Edward Anthony Shufflebarger (Ted Shuffle)
November 14, 1931-May 15, 1998
The son of a pharmacist, Edward Anthony Shufflebarger (Ted Shuffle) was born in Ogden, Utah. His first success in skating came not on the ice, but on rollers, when he won the national senior men's title of the Roller Skating Rink Operators' Association of the United States at the age of fifteen in 1946.
Soon after, he joined the roller tour "Skating Vanities" as a chorus skater and in turn, Sonja Henie's Hollywood Revue. He worked his way up the ranks and choreographed Sonja's 1956 NBC special and film "Hello London". After Sonja's retirement, he worked for decades as a choreographer and director with Holiday On Ice, while continuing to choreograph for television and film projects such as "Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates". He was such a legendary character on the professional skating scene that actor Robin Askwith once described him as "the Bob Fosse of the skating world". He passed away in San Francisco on May 15, 1998 at the age of sixty-six, nine years after his close friend Tony Panko.
Legendary Russian choreographer Igor Moiseyev and Ted Shuffle
Ted's obituary from "The Daily Telegraph": "Sometimes he used flair but he could also turn on a most effective tantrum at rehearsal. With some of each, Ted Shuffle, who has died in San Francisco, aged 66, succeeded brilliantly in transforming ice-skating champions into show business stars. He was one of the world's leading ice show producers. Those with whom he worked included the Olympic gold medallist Katarina Witt from East Germany, Britain's Martin Minshull and Robin Cousins, and the Canadian world champion Don McPherson. Shuffle specialized in presenting energetic ice-dancing routines that proved a triumph of imagination over verisimilitude. Born Edward Shufflebarger in Utah, he began his show business career at five, when he took part in a tap-dance recital in his home town. The audience were said to have been delighted when he pushed aside a little girl who was out of step with the music, and still more so when he remained on stage at the end of the performance to applaud himself. Shuffle fulfilled his fantasies by joining Sonja Henie's Ice Revue and rising rapidly through the ranks to become one of her skating partners. He was soon employed as her choreographer, not only on her travelling show, but also on her live television specials. By the end of the 1950s Henie had retired, but Shuffle continued with her Holiday on Ice production team. His greatest triumph was to lead a tour to Moscow in 1959, the first time an American company had appeared there. Later, the U.S. State Department financed a tour of Africa. But Shuffle was liable to offend against the laws of American kitsch - for example by presenting the hanging of two men in 'The Adventures of Marco Polo'. Dismissed by Holiday on Ice in 1976, he set up the Holiday Ice Revue, his own touring show in Europe, in which he featured some of the best numbers he had created for his previous employers. But he could not compete with the resources of Holiday on Ice, lost all his savings, and soon crept back under the wing of the bigger company. His shows were never the same again. In 1994 he published 'Holiday on Ice: The First 50 Years' but, in truth, the ice show had already become a dated form."
Memories of Ted from R. Scott Carlton's book "Blazing Ice: The Real Story of Show Business": "Ted Shuffle, our overtly aggressive and flamboyant choreographer, spent the bulk of the morning putting together a chorus number just using girls, so we boys spent most of the first session sitting and watching. As we watched the girls, we noticed how badly many of them spoke English, even thought our contracts stated that English was the show's official language. Yet some of the girls spoke the language so poorly that they barely understood anything Ted told them. One new girl, a beautiful young Norwegian named Tøne, spoke excellent English with us but had difficulty understanding Ted, probably due to first-day jitters. Our only communication problem with her was in trying to pronounce her name. The closest we could come was 'Tuna' which quickly degenerated to 'Tuna Fish'. Tøne couldn't understand Ted and Ted made no effort to understand her. Because she was so tall, blond, and buxom, he placed her on top of a huge prop and told her to stand like a Ziegfield showgirl. Poor Tøne couldn't understand what Ted wanted and stood there in a very awkward and unladylike position with her legs spread apart, her toes turned out, and her knees slightly bent. When Ted got back to the front of the ice to survey the scene, he nearly had a stroke. Three times he yelled at her over the P.A. system to get into the right position and three times she moved around but not the way he wanted. Finally Ted screamed at her at the top of his lungs, 'Tuna! Close your bloody fjord!' Tøne turned bright red and the rest of us cracked up laughing."
*Source for inclusion: Coded language, Obituaries, Bay Area Reporter, November 23, 1989
