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July 3, 2022 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

“The sound of the waves on the beach at Waikiki”

Webley Edwards was born November 11, 1902 in Corvallis, Oregon.  He attended Oregon Agricultural College (OAC – it was later named Oregon State University) where he became the first student manager of campus radio, KOAC.

As an OAC student, Webley “made good grades, was a popular athlete, and became the best ukulele player on campus, in an era when skill with the instrument was considered a sure way to a woman’s heart.”  (Corvallis Gazette-Times)

After graduating from OAC in 1927, Webley moved to Hawaiʻi in 1928 to work as a car salesman and play semi-pro football. Fascinated with the local music, in 1935, he arranged for a two-week trial run for a radio show of “authentic” Hawaiian music.

On July 3, 1935, Edwards created and first aired a radio program called “Hawaiʻi Calls” featuring Hawaiian music and entertainment.

The first show reached the West Coast of the continental US through shortwave radio.  Although the program enjoyed a growing popularity on the mainland, Edwards initially had a hard time making ends meet and solicited support from the Hawaiʻi Tourist Bureau.

Hawaiʻi was calling, he seemed to suggest, and to the home-bound listener freezing through an Iowa or Montana winter, making a vow to one day visit the Islands became irresistible.

From about 40,000 visitors annually in the 1930s, the number had grown to 500,000 by the time the show ended its run more than 35 years later.  (Corvallis Gazette-Times)

Except for an apparent break during World War II, the radio program aired continuously since its inception.

Edwards was the first to broadcast news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  In his own words, “the real McCoy. All army, navy and marine personnel report to duty.”  (Corvallis Gazette-Times)

During the war, Edwards worked as a reporter for CBS Radio and landed exclusives including an interview with Colonel Paul W Tibbetts (the pilot of the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, who dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.)

He had been chosen by lottery to be the chief announcer for the shipboard ceremony that ended hostilities between the United States and Japan and aboard the USS Missouri reported on the surrender ceremony that brought the conflict to its close.  (Ankeny)

“Attention, peoples of the world! World War II is about to come to its official closing, three years, eight months and 25 days since the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The Japanese delegation has just arrived.”

“Lined up before us are officers and men with high-ranking stars and gold braid. The deck of the Missouri stretches out before us … its great guns pointed skyward to allow for more room …”   (Corvallis Gazette-Times)

From the time of inception until January of 1972, Webley Edwards was Hawaiʻi Calls’ announcer and leading personality.

Each show opened with the sounds of the pounding surf and the enthusiastic bounding voice of Webley Edwards proclaiming “The sound of the waves on the beach at Waikiki.”

Usually that radio program was broadcast to the Mainland at about sundown. The announcer always described the beautiful sunset including the words, “and now the beautiful sun is a ball of fire, sinking, sinking, ever so slowly over the edge of the ocean–there it goes.”    (Green)

The weekly program was typically taped before a live audience at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki.  Periodically, they took the show on the road and broadcast from a neighbor island.

In its heyday, the show was heard on over 600 radio stations in North America and scores of others in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, South America, Africa and the Far East.  It was also heard on the Voice of Freedom (the predecessor to the Voice of America) and on Armed Forces Radio throughout the world.    (Hula Records)

Throughout the 1950s, Edwards compiled and produced a series of Hawaiian music collections for Capitol Records.  He even wrote songs under a pseudonym, John Kalapana.

In all, Hawaiʻi Calls spanned 40-years, along the way popularizing tunes including “Lovely Hula Hands,” “Beyond the Reef,” “Little Brown Gal” and “The Hawaiian Wedding Song.”

“Sweet Leilani,” which Edwards debuted in 1936, won an Academy Award after Bing Crosby’s powerful, yet gentle, rendition from the movie ‘Waikiki Wedding’ thrilled people throughout the world.  (Hula Records)

In addition, he helped promote local performers, including Alfred Apaka, George Kainapau, Haleloke, and Simeon and Andy Bright.  (Ankeny)  In addition, Al Jolson and Arthur Godfrey were among the many guests featured on the program.

