Hawaii
DEATH has a way of bringing back a flood of memories to those of us still here. Reading of Kathryn Murray's passing was one of those times. Many's the time the Murrays and I found ourselves together, sharing laughs and even a dance or two in Kathryn's case. She would guffaw at husband Murray always good
for a laughArthur's almost practiced stuffiness, but he was highly animated when discussing those things which he loved most: Art and the stock market. He was always there with a stock tip, as if everyone had his kind of money to throw around, and Kathryn would have to cut him off as only she could. She did revel in his recognition, however, even such a minor thing as his appearance on a KHET-TV show about art I hosted called "The Green Room." It dealt with his love of art and we walked along the fence at the Zoo reveling in the fact that young artists were given this opportunity to show off their work. Retired Punahou president Rod McPhee said it best of Kathryn: "Her mind was as fast as her feet." Substitute "nimble" for "fast" and you have it ...
More memories
WORD has reached here via e-mail that Richard Gullicksen, longtime scenic director with the Honolulu Opera, has died on the mainland. I recall clearly that it was Richard who got me cast in the one and only opera I ever appeared in on stage, "Carmen," at the Blaisdell Concert Hall. Gullicksen saw that I had the finest costume in the show, and when I came on stage all eyes turned to me and everyone, including Carmen herself, followed after me. I played the Mayor of Seville, off to attend the bullfight -- about a 10-second walk up some steps. Richard loved it ...ONE final memory: News of the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. reminded Carl Van Brundage of when he was a freshman at Punahou, and his music group, Gross Corporation, was hired to play for Caroline Kennedy's birthday party by architect John Carl Warnecke, an old Kennedy friend. Van Brundage recalls having to shoo away tiny "John-John," eventually telling him to get lost. One reason the memory was so vivid was that Warnecke's check bounced, though they did get paid eventually ...
AFTER attending the Miss America appearance at the Juvenile Diabetes dinner Saturday night, three TV reporters from competing stations, normally vying for viewership, all showed up in the same party at Havana Cabana. Dressed to the nines and turning heads much like Miss America herself might have were Diane Ako, Mahealani Richardson and Kathy Muneno ...
Skywatch
GETTING a different view of the bay yesterday was "Baywatch Hawaii" star David Hasselhoff and another series regular, Brooke Burns. They went up, up and away with Sky Dive Hawaii. Hasselhoff and his wife, Pamela, did tandem sky dives with instructors Torsten Werner and Scott Morales, and then Burns showed she was no sissy, going aloft and down in tandem with Werner ... If anything had gone wrong during the dive, Hasselhoff knew just where to turn. He and the "Baywatch Hawaii" crew had earlier been filming an episode of the show at Wahiawa General Hospital. It added some verisimilitude to the proceedings, too, as Wahiawa General is where many people injured in big wave mishaps end up. The episode they shot there will be the first one aired this season, and seen locally Sept. 25 on KHON-TV ...
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
His columns run Monday through Friday.Contact Dave by e-mail: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com