| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| markwitz |
Posted - 01/20/2014 : 3:13:40 PM
Help support this worthy project on hula, Hawaiian music and a bit of Hawaiian history.
From the website.....
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1977225368/the-hawaiian-room-film-completion-effort
Background on the Hawaiian Room: The Hotel Lexington was completed just six months before the market crash of 1929 and cost $5,000,000, a major sum for the time. By 1937, the hotel owners were in need of a show that would attract wealthy society members and keep the hotel in the black. Charles Rochester was a big "fan" of Hawaii and decided to experiment with all-Hawaiian entertainment set in a glamorous dining room. The "Hawaiian Room" opened with gifted bandleader Andy Iona and nationally-known Hawaiian tenor Ray Kinney as the featured singer. In 1938, Kinney went home to Hawai‘i to recruit dancers and returned to New York with the best! Ululani Holt, Jennie Napua Woodd (singer Amy Gilliom’s grandma), Mapuana Bishaw and Pualani Mossman, a.k.a. The Aloha Maids. The show format - Hawaiian musicians backed up by an American orchestra, with stellar, well-trained dancers - brought authentic Hawaii to life. The Hawaiian Room became an incomparable venue through which aloha and Hawaiian culture were shared for 30 years in what was then the world’s largest city, not to mention cultural & artistic hub – New York!
Between 1937-1966, hundreds of dancers, singers, and musicians straight from Hawai’i were chosen for and became part of the incredible legacy of this pioneering, one-of-a-kind Hawaiian Room. It was a most prestigious engagement. One of our "Ex-Lexes" shared that as a hula dancer if you worked at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Waikiki, and the Lexington Hotel in New York, you had really MADE it! |
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