Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America 9781978803879

Citation preview

Beyond the Black and White TV

Beyond the Black and White TV

•

Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America Benjamin M. Han

Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. LCCN 2019050052 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2020 by Benjamin M. Han All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “Transpacific Talent: The Kim Sisters in Cold War America,” Pacific Historical Review 87, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 473–­498. ♾ The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-­1992. www​.rutgersuniversitypress​.org Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction 1.  Narratives of Integration: Ethnic Spectacle and

Las Vegas

2.  Narratives of Exchange: Asian Performers after

the Korean War

3.  Narratives of Partnership: Latin American Entertainers

after the Cuban Revolution

4.  Narratives of Coexistence: Pacific Islanders and

the Statehood of Hawai‘i

Epilogue

1 20 43 74 105 138

Acknowledgments 149 Notes 153 Bibliography 177 Index 191

v

Beyond the Black and White TV

Introduction

On January 11, 1959, Ed Sullivan conducted an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro shortly after Castro overthrew dictator Fulgencio Batista during the Cuban Revolution. The interview was broadcast on Sullivan’s variety show as part of a recurring segment known as “Sullivan’s Travels,” which documented his visits to many cities and countries around the world, including Hong Kong, Japan, and Italy. During the interview, Sullivan asked Castro, “How do you feel about the United States?” After explaining that he had sympathy for the people of the United States, Castro stated, “It’s a nation that belongs to the people of every world. [The] United States is not one race but people who came from every part of the world.” Castro’s response is a testament to how the United States has shaped its national image abroad as an exemplary model of democracy and freedom. More importantly, the interview speaks of the amicable political relationship between the United States and Cuba immediately following the Cuban Revolution—­before their diplomatic relations would take a drastic turn as a result of Castro’s growing affiliation with Communism and the Soviet Union. While the interview was an odd moment for a commercial TV program mostly known for entertaining American families on Sunday nights, it captures how the variety show genre made significant strides as an important contributor to the circulation of geopolitical knowledge in American television during the Cold War. More significantly, Castro’s response is an affirmation of what the United States had envisioned at the height of the Cold War: to construct a national image grounded in the democratic principles of freedom, capitalism, and more specifically, racial equality. In the 1

United States, the 1950s were marked by racial segregation in the South that would soon explode into a full-­scale civil rights movement that countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union would use as a means to denounce the United States. Hence in the 1960s, “race relations” became an important subject of polemical debate among Cold War politicians. Despite the battle for civil rights and liberties on the domestic front, the growing visibility of race problems in the form of discriminatory practices in the South was negatively impacting the United States’ image across the globe. The Soviet Union scrutinized and disparaged the United States for its racism. Therefore, the U.S. government took measures to change its reputation in its battle against Communism. The U.S. Department of State began sponsoring international music tours featuring prominent African American jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.1 On the surface, these U.S. government–­sponsored jazz tours were viewed as a goodwill gesture of internationalism using popular music; in reality, they were politically orchestrated attempts to project an image of the United States as an antiracist nation. As a result, black musicians who participated in the tours not only acted as cultural ambassadors who promoted American jazz music but also spoke personally of how the United States was indeed a democratic nation of all races in order to deflect international criticism. In addition to the circulation of jazz music around the world, there was an influx of popular music from the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America to U.S. television during the Cold War. The diversity of both international and ethnic music on television ranged from “Oriental” pop to rumba. Oriental pop enjoyed a brief moment of popularity in the United States with Sakamoto Kyu’s hit songs “Let’s Walk with Our Heads Up,” “Sukiyaki,” and “China Nights” in the early 1960s.2 The popularity of such songs resulted in many recordings of Asian-­themed tunes, including “Yoshiko” and “Yoko-­Ho-­Hama.” Additionally, Hawaiian music enjoyed tremendous popularity in the 1960s and 1970s through the enigmatic and romantic figures of Alfred Apaka and Don Ho. And a wide array of Latin American music from the rumba to the cha-­cha was 2  Beyond the Black and White TV