After Edwards left the program, Danny Kaleikini, a well-known Hawaiʻi entertainer and singer, was the announcer and a performer for the program.  (US District Court Records)  The program ended August 16, 1975.

Late in his career, Edwards made a successful run at politics, serving for more than 14-years in Hawaiʻi’s territorial legislature and then the state legislature.

Spending his last few months in a Honolulu assisted-living facility, he died October 5, 1977, after suffering a heart attack.

On October 3, 1992 there was a temporary return of Hawaiʻi Calls, taped at the Hilton Hawaiian Village’s beachside Tropics Showroom, then transmitted via satellite to affiliates.  It ran for about a year, but it failed to attract enough financial support to continue.

© 2022 Hoʻokuleana LLC12

Filed Under: Buildings, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Waikiki, Oahu, Moana Hotel, Moana, Hawaii Calls, Webley Edwards, Hawaii Theatre

February 9, 2022 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

“Excuse my back”

Conversation at Waikīkī: “I see Ed Sawtelle’s back” “I didn’t know he had been away” “I said that I see Ed Sawtelle’s back’s the best known back in Honolulu. I want to see the face in front of the back for once.”

“Ed Sawtelle doesn’t need to say ‘Excuse my back’ when he sits at the console of the great Robert Morton Organ in the Waikīkī Theater: that tall swaying silhouette under the proscenium lights is his signature.  (Blanding, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 27, 1954)

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Sawtelle is a graduate of Harvard, where he majored in music, and a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music where he studied under two of the nation’s outstanding authorities, Professor Henry Dunham and Professor Wallace Goodrich.

For some time, Sawtelle was with the Boston Symphony, and for three years was accompanist with the Boston Opera House. He entered the theatrical field in New York, and has been organist and musical director in theaters in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta, and Boston.

For many years, Sawtelle was associated with the Robert Morton Organ Company demonstrating and installing theatrical organs. In this particular field he was considered one at the greatest authorities in the country.

Sawtelle first came to Hawaiʻi in 1922 as organist at the opening of the Princess Theater. While here he was organist at the Hawaiʻi Theater, and went to Hilo to open the Palace Theater as organist and musical director. He returned to Honolulu to open the new Waikīkī Theater.

Leaving Hawaii in 1929, Sawtelle was featured on the radio in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. A concert tour took him through the major centers of the nation.

Mrs. Sawtelle returned to Honolulu with her husband. She, too, is noted in the field of music, having appeared throughout the country on concert tour as Carmen Prentice, mezzo-soprano.

Not only did Sawtelle supervise the building of the Hammond organ for the Waikīkī Theater, but he brought it to Honolulu with him, and has supervised the installation at the new playhouse.  (Honolulu Advertiser, August 20, 1936)

As organist for the Consolidated Amusement Company since 1922 with only a break of seven years from 1929 to 1936, Ed meant “moods, memories and music” to Honolulu audiences.

During the war years his audiences extended far beyond the limits of the movie palaces to little lonely atolls in the deep Pacific, to hospitals and observation posts in the Islands, and to ships at sea as his Star Dust Serenade went out over the airwaves to reach and sooth the homesick hearts of men and women in the service.   (Blanding, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 27, 1954)

Starting in 1937, Sawtelle played the new organ at intermissions and on weekly live radio broadcasts heard throughout the Pacific during World War II. For a time, Sawtelle played two shows a day, seven days a week. He eventually retired in 1955, but a succession of organists carried on the tradition through 1997.

The 1,353-seat Waikīkī Theater opened with great fanfare on August 20, 1936.  “This first-class theatre survived as a single-screen house its entire life.”  (TheatresOfHawaii)   Dickey created an environment as charming and artificial as the image on the screen.  (Charlot)

In 1939, the Waikīkī Theatre was equipped with a Robert Morton theatre organ, which had originally been installed (with a twin console) in the Hawaiʻi Theatre in 1929.  (Peterson)

“No theater in the world has a more picturesque setting than Waikīkī.  Situated on the beach at Waikīkī, it stands on the site where once Hawaiʻi’s royalty played.  The playhouse now becomes a glorious new addition to the beach made famous in song and story.  It is the new center of activity of that district which long been the mecca of travelers from the world over.”  (Honolulu Advertiser; Alder)

“Inside the theater, it felt as if you were in a tropical paradise. A full-colored rainbow arched over the curtains that hid the screen. Along the side walls, there were palm trees that reached from floor to ceiling and lush jungle plants, which appeared absolutely real to my child’s eyes.”

