I just wanted to do a little plug for a short documentary that I wrote and directed four years ago. It's now hosted on YouTube.com at this URL:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wwvYNW07q0AThis clip was created as a promo for a larger documentary that I am working on. It's about the Hawaiians that worked along Kalakaua Avenue in Waikiki as surf instructors and nightclub entertainers during the Roaring Twenties and the Swing Era.
The promo is a bit dry and kinda of History Channel-esque, lacking the real cabaret excitement that I wanted the larger project to reflect, but it gives you an insight as to what a beachboy was, and how their lifestyle and music became the example that Tin Pan Alley songwriters and entertainment biz writers turned to for Hawaiian inspiration. In 1959, Alan Weiss wrote a piece in "The Los Angeles Herland Examiner" about the beachboys, who were then old men and legends in the surf community. The story was optioned by Colonel Tom Parker as a vehicle for Elvis Presley ("Hawaiian Beach Boy" later became "Blue Hawaii," but Elvis played a beachboy). There were at least ten Hawaiian groups from the '30s through the '50s that used the moniker "Beach Boys," and so it made sense for Joe Saraceno and Russ Reagan to land on that name for one of the burgeoning SoCal surf groups.
Hope you all enjoy the clip...
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