From "Hawaii Recalls" by DeSoto Brown
The grace of Hawaii was captured on Matson Line's arty
menus created by Frank MacIntosh in the late 1930s.

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U.S. swoons
in the ’20s to
Hawaii’s magic spell

The mainland love affair
was interrupted by the war

By DeSoto Brown
Special to the Star-Bulletin

From 1920 through 1941, the U.S.A. didn't need to be told that Hawaii existed. In all kinds of ways, Americans knew -- and dreamed of -- the romantic vision of the Hawaiian Islands.

Going into the '20s, everyone could remember the huge fad of "Hawaiian" music a few years earlier, from 1915-16, when New York songwriters had busily churned out scores of phony Hawaii-themed pop songs (the likes of "Oh, How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo" - and yes, that's a real title).

That craze had subsided but the so-called Hawaiian guitar (an acoustic steel) and the ukulele remained implanted in American music. Mail-order courses to teach Hawaiian guitar for fun and profit thrived throughout the period, incongruously headquartered mostly in the Midwest. Vaudeville stages and circus tents showed off coochie-style haole hula girls.

So when the "Hawaii Calls" radio show first went on the air from across the Pacific to the mainland in 1935, the stage was well set for Hawaiian music to attain an even higher level of popularity. Radio listeners were captivated, visualizing the warm sands of Waikiki, mentally carried away by the strains of the electric steel guitar.

From "Hawaii Recalls" by DeSoto Brown
A hula girl from a 1920s calendar evoked Hawaii's romantic beauty.

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Sophisticated bars and nightclubs sprang up in mainland cities to feature authentic local musicians and dancers amongst fake palm trees. The most notable was New York's Hawaiian Room in the Lexington Hotel.

Hollywood didn't neglect us. Scattered films throughout the '20s used Hawaii as a setting, but "Waikiki Wedding" made the biggest splash when it hit screens in 1937. Bing Crosby starred in this musical comedy, with a handful of scenes shot on location and all the rest on well-decorated studio sound stages. When Harry Owens' "Sweet Leilani" from this movie got to No. 1 on radio's "Your Hit Parade," then grabbed the Oscar for "Best Song," people really took notice.

In the next five years, there would be at least 10 more notable Hollywood Hawaiian efforts, from the big-budget ("Song of the Islands" starring Betty Grable) to grade B ("Hawaiian Buckaroo," played by the obscure Smith Ballew).

Tourism was still only a small part of the local economy; agriculture and the military were bigger spenders. But the necessity for advertising was still there.

The now-forgotten Los Angeles Steamship Company was a major carrier of visitors and spread the word to the Western United States actively in the late 1920s. But Matson Navigation ended up winning the competition for the bigger share of shipgoers and bought out its rival in the early '30s. It was successful enough to place multiple, full-color romantic advertisements in major national magazines by 1935 and beyond.

Alongside these were ads for Dole Pineapple -- "Glamorous Hawaii Offers You Her Most Refreshing Gift!" -- and the Hawaii Tourist Bureau. While the island popularity was at its peak in the late '30s, one practically couldn't pick up a magazine without seeing smiling Hawaiian faces in the ads.

And though the Hawaii Tourist Bureau's advertisements in December 1941 ironically emphasized that you could reach Hawaii "over peaceful seas," peace was actually at an end.

The intrusion of war would bring a sudden, if temporary, halt to the romantic image Americans had had of Hawaii for the previous decades; that the enemy's first, shocking strike came to "paradise" made it seem even more terrible.

The isles wouldn't be completely forgotten in the 1940s, but it wouldn't be until the middle '50s that things Hawaiian would become a fad again.

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DeSoto Brown is a collector of Hawaiian memorabilia primarily relating to tourism, and has written four books on different aspects of 20th-century Hawaiian history.

About this Series The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is counting down to year 2000 with this special series. Each month through December, we'll chronicle important eras in Hawaii's history, featuring a timeline of that particular period. Next month's installment: September 13. Series Archive Project Editor: Lucy Young-Oda Chief Photographer: Dean Sensui