Aloha Nūhou Monday!

Dear Reader,

If you think Director Jon Chu’s “Wicked” is going to be “Popular” in its opening month, imagine how Hawaiʻi’s movie-goers of 1939 felt during the cinematic premiere of its source material, “The Wizard of Oz.” This week we share an advertisement for Consolidated Amusement Co., published in Hilo’s nūpepa ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi on October 18, 1939.

Some insights from Bishop Museum Historian, DeSoto Brown:

“For decades, film historians have considered 1939 to have marked the high point of Hollywood’s movie output. Among the many classic films produced that year, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is possibly the one that has had the biggest influence on popular culture. People all over the world were avid movie-goers then, and Hawaiʻi residents were just as enthralled as millions of others, particularly because there was no television broadcasting here at the time, let alone the internet.

Movie theaters in the Hawaiian Islands in 1939 were run by a variety of companies. Some were entirely independent, while others belonged to local chains that might exist on just one island. At the top of the scene was Consolidated Amusement, which owned theaters on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu and Hawaiʻi Island. As the largest and most powerful of such companies, Consolidated got first pick of the best Hollywood productions, which of course included ‘The Wizard of Oz’ that year. In this English-language advertisement, we see that it was shown in what was then the city of Hilo’s premiere auditorium—the Palace Theater. The Palace would be replaced in this position the following year, when the modern Hilo Theater opened on Kamehameha Avenue, known immediately as a landmark in a prominent location. The Hilo, sadly, would close only 20 years later after the devastating 1960 tsunami wiped out much of downtown Hilo.”

Likely odd at first glance, we are sure to refer to this advertisement as “English-language” because, while the prevalence of the Hawaiian language had dwindled considerably since the turn of the century, this ad was retrieved from a nūpepa called Ka Hoku o Hawaii—a nūpepa widely regarded as the last known Hawaiian language newspaper, and a newspaper which undertook the preservation of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi as its personal charge. An indication of the growing influence of the English language, the advertisement appears on the fourth page of this issue, in a section titled The Star of Hawaii. This section was expressly “printed in the English language for the benefit of the younger generation, many of whom do not read the language of their forefathers, and our Caucasian subscribers.”