Post #485855 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Wed, Sep 30, 2009 4:43 PM

John-O, I love this thread. It's great to finally know that Frank Bowers was responsible for all those great Polynesian bar murals. I'm definitely visiting The Embers soon.

At Bosko's slideshow at Tiki Oasis this year, Bosko had a photo of the interior of Dale Sizer's house in the 1990s. On the wall was another of these large Frank Bowers paintings depicting nude Polynesian maidens. A week later I met Dale Sizer at another Hollywood event and asked him about that painting. All the info he had was the name of the antique store he had bought it from, and the fact that he had sold it himself, years ago. Another dead-end. Now the mystery is solved.

The Foc'sle Bar is just about 15 blocks from my house (I live off Avalon in Carson). So I decided to make a quick archeological expedition at lunch today. I was dressed in my best corporate attire from the office, and debated whether to dress-down, as I would surely stick out like a sore thumb in Wilmington, but was in a bit of a hurry, so decided to go as I was.

The Foc'sle is around the block from another of my favorite haunts, Jack's Country Kitchen - a fantastic 50s restaurant with a covered wagon out front and tons of antiques inside, that, unfortunately was sold a few years ago and "remodeled tastefully" for the worse.

Entering the Foc'sle, the painting is clearly evident in all it's glory. I talked to the few locals having beers and they're very proud of their painting. They said someone came in recently and offered to buy it for $1000 but the owner turned him down. I told the guys there to tell the owner that the painting was by a famous Californian artist and worth a lot more than that and please dont' sell it. They said he'd never consider selling it, which is good. They wanted to know when it was painted and I told them 1940s or 50s, and that seemed to surprise them because they didn't suspect the bar was so old, but that only confirmed that they had something special there.

The girl tending bar was reluctant to let me photograph the painting without the owner there, but one of the older locals asked her if he wasn't acting manager while the owner was out? And she said yes, so he told me, "In that case, I override her - you can take your pictures".

Behind the bar is an even longer painting, but it's obscured by shelving and bottles, so that you can only catch small glimpses of it. The locals said the painting is the same scene as the other painting, but painted from the "opposite side" of the first painting. So in the portion below, you can see the same sailor, but viewed from "behind". The girls are viewed from behind as well.

Walking out of the bar, I surprised a 55-year-old longshoreman walking down the street.

"Brother," he said, "you are the last person I expected to see come out of the Foc'sle!"

He looked my attire up and down. "I don't think I've ever seen someone dressed like you in Wilmington, but hey, even suits got to have a beer at lunch like everybody else, right?".

I laughed and told him about me coming to see the Frank Bowers paintings in the bar. He seemed surprised that I knew about them and wondered how I heard about Frank Bowers. I told him about my interest in old Polynesian bars and how he had painted murals in quite a few of those bars.

"Then you would have loved Joe Keawe's just down the block." he said. "Joe Keawe was a famous singer back in Hawaii and every wall of his bar was covered with Polynesian Girl paintings, and every one of them was signed 'Frank Bowers'".

I of course was astonished, so I asked him more questions and we had a great conversation about the history of Wilmington and the longshoremen of the Local 13, of who Joe Keawe was a member. When I got back to my office, I did some research on Joe Keawe and this is what I discovered.

Joe Keawe was a famous Hawaiian Falsetto singer who's appeared on many albums. He moved to the mainland in the 1940s and opened Joe Keawe's Hale Hawaii bar & restaurant in Wilmington at 348 Avalon Blvd. He continued singing and was also a longshoreman. His Bar/Restaurant seems to have been renamed at some point to "Joe Keawe's Hawaiian Restaurant". When he died, his wife Doris continued to run the restaurant until 2005 or 2006 when it was sold and closed.

I'm going to have to make another trip to see if the building (and possible murals) is still there and maybe contact his family to see what happened to the Frank Bowers paintings.

I haven't had this much fun on an urban archeology expedition for years. I can't believe a treasure like this exists right in my own neighborhood and I never knew about it. But Wilmington is full of forgotten mid-century wonders.

And despite my normal rule of dressing like a local to fit in to the neighborhood, if I wasn't wearing inappropriate clothes, I never would have talked to that longshoreman, and I never would have found out about Joe Keawe's Hale Hawaiian. So I'm re-thinking my rule.

Sabu

[ Edited by: Sabu The Coconut Boy 2009-09-30 16:51 ]