“Then, a distinguished gentleman named Ed Sawtelle would appear and sit down at a large organ console, located just below and in front of the stage, and begin a concert that filled the hall with rolling music that vibrated off the walls.”  (Richard Kelley)

© 2021 Hoʻokuleana LLC

 

Filed Under: Buildings, Economy Tagged With: Hawaii, Hilo, Oahu, Hawaii Theatre, Waikiki Theater, Edwin Sawtelle, Palace Theater

June 28, 2019 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Hawaiʻi Theatre

The Hawaii Theatre is celebrating its 90th anniversary.  It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its excellent architectural and interior design, craftsmanship, and detailing.

The theater is a rare example of eclectic architecture that was relatively common to this area of Honolulu prior to World War II.

The theater, historically, had two primary functions. During its early years it was both a live center for the performing arts and a motion picture theater, its dual uses gradually shifted, and in later years it functioned solely as a motion picture theater.

In March, 1920, the Honolulu architectural firm of Emory and Webb was commissioned to do the design plans. On June 9, 1921, a construction contract was awarded to Pacific Engineering Company, another Hawaiian company.

Official opening of the theater was held on September 6, 1922, and was attended by Governor Wallace R. Farrington and members of the Territorial government, and members of social circles.

It is the oldest theater still remaining in Honolulu and the State of Hawaiʻi that was originally planned, built and used as a legitimate theater and concert hall.

Great pride was expressed that “the finest theater in Honolulu…is a home product.”

“Honolulu is to be congratulated on what is being done for the entertainment of its residents and visitors. It has now a most attractive and well conducted amusement place in Aloha Park and its new Hawaii Theater is as if one of the best and most attractive from the white light district of New York had been carried bodily across the continent and out into the Pacific to the Paradise of the Pacific.”  (Maui News, October 3, 1922)

The theater was built at a cost of a half million dollars and was ranked with the most modern theaters in America for that period.

It was equipped with air conditioning, indirect lighting, a fire/emergency exit system, wicker chairs in the balcony and a seating capacity for 1,726 persons, and was the largest and the first modern theater in the Territory of Hawaiʻi.

The Hawaii Theatre is situated at the southwest corner of the intersection of South Pauahi and Bethel Streets in Downtown Honolulu and abuts the Chinatown Historical District.

The Hawaii Theatre opened as a showplace for vaudeville, silent films, plays, musicals, and Hawaiian entertainments. It slowly evolved into a plush movie palace until it fell on hard times in the 1970s, when Waikīkī became the entertainment destination for locals and tourists alike.

In the 1980s, concerned citizens banded together around the mission to preserve and restore the Hawaii Theatre and formed the Hawaii Theatre Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that owns and operates the historic Hawaii Theatre.

The Hawaii Theatre hosts approximately 100,000 patrons annually showcasing the finest in local, national, and international entertainments.

Each year the Hawaii Theatre Educational Programming Project reaches thousands of Hawaii’s children through programming geared specifically for student matinee performances. The Hawaii Theatre Center SHOWTIME! Student matinee series has drawn thousands of students to the historic theatre to experience the wonders of performance.

In 2005 the League of Historic America Theatres named it the “Outstanding Historic Theatre in America”; in 2006 the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave Hawaii Theatre its highest “Honor Award” for national preservation; and in 2006 the Hawaii Better Business Bureau presented its “Torch Award for Business Ethics” to the Hawaii Theatre Center, the first small nonprofit to receive that award.

