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Actress, 'Ice-Capades' star Vera Hruba Ralston dead at 79
Saturday February 15, 2003
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) Czech-born ice skater Vera Hruba
Ralston, star of America's ``Ice Capades'' and Republic Pictures
B-movies, has died. She was 79.
Ralston died Feb. 9 of cancer at her Santa Barbara home, said
her husband Charles Alva.
In 1941, Herbert J. Yates, head of Republic Pictures featured
Ralston in ``Ice-Capades,'' and followed in up in 1942 with
``Ice-Capades Revue.''
In 1943, Ralston signed a long-term contract with Republic,
where she became the married Yates' protegee and later his wife.
Ralston was Republic Pictures' answer to 20th Century Fox's
Olympic gold medalist-turned actress Sonja Henie. Ralston was
billed as a star who ``skated out of Czechoslovakia into the hearts
of America.''
Her first leading role was in ``The Lady and the Monster,'' a
1944 thriller costarring Erich von Stroheim and Richard Arlen. Over
the next 14 years, she appeared in 23 other Republic films,
including ``Lake Placid Serenade,'' ``Storm Over Lisbon,'' ``I,
Jane Doe,'' ``Dakota,'' ``The Fighting Kentuckian,'' ``The
Plainsman and the Lady'' and ``Fair Wind to Java.''
She added the surname Ralston taken from the name of a popular
breakfast cereal because Americans had difficulty pronouncing
Hruba.
The daughter of a wealthy jeweler, Ralston was born in Prague in
1923.
Around age 10, she turned her attention from studying ballet to
figure skating. Within a few years, she was a local champion and a
British gold medal winner. She skated in the 1936 Olympics.
Ralston, who married Yates in 1952, retired from the screen in
1958, the year he was deposed from the studio in a proxy fight.
Yates died in 1966 at 85. Ralston inherited half of his
estimated $10-million estate and later moved full time to the
oceanfront house they had bought in the mid-1950s in the Hope Ranch
section of Santa Barbara.
She married Alva in 1973.
A private graveside service was held Friday.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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