SUN VALLEY, Idaho — The 1941 Sonja Henie movie "Sun Valley Serenade" might just be the world's most frequently shown film. It has been an entertainment staple at the Sun Valley Lodge and Inn for at least 25 years.
At least 200 days a year, promptly at 5 p.m., the film is shown at the theater-size Opera House on the grounds of the Sun Valley resort.
And for the past 12 years, hotel manager Dick Anderson said, it has aired on Channel 55 of the resort's in-house closed-circuit television system 16 times each day, 365 days a year — an estimated 73,000 times so far.
Anderson, who joined the Sun Valley resort as beverage manager 25 years ago, says "Sun Valley Serenade" and one of the movie's songs, "It Happened in Sun Valley," have had a huge influence in the resort achieving worldwide recognition.
The 86-minute film was nominated for three Academy Awards — best cinematography, best musical score, best song ("Chattanooga Choo Choo").
"People love it," Anderson said. "But we're worried we're losing some of our audience" as people who first saw it as children age and die.
The romantic comedy features Henie, the dimpled Norwegian skating star, as a wartime refugee. She breaks up a romance between John Payne, acting as a piano player in the real Glenn Miller Orchestra, and actress Lynn Bari, playing a band singer. Comic relief is provided by Milton Berle, who later hit his stride as a television pioneer.
Ironically, not much of the film was actually produced in Sun Valley, although the stars visited the area. Actors performed on Hollywood sound stages where skating rinks and interior sets resembling snow-covered Sun Valley were created, said Chris Millspaugh, chief archivist at the Ketchum Community Library's Idaho history section. Several Sun Valley skiers, however, doubled for the stars. Skier Gretchen Fraser, an Olympic gold medalist for whom the lodge's Gretchen's restaurant is named, posed as Henie in a ski scene.
"Sun Valley Serenade" created an immediate and impressive following.
Wendolyn Spence Holland wrote in her book, "Sun Valley: An Extraordinary History," that the Shah of Iran booked a Sun Valley ski vacation for his family and royal entourage after seeing the film.