PIctures of celebrities in canoes

[Glenn MacGrady]

For those of you who, like me, appreciate paddling the fastest canoe in the world -- the outrigger canoe -- and which is also the watercraft that historically first carried the migratory explorers who populated the islands of the Pacific Ocean by paddling and sailing from the Asian mainland, here is hunky Howard Keel and aesthetic Esther Williams in a tandem outrigger in Pagan Love Song (1950).

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

The lovely Ann Blyth, film star and Oscar nominee in the 40's and 50's, spears a fish from her birch bark canoe in Rose Marie (1954).



Ann was well known to TV audiences in the 70's as the spokesperson for Hostess Cupcakes and Twinkies. Still scrumptious.

 

[Mason]

Glenn, I really think you're enjoying this, as am I. Thanks!

 

[Boreal Birch]

Nostalgia beats dementia!

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Glenn, I really think you're enjoying this, as am I. Thanks!

Appreciate the appreciation, Mason. Yes, since I haven't canoed all year and have barely been out of the house, I find researching interesting and educational topics to be enjoyable.

Having been distracted from outrigger canoes by a babe in my last post, the comely Ann Blyth, let's get back to those canoes and a Babe on Waikiki Beach in 1934.



The Babe may have built a house,Yankee Stadium, but the Duke built a worldwide sport, surfing.

Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) was the fastest swimmer and most famous surfer of his time. And surfing is, after all, a sort of paddle sport. Duke was a five-time Olympic swimming medalist, Hollwood movie actor, long-time sheriff of Honolulu, and popularizer of surfing as a sport all over the world. Here he is in 1915 tandem surfing with Isabel Letham, reputed to be the first Australian woman to ride a surfboard.



Even though Duke didn't grow up in the Adirondacks or Iowa, he always preferred his paddle crafts to be made of wood. His favorite board was made from koa wood, was 16 feet (4.9 m) long and weighed 114 pounds (52 kg). The board had no skeg because it hadn't been invented yet. Here's Duke with a big redwood board in California in 1921.



Finally, here's a very short video highlighting the life of Duke Kahanamoku, the Father of Surfing, and the first person to be inducted into both the Swimming Hall of Fame and the Surfing Hall of Fame:

My next installment will feature Duke canoeing with a "Prince". And that will lead to the original cliffhanger.

 

[Robin]

Hollywood tough guy as Pasquenel.



https://youtu.be/Yko-mQMKm2k

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[Glenn MacGrady]

Hollywood tough guy as Pasquenel.



https://youtu.be/Yko-mQMKm2k

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That video illustrates the story I told not too long ago about the late Ralph Frese of the Chicagoland Canoe Base. He was hired to make the canoes for the mini series Centennial, which took place in the Midwest, the Great Plains and mountain West. The director wanted Pasquinal and the Indians to be paddling birch bark canoes. Frese told them that there were no birch bark canoes used in those areas, only dugouts, because there are no (or few) birch trees there. But the director insisted. So, Frese made fake birch bark canoes like the one Pasquinal is paddling in the video.

 

[Robin]

Yea, glad the director won, I so enjoyed this segment back when with that canoe. All do respect to Ralph Frese but I figured Pasquenel picked up that canoe somewhere along the river from a Minnesota “resident” where a birch bark canoe is a reality.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

. . . I figured Pasquenel picked up that canoe somewhere along the river from a Minnesota “resident” where a birch bark canoe is a reality.

Maybe Artemus Gordon got the canoe for the Hollywood tough guy by hornswoggling it from someBODY in Minnesota who is a celebrity, such as a future governor of Minnesota, which is why the guv ended up wrestling a raft instead of his birch bark canoe.



Oops, now Duke and the "Prince" will have to wait another day to go canoe tripping dot net.

 

[Boreal Birch]

I think Robin is correct in this case, birch bark canoes went all over North America in the fur trade, rolls of bark, spruce roots and pitch to repair them were part of the cargo. Simpson, Mackenzie, Hennepin, La Salle, Marquette and others were paddling birch bark canoes all over the new world long before Lewis & Clark struggled up the Missouri in dugout cottonwood canoes.
Birch bark canoes are a lot tougher than most people realize. The men that paddled them were the long haul truckers of their day, very professional river men, skilled in their craft, skilled in the maintenance of of their craft too.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

So much for goofy politicians in Minnesota. We shall return to the most prevalent tripping canoes in the world -- dugouts, with or without outriggers, and the Duke.

Here is Duke Kahanamoku in 1915 paddling with the "Prince of the Oyster Pirates", one year before the pirate's death. He got that nickname rabble rousing in the dockside bars of Oakland, California, when as an impoverished young man he bought a one-man sloop with borrowed money and became an oyster pirate in San Francisco bay.



He soon became one of the first novelists and short story writers to become a very wealthy and world-wide celebrity, publishing famous books and stories about the Yukon, sled dogs, fighting wolfdogs, seafaring and science fiction.

Note the woman in the canoe stern on this novel cover, who is brandishing what could be a Nessmuk pudding stick.



Jack London died in 1916 at the age of 40 on his ranch in Sonoma County, California, of uremic poisoning after years of battling various ailments from dysentery and rheumatism. His life credo supposedly was:

I would rather be ashes than dust!
I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Harry Chestnut standing up in one of his sponson canoes in 1913, a model even Robin may not have:

 

[Alan Gage]

Is that a rudder?

Alan

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

She won Tony Awards for her Broadway starring roles in Peter Pan, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific.

 

[stevet]

Mary Martin?

 

[lowangle al]

I had read somewhere that the Duke was the first SUPer. He used it when giving surf lessons.

 

[lowangle al]

 

[Robin]

 

[lowangle al]

That's a poor quality photo above so I'll give a hint. He was a clown that had his own TV show in the 50's and 60's.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

Al's picture is of the great Red Skelton. I don't recognize Robin's.