Roy Blakey, Ice Show Performer and Archivist, Is Dead at 86

As an 11-year-old in Oklahoma, Roy Blakey became mesmerized by the brilliance of the Olympic figure skating champion Sonja Henie when he watched her 1941 film, “Sun Valley Serenade.”

One scene stayed with him for the rest of his life: With the ice painted black and covered with a film of water, Ms. Henie and the other skaters, all costumed in white, were reflected on a stage of mirrorlike ice.

“It was the most magical thing I had ever seen in my life,” Mr. Blakey told the Collectors Weekly website in 2015. “And it was in that movie theater that I said to myself, ‘I have to do that.’”

It was the start of his lifelong fascination with the theatrical end of figure skating, which led him to careers as a performer in ice shows around the world and as a historian who celebrated those extravaganzas by amassing a vast collection of artifacts, including skates, costumes, posters, postcards and programs.

Mr. Blakey died on Aug. 23 at his home in Minneapolis. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his niece Keri Pickett, a photographer and filmmaker who directed “The Fabulous Ice Age,” a 2014 documentary about ice shows that featured her uncle and his memorabilia, and who is working on a film about his life, “My Uncle Roy.”

With no ice rinks in Enid, Okla., Mr. Blakey turned to roller skating. He also started his collection, which he later called the IceStage Archive, by writing to skating stars for their autographs, and to hotels for programs from the shows they staged. He continued to build the collection during his 15 years as an ice-show performer in the 1950s and ’60s, and for the rest of his life.

Ms. Pickett said her uncle’s archive totaled more than 44,000 items, tracing the history and cultural impact of shows like Holiday on Ice, the Ice Capades, the Ice Follies, Disney on Ice and Ms. Henie’s “Hollywood Ice Revue.”

Some of the most valuable pieces in his archive are skates and costumes worn by Ms. Henie, who won a gold medal in singles figure skating in the 1928, 1932 and 1936 Winter Olympics. He bought one pair of her skates on eBay.

Gloria Nord, a star of roller and figure skating shows, donated the feathered outfit she wore at a command performance for Queen Elizabeth II at Wembley Arena in London.

“He’ll take good care of it, better than I could,” Ms. Nord said in Ms. Pickett’s film.

Leila Dunbar, an appraisal expert who valued the collection at $1.9 million in 2014, said she was unaware of any other archive like Mr. Blakey’s.

“He’s the only person I’m aware of who curated a collection that told the story of the ice shows and how important they were,” she said in an interview. “It was extraordinary.”

The archive was donated in August to the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies.

“If the IceStage Archive ended up someplace else that wasn’t an L.G.B.T. collection, people could approach it without acknowledging the queerness of the ice shows and more specifically the male performers,” said Aiden Bettine, the Tretter’s curator.

(Mr. Blakey, like many ice show performers and enthusiasts, was gay.)

Roy Austin Blakey was born on July, 19, 1930, in Tulsa, Okla., and moved to Enid when he was 6. His father, Bernard, was the director of student finance and employment at Phillips University in Enid. His mother, Josie (Walker) Blakey, was an ordained minister with the Disciples of Christ whose work included setting up educational programs for children in eight states.

Roy’s first time on ice was at the University of Tulsa, which had a rink. He left the school after two and a half years and enlisted in the Army in 1952. Working as a mail clerk for an antiaircraft unit in Germany, he learned of a recreation center for soldiers in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, the Alpine site of the 1936 Winter Olympics.

A nightclub there, Casa Carioca, had an ice-skating show.

On a three-day pass to Garmisch, he saw that the nightclub was next to the stadium where Ms. Henie won her third Olympic gold medal. “It was a historic place,” he told Collectors Digest, “so naturally I went skating in the stadium.”

He also auditioned for the show at Casa Carioca, but he didn’t hear back from Terry Rudolph, the woman who ran it, until his discharge neared in 1954. He wrote to remind her of his audition; she quickly hired him, and he skated in her show for 18 months. She later helped him get a deal to return to the United States and skate at the Boulevard Room of the Hilton Hotel in Chicago, in shows with names like “Frosty Frills” and “Icerama.” He performed there seven days a week, two shows a night, for five years.

He took photography lessons in Chicago, and after moving to Holiday on Ice International in 1961, he began taking pictures of the skaters and the troupe’s stage setups so they could be replicated on stops around the world. He also took photos of guests who attended the shows, among them the king and queen of Thailand.

Mr. Blakey was never a headliner, but he stayed with Holiday on Ice International until 1967 and then performed in a seasonal exhibition at the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink for two years.

In 1970, he became a full-time freelance photographer. His head shots of entertainers like Debbie Allen and Kaye Ballard appeared in Newsday, The Daily News of New York and other publications.

Mr. Blakey also became known for his portraits of nude men, which appeared in magazines like After Dark and Dilettante and in a book, “He,” which he published in 1972.

Some of those pictures were part of an exhibition in 1973 at the Continental Baths, the well-known Manhattan gay bathhouse that launched the careers of Bette Midler and Barry Manilow.

Gene Thornton, a photography critic for The New York Times, wrote in a review that Mr. Blakey’s photos were “artistic” and that “as far as is possible, they transform the young male body into an aesthetic rather than a sexual object.”

“He” was rediscovered and largely republished in 2002 as “Roy Blakey’s 70s Male Nudes,” with an introduction by the writer Reed Massengill.

Mr. Blakey’s boxes of male nude photos were also acquired by the University of Minnesota.

In addition to Ms. Pickett, his niece, he is survived by another niece, Kim Mahling, and a sister, B.J. French.

Ms. Pickett said that the idea for her ice-show documentary emerged as she listened to his stories and watched skaters make pilgrimages to view his ever-growing collection.

“His collection was a documentary filmmaker’s dream,” she told “Director’s Cut,” the public TV show. “I searched for material for this film all over the country, and Roy really had the majority of it already. All I would have to do was go in his IceStage Archive and say, ‘Roy, what do you have from 1915 from the ice shows?’”