Last week I wrote about some of Dick Grimm’s stories from his 30 years in local television management. Grimm was a sales or general manager at KHON, KGMB and KITV.
KITV, under Grimm’s leadership, was the first station to televise many local events, such as UH women’s volleyball, the Ironman Triathlon and the Merrie Monarch Festival. Securing rights to the festival proved to be difficult.
“Napua Stevens, a great Hawaiian lady, introduced me to Dottie Thompson, who ran the Merrie Monarch Festival.”
The festival began in 1964 as an attempt to help Hilo’s economy recover from the 1960 tsunami. Hula was just a part of the original merriment. Barbershop quartets sang. Beer drinking contests were held, as were best-beard contests.
After a while the other attractions went by the wayside, and the premier hula festival in the world emerged. But you had to go to Hilo to see it. Grimm wanted to televise it.
“I went over to see Dottie. She wore a luna hat, a kukui nut lei, and sat behind a desk chain-smoking. I introduced myself.
“I know who you are,” Thompson cut him off. “Nappy told me all about you. The answer is no.”
“Can we even talk about it?” “No.”
“Can I at least buy you lunch?” “OK,” she said.
“She told me the festival was for the people that came to Hilo and they were sold out every year.
“I said, ‘How can you stop the whole state from watching this wonderful event? You’re preventing everyone from viewing this.’
“She thought about it for a while and said, ‘OK, but you gotta televise the parade, also.’
“‘You have a parade?’ ‘Yeah.’
“We couldn’t broadcast it live because the microwave transmission in those days cost too much — $15,000 a day. So we shot the kahiko and auana and edited it in Honolulu down to a two-hour show.
“By the third year the microwave rates had fallen to $3,500, and we started broadcasting it live. It did a 60-70 share and killed everything it was against.”
“The second year we broadcast the Merrie Monarch Festival, one of the girls’ top fell down while her halau danced the kahiko. She couldn’t have been more than 15 years old. She did not break the dance.
“She danced the whole time without a top and, with the halau, danced off the stage. When we edited it, my director made sure to keep her obscured.
“The place went wild,” Grimm recalls. “I thought the roof was going to come off. Everyone was cheering for her. People were crying. My wife’s mascara was running down her face, she was crying so hard.
“The crowd had so much empathy for that poor girl, who had the discipline to not break cadence.
“Their second dance, the auana was done very close together, hip to hip. They moved like a caterpillar. It was just so beautiful.
“Her halau won the kahiko and auana that year, and they won the overall.”
“About 1975 or ’76, the UH women’s volleyball team was ranked No. 2 in the country behind UCLA. Dave Shoji had been named head coach the year before.
“When UH and UCLA were a week away from playing two matches, I talked to Donnis Thompson, the women’s athletic director, and suggested the games be moved from Klum gym to the Blaisdell Arena.
“I can’t afford it” was her response. It was $1,000.
“‘Donnis, please do it,’ I begged. ‘We’ll promote it.’
“She agreed. I ran about $20,000 worth of ads for the game. The first game was sold out with over 1,000 turned away at the box office. We beat UCLA in both matches and vaulted to No. 1.
“The next season, KITV started televising women’s volleyball regularly.”
“I got a call that Gov. Burns was in bad shape in the hospital in 1975,” Grimm recalls. “He wanted to be able to watch the UH football game that weekend. It was the last of the season.
“KITV’s contract with the NCAA stipulated that local games could only be televised if they were sold out.
“The governor’s lawyer, Wally Yamaguchi, called. He was a power broker. He called me on a Wednesday and in heavy pidgin said, ‘Eh, Dick! Wally.’
“‘Yeah, Wally, what can I do for you?’
“‘Dick, you gotta televise the football game Saturday. The old man’s dying. You gotta televise it. He wants to see the game.’
“‘I can’t, Wally. It has to be sold out,’” Grimm said.
“‘Don’t worry, it will be sold out,’ he promised me. ‘Have them call the box office. They’ll tell him it’s sold out.’
“The box office told someone the game was sold out, even though it wasn’t, and we televised it. No one from the NCAA was going to come to Hawaii to verify it.”
Burns saw the game and died a few months after, before the next season started. It was the last UH game he saw.
“Captain Honolulu” was KHVH’s (now KITV) answer to the successful “Checkers and Pogo” kids’ afternoon show on KGMB. John Farrington was hired to play the lead.
“Unfortunately, the night before, Farrington partied too hard and didn’t show up for the live show. We panicked,” Grimm recalls. “The program director, Bob Smith, said he had an Air Force flight jacket and cap, and we sent him home to get it.
“We decided he would be Sgt. Sacto and substitute for Captain Honolulu, who was chasing criminals on Mars. The name Sacto may have come from the acronym of SAC – the Strategic Air Command.
“Farrington was fired and never appeared as ‘Captain Honolulu,’ leaving sidekick Sgt. Sacto to host the show. It ran for years.”
The show aired in the 1960s when television was black and white. Sgt. Sacto chatted with kids between cartoons (such as “Popeye,” “Mickey Mouse” and “Bugs Bunny”).
“Sacto was famous for creating a mask with his thumb and fingers, turned inside out in a way that few could mimic. Kids at every elementary school tried, and those that could earned a special status.”
I’ve looked through the Star-Advertiser photo archives for a shot of this finger mask and came up empty. Do any of you have one? If so, please contact me.
Bob Sigall, author of the Companies We Keep books, looks through his collection of old photos to tell stories each Friday of Hawaii people, places and companies. Email him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.
