The Saint Paul Pop Concerts are a regular summer series of unique entertainment, consisting of music by a symphony orchestra, soloists and choruses. and figure skating revues on an artificial ice rink. Performed in the arena of the Saint Paul Municipal Auditorium.
Hot. Boy. it’s hot. A real scorcher. Worst summer in 20 years. You think it’s The Bomb?
One way to escape conversation like that is to attend the Pop Musical Ice Revues at the
St. Paul Auditorium Arena, where it is always 20 degrees cooler inside. St. Paulites have been beating the heat at the Pops for 28 years. In the summer of 1935 a series of straight indoor pops concerts hadn’t drawn very well at the Auditorium. and manager Ed Furni got the idea of turning them into ice shows.
Lyman Wakefield, president of the St. Paul Figure Skating Club. rounded up the skaters and Lyle Hines, president of the St. Paul Civic Opera, took care of the singers and musicians. The personnel has changed since the fit-st show in 1936 but today’s format is much the same, and it still draws the people. Like the Boston Pops. the St. Paul Pops offers tables where you can munch hot dogs and guzzle pop (or 3.2 beer) as the show goes on. But nobody ever got chillblains at the Boston Pops and this can be a delightful risk at the auditorium’s rinkside tables. The shows run at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Aug. 22 (except for Aug. 7-8, which has been booked for a Chevrolet convention).
–Dan Sullivan
Minneapolis Evening Star
July 26th, 1964
