Post #447765 by bigbrotiki on Fri, Apr 17, 2009 4:39 PM

I have always been fascinated by the name of PAGO PAGO (pronounced Pungo Pungo) for Pre-Tiki Polynesian bars and supper clubs in the 1940s. Pago Pago is the main port in American Samoa, and was featured early on in literature:

"...in 1916, W. Somerset Maugham departs on a voyage to Pago Pago. Characters he meets on the voyage, including a prostitute and a missionary, inspire the story "Miss Thompson," which is published in his 1923 story collection, The Trebling of a Leaf. The story becomes the play "Rain", which is filmed three times, once starring Gloria Swanson, once with Joan Crawford, and once with Rita Hayworth.
(In 1919, Maugham published The Moon and Sixpence, featuring an unconventional artist based on Paul Gauguin.)"

The above story obviously was the inspiration for this 1940 film:

In it, a prostitute (played by Frances Farmer) falls for native Hunk Jon Hall.
Here's another publicity still of beautiful and tragic Frances Farmer:

And here she is in bad company:

"IT'S PRIMITIVE! IT'S EXCITING! IT'S SOUTH OF PAGO PAGO!" I believe it was the film that lifted the name to a pop culture status so that several different (how many?) South Seas hideaways around the U.S. chose it for their calling card. This thread shall serve for the collecting of all Pago Pago material from all locations. I will start with the Pago Pago in Tuscon, here the famous match book:

...and my match-up of the match book rendering to a frame capture of the 1956 film "A Kiss Before Dying":

Now here is the place to post swizzle sticks, more matchbooks, postcards and other paper ephemera from all the various Pago Pagos in Chicago, Tuscon, Portland, Long Beach and so on.