On 2011-09-14 07:40, tikigreg wrote:

That letter is great! And what penmanship! Who writes like that anymore? I missed the earlier post (from 2005) about the Tahiti Village in Key Largo. I had no knowledge of the place before. It was such a different world then. So many places that we know little about and a world we've only touched on...

Here's a Japanese pop film take on the subject. From the Wakadaisho series of movies starring Yuzo Kayama, which paralleled the Elvis movies in many ways, some shots from "Hawaii no Wakadaisho" - loosely translated as Young Guy in Hawaii.

My favorite part is when the hula dancers break into the twist a couple times during this song...

And here's an extra from another movie in the series, Ginza no Wakadaisho. That one doesn't even take place in the islands, but it's kinda reflective of the phenomenon that sometimes it seems like the Hawaii / Polynesia fantasy played a role in Japanese midcentury culture almost as much as in the US.

Sorry if this is veering into another unplanned offshoot of the topic (ie, Polynesian acts on film)!

-Randy