Ursula Danera Hare, an actress of Jewish heritage who escaped Nazi detection in Austria, thanks in part to a nose job, and later found her way to Honolulu, where she became a radio personality and exercise guru, has died at age 93.
Hare was the host of the International Hour on KNDI Radio during the 1970s and early 1980s and wrote a book on exercise in 1977. She conducted weekly yoga and exercise classes in front of the Honolulu Zoo for years.
"I always loved her," said Rudolf Polt, a former exercise student of Hare’s. "She’s done so much good for people. She was the type of person who would see rubbish on the street and stop the car to pick it up. She was an amazing person."
Born Ursula Danera in Nikolaiken, Lithuania, she became an actress who starred in a few German movies during the run-up to World War II. To escape persecution by the Nazis, she underwent nose surgery so that she would look less like her Jewish grandmother, Polt said.
After the war, Danera moved to Italy, where she hosted a radio program. She would later marry, have two children, move to England, then to Canada and California before landing in Hawaii in the early 1970s, after her husband died.
In addition to her KNDI radio program and exercise activities in Honolulu, she was an animal lover and volunteer with the Hawaiian Humane Society and other nonprofit agencies.
Polt said Hare wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. Among other things, he said, she demonstrated against the Vietnam War and expressed sympathy for the plight of a call girl on the air, saying that prostitution should be legalized.
"She got fired for that," he said.
She is survived by her daughter, Teresa, and a sister. Services were held Thursday in the Atherton Memorial Chapel of Central Union Church in Honolulu. An inurnment was held Friday at Diamond Head Memorial Park, where her son, actor Douglas Hare, is buried.
