Post #741296 by PremEx on Wed, Apr 15, 2015 11:11 AM

While web searching the history of the Half Moon Inn this past weekend, I came across this article on Miss Billy Riley.

http://www.travelwritingbycynthiadial.com/riley.html

Here's the relevant excerpt:

From 1949 to 1961, she was the receptionist for a doctor who was also an investor in San Diego’s first resort property, the Half Moon Inn on Shelter Island. The property was struggling. Tourism hadn’t yet come to San Diego—it was still just a Navy town.

Riley was hired to handle the resort’s public relations. As the San Diego Union said, “. . . The owners bet on a long shot. They sent in a doctor’s receptionist, a woman with a man’s first name, to do some promotion . . . Billy Riley put on its feet a nine-year-old resort hotel that had arrived before its time.”

“Those were desperate, desperate times,” she says. “Occupancy was low—5%. So I had all the hotel employees park their cars in the spaces reserved for guests and I turned on every light in the place at night. That brought in the first tourists. I knew times were changing when I could quit sewing together twin sheets if we needed a king-sized bed that night.”

Riley’s ingenuity was recognized and she eventually became assistant manager and soon manager and vice president. Her entertainment background surfaced and she began “staging” her first hotel.

The Polynesian paradise

The Half Moon Inn was transformed into a Polynesian paradise and Billy was as comfortable in her muumuu as she is today in a lace period dress. Even the trams that transported guests had “the look” with their thatched grass roofs. Guests described the property as being “more like the islands than the islands.”

The reputation spread and the resort soon became a haunt for celebrities. Nan and Frankie Lane lived there 13 years and regulars included Desi Arnaz, Xavier Cugat and Lana Turner. And because of its romantic charm, many newlyweds honeymooned at the Half Moon Inn, including President Johnson’s daughter, Lynda Bird, and her husband Charles Robb.

In 1969, Sheraton bought the thriving Half Moon Inn and Riley went to Los Angeles as a vice president for Amfac hotels

She still lives in San Diego and sounds like an interesting person to talk to. I wonder if any of you San Diegans might look her up and perhaps scan a few goodies from this:

After he saw old scrapbooks from Riley’s Half Moon Inn days—the resort’s transformation and its appeal to celebrities—Pearson repeatedly asked Riley to manage the Gaslamp property.

She's also mentioned here:

http://legacy.utsandiego.com/news/metro/20031201-9999_1m1island.html

Against a backdrop of marinas, boat repair and boat building, owners of hotels and restaurants in the early years strove to imbue the area with a Polynesian sensibility. The Bali Hai Restaurant, for example, offered a Polynesian floor show six nights a week. The mai tai, the rum-fueled cocktail, was a popular beverage.

"The key to everything was our Polynesian atmosphere," said Billy Riley, 85, a pioneering businesswoman on Shelter Island. "We were more Hawaii than Hawaii."

Riley, who managed the Half Moon Inn and was later a part owner of a Shelter Island restaurant, said the Polynesian patina lured winter tourists from the Midwest and Phoenix.

Riley joined with Tom Ham, the energetic owner of Bali Hai, to relentlessly publicize Shelter Island. Riley customarily wore colorful muumuus, while Ham favored splashy open-collared Hawaiian shirts and white slacks.

"We had to promote it like crazy to get it going," Riley said.