Why it's chimps playing hockey! And there's still more to come before intermission. That still more is Ronnie Robertson?╟÷ Holiday's star making like Fred Astaire ?╟÷but more like Robertson with those unbelievable spins. And the reaction to that remarkable feat of derring-do? Several hundred children are now so glutted with the impossible they're tearing up and down the aisles making their way out and back with supplies of popcorn, cotton candy and assorted staples. Holiday on Ice is noted for its remarkable production numbers. This year is exceptional for cleverness. The sequence on old movies that takes up most of the last half of the show misses not an old Hollywood trick. Pauline is there with all her perils?╟÷tied to the cowcatcher of the engine?╟÷getting the Chinese torture. All of it. Shirley Temple, her curls wagging, Jackie Coogan and Jackie Cooper (those three little Cooks again) up to a little mischief. On it goes with Rudy Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Ruby Keeler each doing their thing. And it all seems to come full circle when Sonja Henie appears?╟÷or you'd swear it was she?╟÷tippy toeing all over the place?╟÷remember??╟÷and on skates yet? Holiday on Ice will be running through next Sunday.