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Filed Under: General, Buildings Tagged With: Hawaii, Hawaii Theatre, Chinatown

July 14, 2014 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Consolidated Amusement

The first moving pictures were first publicly shown in Hawaiʻi in February 1897.  A little over a decade later, the ‘cameraphone’ arrived, it was “the picture machine that sings and talks”.  (Hawaiian Start, January 18, 1909)

“Harry Werner and his wife Leona Clifton leave in the SS Alameda on Wednesday next for the mainland … Werner will devote his attention abroad to the cameraphone, a device producing the effect of talking-moving pictures and which he may bring to Honolulu later.”  (Hawaiian Star, September 12, 1908)

“Harry Werner was an incoming passenger on the SS Lurline arriving this morning.  He has been away several months and returns with a cameraphone, a moving picture novelty popular at the Coast but never introduced here.”  (Hawaiian Star, January 13, 1909)

“In reproducing the picture and vocal record at exactly the same rate of movement, the moving picture machine is placed as usual at a point behind the audience at the back of the Opera House, while the talking machine is located near the screen.”

“By this means we have a perfect concordance between the two apparatus.  This great novelty will open in the Opera House next Saturday evening.  Seats are on sale … Prices 15¢, 25¢, 35¢ and 50¢.”  (Evening Bulletin, January 21, 1909)

“Tonight the Cameraphone will make its first how to a Honolulu audience.  The program selected is sure to please as it made up of operatic trio, duets and solos, as well as vaudeville acts and dramatic numbers.”  (Evening Bulletin, January 23, 1909)

And so the modern movie phenomenon began.

By 1910, a dozen nickelodeons were operating in downtown Honolulu, including the Savoy. The Liberty, the first modern, “fireproof” theatre, opened on Nuʻuanu Street in 1912.  Others opened.

In 1911, many of the independent theatres joined forces and formed the Honolulu Amusement Company; it was later renamed Consolidated Amusement, eventually operating more than three dozen theatres at its peak and became the Islands’ largest theatre chain (first under J Albert Magoon, then his son, John Henry Magoon.)  (Angell)

J Alfred Magoon was a prominent Honolulu lawyer and promoter of the Honolulu Consolidated Amusement Co. (which controlled the Bijou, Hawaii, Ye Liberty and Empire theatres at Honolulu.) (Variety, 1916)

“Articles of incorporation were filed today by the Consolidated Amusement Company Ltd. …  The incorporators are GT Chong, president, who holds 1,498 shares of the stock; J Alfred Magoon, vice president, holding 1,498 shares of stock; Robert McGreer, treasurer, holding one share; John Henry Magoon, secretary, holding one share, and William H. Campbell, holding one share. L Abrams is named as auditor.”  (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 5, 1912)

Joel C Cohen was instrumental in the organization of the Honolulu Amusement Co., Ltd., in which were consolidated a number of moving picture houses. He became president and manager of the Consolidated Amusement Co., Ltd., in 1913; he also operated a motion picture exchange which supplied all the theaters of the Territory with films.

Back then, movie going was not the near-dawn to waay-dark, 7-days-a-week phenomenon that it seems to be today.  “… a law was passed in this past legislative session giving the responsibility to the board of supervisors of each county to make laws to approve showing movies on the Sabbath; the Consolidated Amusement Company put a request before the board of supervisors of the City and County of Honolulu at the meeting of that board on this past Tuesday night, to ask for approval to show movies on Sundays.”  (Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, May 14, 1915)  (Sunday performances were allowed May 23, 1915.)

Downtown Honolulu’s Hawaiʻi and the nearby Princess theatres both opened in 1922, the biggest and fanciest the Islands had ever seen.  The Dickey-designed Waikīkī Theater opened in 1936.

“… the Hawaiʻi, a class of entertainment hitherto undreamed of in the Islands.  The Hawaiʻi Theatre is the home of Hawaiʻi’s people, whether living in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, Maui or Kauaʻi. It is there for your entertainment and delight whenever you visit the Queen City.”    (Maui News, October 22, 1922)

But opportunities for movie entertainment were not limited to downtown Honolulu.

