Video night footage of The Luau restaurant, Miami Beach in 1964!

This is spectacular! The night footage starts at 13:30, with the Luau at 13:42 (but I enjoyed the whole video).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SoJhbaz2Mk&feature=digest

Jab,

Great find! On the version I looked at the Luau night footage started at about 17:42. Awesome shot of the Van Dercar tikis in full flame.

And, there is a nice segment from the Castaways at about 14:28

Thanks for the post.

DC

The entire film was interesting, I loved all the old cars and the fancy stores, all the hotels and the way people dressed up and how thin everyone was...

The Castaways are also at 03:36

I know I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for 3 days... MIAMI BEACH La La La - La La :music:

[ Edited by: Bora Boris 2010-06-29 19:59 ]

*On 2010-06-29 19:44, Bora Boris wrote:*I know I'm going to have that song stuck in my head for 3 days... MIAMI BEACH La La La - La La :music:

My kids have been signing the song tonight after I watched the clip! It's catchy.

DC

Sooooo cool! I loved the whole video. What a wonderful window into the styles of the past. Very cool. Thanks for the post!

Thanks for correcting the number. My brain farted and I typed 13 instead of 17. :lol:

No problem.

Some more Castaways fishing scenes around 10:46

DC

DANG !

On 2010-06-29 23:11, bigbrotiki wrote:
DANG !

I KNOW!

Sven, just curious, how much film footage is out there (that you're aware of) showing classic tiki? I'm sure there must be lots of home movie footage? The bars in old feature films are usually not easily identified.

Keep the faith and keep searching for "lost" 8mm & 16mm film footage - its out there.

My personal quest involves searching for old wooden roller-coaster footage. You would never guess that in the past ten years I've been fortunate to find stuff 40-60 years old in forgotten stashes around the country.

Years may pass with nothing - then BAM! - a whole slew of worthy stuff will surface and find its way to me for eventual inclusion into our national archives.

I would imagine tiki parallels amusement parks as its so film worthy, especially if the photographer was on vacation capturing memories of (or) for thier family.

Brilliant find here. Thanks for posting. G

Sven, just curious, how much film footage is out there (that you're aware of) showing classic tiki? I'm sure there must be lots of home movie footage? The bars in old feature films are usually not easily identified.

Very very very little! I mean of ACTUAL classic places, like the Miami Luau and the Castaways above.
As can be witnessed in the "Tiki in the movies/TV" -threads, most scenes playing in and around Tiki bars in the 50s/60s were shot on sets, which more often than not were bad, half-assed and cheap attempts to create a Tiki Bar (there ARE exceptions, like the bar in "The Apartment"), the irony being that initially many of the decor concepts of Polynesian restaurants borrowed from movie sets. That's just how it was done in Hollywood at the time: Very few productions shot on real locations.

Yes there MUST be lotsa amateur movies out there shot around Tiki places (not so much IN, because of the low light presenting a problem to the "slow" film at the time) -but to find them is, just like with amateur PHOTOS in Tiki bars, a lucky number game. PLUS, as can be seen in countless Restaurant photo folder snapshots, the emphasis of the photo or film was usually on the PEOPLE, not the decor (really, how can they!?). You are very lucky if you catch a glimpse of a mural, a mug or god forbid even a Tiki in any of these photos - a fact that paper collectors can corroborate, I am sure.

Which leaves film footage like the above: Newsreels, commercials, travel films. But even here, Polynesian pop was woefully under-documented, just like in the rest of the media like newspapers and magazines, a fact that supports my claim that in its heyday, Tiki style came and went unrecognized and undescribed.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-06-30 14:37 ]

Nice find Jab!

Here's another screen grab of the Castaway.

Hopefully with the advent of You Tube more footage will begin to surface.

A little off topic, but here are a couple of other old video clips from Tiki bars.

The Beachcomber in England

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=1802

Spoof that was shot at the Outrigger in Monterey.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MvKXnCkKRYk

DC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFwzMvFJYik&NR=1#t=19m27s

Some jet-age tiki stuff from a Pan Am infomercial from the same travelfilmarchive youtube account as the original post.

(There's also a jetage bellydancer at 7 minutes)

Martian tiki,

Holy cow, that film is from the Hotel Taharaa in Tahiti that I just did a post on! That is footage of the 23-foot Oceanic Arts Tiki and the hotel. Cool.

I am posting that over on the Taharaa thread as well.

Great find.

DC

On 2010-06-30 18:32, Dustycajun wrote:
Martian tiki,

Holy cow, that film is from the Hotel Taharaa in Tahiti that I just did a post on! That is footage of the 23-foot Oceanic Arts Tiki and the hotel. Cool.

I am posting that over on the Taharaa thread as well.

Great find.

DC

Wow thanks for identifying the hotel. Probably every place in that video has an enthusiastic historian somewhere.

Edit: See Dustycajun's thread http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=36953&forum=2

[ Edited by: martian-tiki 2010-06-30 20:52 ]

Great find Jab! Yours too DC & MT.....the Pan Am clip has what appears to be a Cobra's Fang mug @19:53

http://www.travelfilmarchive.com/ may have more interesting clips for the folks here - doing a quick search for Tahiti brought up some videos.

The opening music reminds me of the Tom & Jerry cartoons music

It does, huh?

The problem with travel films is that unless they depict U.S. destinations like the Miami one, they won't really show the heartland and power places of Tiki.

martian-tiki, I love that Pan Am one, it's beautifully done. Someday I would love to find one w/out the counters on it.