Hawaii
1971: Some assembly required
for Benihana restaurantFIESTA: Malcolm MacNaughton, Bill Quinn and other Castle & Cooke execs visited the Dole plantation in the Philippines a few weeks ago. Their small plane was caught in a storm off Mindanao. When the pilot found a remote coastal landing strip, they put down for the night. The relieved passengers assumed they would have to rough it, and were glad to be alive to do so. Surprise! Their jungle host provided them with fine wines, a banquet and such agreeable accommodations that they could hardly believe their eyes -- or luck. (March 26, 1969) ...
THE new Japanese restaurant under construction at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Benihana of Tokyo, is actually a 400-year-old Japanese farmhouse which was dismantled in Japan and is being reassembled inside a large warehouse-size structure on the grounds of the Village. There are no nails in the farmhouse -- all the wood is painstakingly fitted together. (March 24, 1971) ...
JUST back from Kona, where the Press Club's Gridiron Show played before a full house at the Kona Surf Hotel ... One of the funniest Gridiron Show incidents occurred offstage -- at the airport, in fact. One of the props used in the show is a large plastic marijuana plant, and when prop gal Lorraine Walters blithely carried it up to the spot where police are on hand looking for hijackers or something, all motion stopped. The policeman looked very suspicious and even called an agriculture inspector over to have a look. Finally, it passed inspection, but when Lorraine hauled it onto the bus in Kona, the driver told her, "If we get stopped, I don't know nothing about that." It did look real -- one young counter-culturalist even came sniffing around at the airport, stating that he grew a garden of the stuff in Kona. (March 26, 1973) ...
ONE of the people who stopped by to wish a happy birthday to Robert Cazimero last week was Alicia Bridges, the disco singer who's a self-proclaimed Cazimeros fan. She's been enjoying a long vacation in Honolulu. (March 24, 1980) ... Channel 9 staffers had planned a baby shower for reporter Lynette Lo Tom tonight, but a baby girl who was later named Jennie had other ideas and arrived on the scene yesterday. She was certainly no Jennie-come-lately. (March 29, 1985) ...
INDUSTRIAL Medical Clinic owner Dr. David Eith fulfilled a longtime dream by talking a Hollywood pal out of two tickets and attending the Academy Awards Monday. He did it in style, too, hiring a stretch-out limo and arriving in tux to applause from the crowd at the entrance. (They probably thought he was Steve Martin -- there's a definite resemblance.) Afterward he took in the Board of Governors party -- no ticket, but when you're decked out in Hollywood, you can go anywhere. To top off the evening, he and his date went to the famed Polo Lounge. Though it was Eith's first visit there, the cagey maitre d' said, "Nice to see you again." Ah, Hollywood. (March 27, 1986) ...
MAY Day is traditionally Lei Day in Hawaii, and that's the day that striking model and photog Sri Leinani Maiava has chosen as her wedding day. On May 1 she'll marry Ruz Rusden at Paradise Park ... When Damien Memorial High School kicks off its 25th-anniversary commemorative festivities April 12 with a luau at the Blaisdell Exhibition Hall, the entertainment will feature a graduate of the class of 1967, comic Frank De Lima. He graduated? (March 25, 1987) ...
IT'S not that she has anything against mystery writers -- it's just that Doris Lawyer doesn't want to be one. Lawyer, who left the advertising business to become a writer for Mayor Frank Fasi and Managing Director Jeremy Harris, attended the 1991 Pele Awards honoring the best in Hawaii advertising for the year. She and husband Keith Lawyer were thrilled when a brochure she'd written for Mauna Lani Resort's Champion Ridge development won a Pele Award. Her former agency, Starr Seigle McCombs, was mentioned, as was art director Larry Racoma. Was she, the writer, mentioned? Nope. And when the same brochure, "A Stroke of Genius," won best in show, her name was again not mentioned. Maybe she ought to get another lawyer. (March 27, 1991) ...
Dave Donnelly has been writing on happenings
in Hawaii for the Star-Bulletin since 1968.
The Week That Was recalls items from Dave's 30 years of columns.Contact Dave by e-mail: ddonnelly@starbulletin.com