“Fun. Laughter. Excitement. These words describe the Kalaupapa Social Hall. Built in 1916, the hall hosted numerous recreational events and gatherings for all the residents of Kalaupapa. Isolated from the outside world both physically and socially, people needed a place for coming together, for socializing, for “talk story.” Now they had a suitable structure for hosting movies, dances, theater performances and concerts.”  (Paschoal Hall, (NPS))

“Hawaiʻi, in a few brief years, has been swept from the edge of world affairs close to its vortex.  And, until a very few years ago, the Territory was dependent for its amusements entirely upon such stray attractions as dropped off the steamers enroute between Orient and Occident.”

“The Consolidated Amusement Company has changed all that. It has brought the world’s best pictorial entertainment your door. And, now, it has afforded Island people, when in Honolulu the advantages of playhouse second to none in America so far as beauty and comfort is concerned.”  (Maui News, October 22, 1922)

By 1929 popularity of movies caused further expansion and, to meet the demand, Consolidated Amusement began constructing neighborhood theatres that year and into the 1930s, with well over a dozen built on the Island of Oʻahu.

“Honolulu in the early 1930s was mad about the movies. … To meet the growing demand, the leading theater operators, Consolidated Amusement, built more than two dozen neighborhood and rural theaters on O‘ahu and elsewhere during the decade. Every neighborhood had one.”  (Friends of Queen Theater)

 “On October 9th, 1931 the first sound program was shown in the Kalaupapa theatre with the dual equipment installed by the Consolidated Amusement Co. This equipment has given complete satisfaction since its installation and an average of two programs weekly has been maintained since the initial show.”  (Superintendent’s Annual Report, 1932)

“Everybody looked forward to the movies. There was nothing else to do on Monday and Friday except go to the movies unless there was a baseball game, then maybe they would go to the game and then come to the movie. But other than that, nobody misses the movie because it starts at 7:00.”

“During the War, (World War II) at one time they started it at 3:30 in order for it to get through before dark. They blacked out all the windows inside and then they showed the movie.” (Kalaupapa resident, NPS)

In all, there have been more than 400 theatres throughout the Islands. The tropical climate and social, cultural, and ethnic diversity contributed to a variety of theatre designs unique to Hawai’i — tin-roofed plantation theatres, neighborhood movie houses in exotic styles, large downtown “palaces,” and the uniquely beautiful, tropical 1936 Waikīkī Theatre.  (TheatresOfHawaii)

The most famous hula movie in Hawaiʻi is not a movie at all but a “trailer” featuring torch-bearing hula dancers appearing on the screens in all Consolidated Amusements Theatres before every feature-length film.

For the last 22 years, Consolidated Amusement has run the “Hawaiʻi” trailer more than a thousand times a day on its screens across the Islands.  Jon de Mello, the film’s producer, believes it is the longest running movie trailer ever made.  (Fawcett)

Click HERE for Consolidated Amusement’s trailer.

The first movies actually filmed in Hawaiʻi were ‘Honolulu Street Scene,’ ‘Kanakas Diving for Money’ (two parts), and ‘Wharf Scene, Honolulu,’ all made by two Edison photographers, W Bleckyrden and James White, on May 10, 1898 while in transit through Honolulu.  (Schmitt)

Keeping on the entertainment subject, television came to the Islands in late-1952. Station KGMB-TV was first with both a live program and televised motion pictures, initiating regular programming at 5:05 pm, December 1.  Color television was first viewed in Hawaiʻi on May 5, 1957 at 6:30 pm, when KHVH-TV presented a program of color slides and movies. (Schmitt)

Live television broadcasting to and from the Mainland was inaugurated on November 19, 1966, when KHVH-TV used the Lani Bird communication satellite to bring the Michigan State-Notre Dame football game at East Lansing to Island viewers.  (Schmitt)

The image shows Empire Theatre on Hotel Street from Bethel.  (HSA, 1911.)  I have added other images to a folder of like name in the Photos section on my Facebook and Google+ pages.

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Filed Under: Prominent People, Economy, General Tagged With: Hawaii, Hawaii Theatre, Waikiki Theater, Consolidated Amusement, Kalaupapa, Cameraphone, J Alfred Magoon

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People, places, and events in Hawaiʻi’s past come alive through text and media in “Images of Old Hawaiʻi.” These posts are informal historic summaries presented for personal, non-commercial, and educational purposes.

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