Ava & the Avalanches: Swiss Invasion sweetheart
 Anyone versed in pop history knows the classic cautionary tale of Bo Bogerman and the Swiss Invasion. In early 1963, flush with the proceeds of Clipper Cowbridge’s “Soda Pop Shop,” Bogerman made a whirlwind wintertime tour of Alpine ski resorts, signing up every chalet combo that could keep a beat. His plan: to release their talents en masse as a readymade genre called the Swiss Invasion.
Bo believed that America, with its growing hordes of novelty-hungry teens, would greedily devour his prefab pop. But he made one fatal error: in a cost-cutting move, he pressed the Swiss 45s on inexpensive white vinyl that turned out to contain high levels of both lead and arsenic. Besides being toxic, the vinyl was highly unstable — the labels peeled off almost instantly, and within weeks the discs softened into a moist, turntable-clogging goo.
Bogerman recalled the faulty discs and rushed to reissue them on more reliable red vinyl, but it was too late. The British Invasion had already claimed the hearts and minds of America’s youth. As so often happened in Clubbo’s history, the window of opportunity had slammed shut on Bo’s fingers.
Clubbo nearly went under. Only Bogerman’s fortuitous poker winnings kept the label afloat until other, more lucrative acts could be launched.
 But not all of Bo’s Swiss Invasion acts deserve their oblivion. One of the label’s most appealing artists was blonde sex kitten Ava Langenthal. Her group, Ava & the Avalanches, was the house band at the Hotel Post in Zermatt, the quintessential skier’s party town nestled in the shadow of the Matterhorn.
Ava was a naïve 19-year-old when she co-wrote “Ski Baby Ski,” a good-natured romp that features another Swiss Invasion heartthrob, Heinrich Schwiz, on tuba. (Schwiz is best known for his poignant pop waltz, “Always Two Hearts in My Pocket,” also initially released in 1963.)
With Ava’s blonde good looks and appealingly husky, if untrained, voice, it was only natural that Bo chose her as the “face” of the Swiss Invasion. A 1963 press photo shows her kneeling in the snow wearing a rented leopard coat. As it happened, this photo shoot marked a philosophical turning point for the young singer. In a 1977 Guardian interview, she recounted the experience:
“As I was for these photos posed in the snow, wearing the fur of this magnificent cat, I discovered that I was not at all cold. This caused me to think sadly of the poor dead creature whose skin I then wore, and filled me with a sense of great pity and horror that I, and not the leopard, should now be inside this fur. And yet I must still keep smiling for the camera!”
The release of “Ski Baby Ski” was met with great fanfare in Zermatt. A bartender at the Hotel Post created a new “Ski Baby” cocktail, and Ava was presented with a special award: a miniature replica of the world-renowned barrel upon which generations of revelers have danced in the hotel’s Broken Bar disco.
 But disaster lay in wait. Ava’s fiancé, Johann Schell, an athlete who hoped to win the first-ever luge event at the 1964 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, lost his life in a tragic incident only days before the games opened. Due to a lack of snow, the Austrian Army had been tasked with carving out 20,000 ice bricks from a nearby mountaintop and transporting them to the bobsled and luge runs. A fatal miscommunication sent Schell downhill on a qualifying trial just as a final load of ice blocks was being dumped at the foot of the luge run.
Ava was crushed almost as completely as her fiancé — and her distress grew when she discovered, only three weeks after the accident, that she was pregnant. She continued to perform with the Avalanches for a few months, but when Clubbo dropped all the Swiss Invasion acts, the combo quietly folded.
Her career as a pop star may have been brief, but Ava’s post-Clubbo years tell an inspiring tale of courage, creativity, and eventual triumph.
Ava’s son Johann Langenthal was born October 15, 1964. After an unsuccessful attempt to live with a cousin in Geneva, the young mother and child moved back to Zermatt, where Ava worked as a sous-chef and cocktail waitress at her old stomping grounds, the Hotel Post. Little Johann grew to toddlerhood behind the scenes at the hotel, where he “helped” mash potatoes and shell peas in a corner of the kitchen, and was often rocked to sleep by the comforting thump of music from the Broken Bar disco.
But Ava was determined to create a better life for herself and her son. In 1967 she began making whimsical, pop-art cuckoo clocks, which she sold on consignment through a local gift shop. The clocks were a hit with tourists, and when one was featured in a chic London design magazine, orders poured in from around the globe.
The official Swiss horological trade group branded Ava’s efforts “inauthentic,” yet she soon found herself overseeing a twenty-person workshop. She added more items to her line: linens, hand-painted dishes, stationery and other fanciful goods. The sole constant was a strict “no animal products” policy — the traumatic leopard coat incident still haunted Ava.
Ava’s entrepreneurial spirit paid off in 1975 when she sold her now-sizable business to a growing Swedish housewares retailer. After setting up a trust for Johann, she used most of the remaining proceeds as seed money for a series of no-kill animal shelters throughout Switzerland and a big cat sanctuary based on a friend’s estate in the English countryside.
 Ava’s son Johann followed in his mother’s bootsteps as a Clubbo artist. Perhaps he was influenced by the discotheque beats that once served as his lullaby — in any case, he became a club music pioneer in the late ’80s and early ’90s, working under the name DJ Hellvetica. He’s best known for his 1992 club hit “SOB NRG,” a remix of Suthrn Cuzn’s “Sonofabitch,” and still enjoys an active career as an internationally recognized DJ and scene-maker.
These days, Ava spends much of her time promoting animal conservation and rescue, with a focus on big cats rescued from show business, fur farms, hunting ranches, and private owners. She is an outspoken critic of the fur trade. (At one recent fundraiser, she shared the stage with fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who turned against fur after realizing that the leopard coat he’d made for Jackie O had launched a fad that killed more than 250,000 leopards.) She invites all Ava and the Avalanches fans, old and new, to meet some of her favorite feline friends via her web page, “Ava’s Big Cats.”
Ava is also a renowned vegan chef. In 1995 she published a best-selling animal-free cookbook, from which she was gracious enough to share this delicious vegan fondue recipe.
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