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Elks Honolulu Lodge No. 616
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Milk, Magic, and Will Rogers
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I never met a man I didn’t like.
Elk / entertainer William Penn Rogers arrived in Honolulu July 27, 1934, slipping into the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with none of the cymbals and bugles accorded Elk / President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) days earlier. Will and wife Betty were on a world cruise with Hawaii their first stop. The Star-Bulletin, where his daily paragraph-sized commentary was published, reported Rogers’ visit in detail, while rival the Honolulu Advertiser pretended to barely notice. Will skipped surfing (I couldn’t ride one of those ironing boards), but wedged in polo playing. He showed off his cowboy, regular guy image: refusing free air tickets to Maui and Hawaii (don’t want no Senate investigating committee saying I was taking any graft); meeting paniolo at Parker and Ulupalakua ranches (fine cowboys); refusing a VIP seat to view the patriotic lantern parade from the Iolani Palace steps with the press ‘boys.’ Will Rogers had a long history of performing for charity events – in Dublin, Puerto Rico, and Latin America, in New Orleans, Arkansas, California, Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. The Salvation Army and Red Cross received his special attention. Folks who suffered from drought, flood, and just plain poverty got Will’s help. Not surprising then that with Will in town, 616 soon was busy planning an impromptu fundraiser for their milk for needy children program. Elks 616 was surely grateful for help. In 1934, the monthly bill from the Honolulu Dairymen’s Association was $60-100 [equal to $900-1500 - in 2007].
Without lead-time to advertise and sell tickets, 616 went for saturation coverage. Both major daily newspapers had nearly a dozen ads, each sponsored by a major corporation. The ads – and Will Rogers’ name – drew 4000 people to the Civic Auditorium. For as little as 50c [$7] you could see and hear the man whose humor you admired. It was $1 [$15] to sit close up to the movie and radio star. True to his persona, Rogers told Elks 616 to let ticketless stage door kids come inside to watch him do some ropin’. For those who couldn’t be there at all, KGU broadcast the show. The event was a social and financial success. Will made a personal donation of $500 [$7600]. A chance to get close to Will Rogers made it easy to get volunteers to work the fundraiser. Gov. Poindexter, Mayor Wright, and Attorney General Pittman worked as MCs. Performers volunteered to be the front and back of the playbill with Will Rogers headlining as “cowboy philosopher and diplomat without portfolio.” Elk magician Max Malini modestly billed himself as the “World’s Greatest Magician”; visiting vaudevillian Jan March sang, while the Royal Hawaiian Band, Lena Machado, Sam Toomey, and others represented Hawaiian music and dance.
On taking the stage, Aug 2, 1934, the first thing Will Rogers did was apologize to Honolulu. Even as practiced and benign a humorist as Will Rogers can stumble when joking about topics that aren’t funny to the local audience. Noting Honolulu’s large ethnic Japanese population, Rogers joked in his nationally distributed column, datelined Honolulu, that he had found Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt “at some Japanese islands.” Hawaii’s power structure as well as the city’s regular folks were working overtime to convince FDR and Congress that local Japanese were NOT planning to deliver Hawaii to Japan and Hawaii WAS America, and won’t you please quit waiting and make us a state, please and thank you. Now, the Advertiser took notice of Will Rogers, suggesting “Mr. Rogers look about him to see a flag known here in the sticks as the American flag.” In his stage opening, Will said the islands also had “a lot of Portuguese people” and if he should write the islands were in Portugal the city should “wait until you hear from Roosevelt before you believe it.” With his stumble behind him, Rogers and his audience enjoyed themselves. Rogers presented himself as his fans expected, costumed, swinging a lariat given him by legendary paniolo Eben Low, with signature chewing gum wad aiding his drawl. He told the crowd he’d come to the islands to “offset any good the President might have done” during his trip. The 30 min. promised routine became 60 min. and his ending was a real crowd pleaser. He used his new lariat to “encircle himself and a Hawaiian dancer” on stage. The crowd loved it.
The next day Will and family boarded the Empress of Canada sailing for China and Japan to continue their world tour. A little more than a year later, Rogers, and pilot Wiley Post were killed when their plane crashed in Alaska. Rogers had passed on a return trip to Hawaii to explore a place new to him.
We enjoy Will Rogers’ 70-year-old work because his funny stories speak to our lives today:
I’m not a real movie star. I’ve still got the same wife I started out with 28 years ago. Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the places they do today. There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Responding to observers calling him wise, Rogers protested: All I know is what I read in the papers. His daily comments were insightful, pointed, and always entertaining. Noting (rightly) that Austria was sure to be carved up (again) by her neighbors, Will suggested Austria move out and settle among different neighbors. In 1934 he predicted: If war was declared with some Pacific nation we’d lose the Philippines before lunch. After his Hawaii trip, he wrote, Don’t have any fear of Hawaii belonging to Japan. Those Japanese kids [seen in the lantern parade for FDR] won’t let ‘em have it. As so many times before, Will Rogers was right.
Anita Manning, 616 Lodge Historian
References: 616 Minutes Mar-Oct 1934 Advertiser 1934 July 31, Aug 2-3 Hawaii Hochi 1934 Aug 2-3 Nippu Jiji 1934 Aug 3 Star Bulletin 1934 July 27-31, Aug 1-3 Sterling, B. & F. 1989 Will Rogers' world Yagoda, B. 1993 Will Rogers: a biography.
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