also introduced to the Americans and enjoyed popularity during the Cold War. Commercial interests were not the sole motivation for U.S. television’s investment in Asian and Latin American music. U.S. commercial programming featured ethnic entertainers to diffuse national attention away from the civil rights movement and segregation in the South. As the American public was turning their attention to the black-­white problem with the increasing coverage of the civil rights struggle in news programming, U.S. television networks’ turn to race relations intertwined with the government’s political interests. While the symbiotic marriage between the medium of television and the government was not apparent to the public, what occurred behind the small screen clearly demonstrated how these enterprises worked collaboratively for the betterment of the nation. For example, in a 1960 letter from L. D. Mallory, acting assistant secretary of the Office of Inter-­American Affairs, to John  P. McKnight, assistant director (Latin America) of the United States Information Agency, Mallory explains that it has come to his attention that a musical salute program for television in Latin America is in its planning stage to commemorate the independence of several countries in Latin America. He says that even though the TV program is meant as a gesture of internationalism, it “might have results far different from these good intentions.”3 He writes further, “Impartial treatment, or at least making the various countries believe they have been treated impartially, will be difficult under the present circumstances of our relationships with the other 20 American Republics and the various points of difference between themselves.”4 This exchange clearly illustrates the anticipated payoff of the music television program in terms of international relations but also cautions against the negative impact it might have on U.S. diplomacy with Latin American nations. Indeed, the issue of race expanded into television at a crucial time when it was developing into a mass commercial medium. For instance, television news programming was vital in informing Americans about the civil rights movement. News and variety shows can be thought of as belonging to two separate spheres, as Introduction 3

news programming focused on informing the audience, while variety shows were more devoted to entertainment. Nevertheless, these two genres utilized liveness to focus on the performances of raced bodies. Drawing on the late José Muñoz’s work on the burden of liveness, Sasha Torres writes about the tendency to privilege liveness over recorded performance, “with a fetishizing racist or imperial gaze on bodies of color.”5 Indeed, variety shows in the 1950s were broadcast live to the audience; thus ethnic performances were acted out onstage as objects of spectacle for the American public. What distinguished news programming and variety shows was that the former was devoted to the “black performances of physical suffering and political demand” during the civil rights movement, while the latter was focused more on the spectacular performances of ethnic entertainers.6 In addition, liveness in news programming highlighted that civil rights events were happening in real time and space, further claiming television’s privileged status to communicate “immediacy and transparency.”7 Liveness in news programming, according to Sasha Torres, not only brought more visibility to the civil rights issues for Americans but also contributed significantly to the success of the movement. On the contrary, liveness in variety shows was meant not to capture the immediacy of the performances but to claim television’s ability to represent Asians, Latin Americans, and Hawaiians. Despite the racialization of ethnic entertainers, the fact that they were playing themselves rather than performing roles written for them made them appear more authentic and intimate to American audiences. While both news and variety shows employed liveness to display spectacle in the form of ethnic performances, they fulfilled the dual function of education and entertainment. As Torres argues, television’s African American spectacle in the coverage of the civil rights movement simultaneously amused the “dominant power bloc” while producing “outrage, trepidation, and alarm” among the American public.8 While variety shows were considered a lowbrow form of entertainment that used ethnic spectacle to charm the audience with the talents and skills of ethnic performers, they also educated

4  Beyond the Black and White TV

the American audience about Asian, Latin American, and Hawaiian culture in order to render television as a pedagogical medium. Moreover, as the expected consuming power of the black audience became more significant to the TV networks, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) implemented the “integration without identification” policy in 1953 to offer more “positive” black representations on the small screen. In launching this new initiative, NBC also hired an African American public relations expert named Joseph V. Baker to develop better public relations with the network’s black audience.9 Additionally, NBC appointed Stockton Helffrich as the head of its censorship office to monitor program scripts for any offensive or derogatory racial remarks.10 And in November 1956, NBC premiered the Nat King Cole Show, a variety show that served as a further testament to television’s contribution to the betterment of U.S. race relations. The “integration without identification” policy, which was meant specifically to improve the representation of blacks on television, could also possibly lead to unintended consequences wherein Asians and Latin Americans saw blacks as receiving preferential treatment. In some ways, the visibility of raced bodies on television was a conscious effort by the networks to cater to “other” audiences. The main aim of the policy was to integrate “black people into regular television shows in roles [in] which they might be found in everyday life.”11 The notion of everyday life equated with the logic of ordinariness and authenticity. Variety shows’ dependence on nonblack bodies asserted the ordinariness of Asian and Latin American performers as manifested in nonfictionalized roles. It was not their racial markers but their musical talents that constructed them as extraordinary; thus they appeared as nonthreatening figures. Hence the ethnic entertainer’s display of spectacular talent could trump the racial undertones of his or her performance. Coinciding with a flourishing scene of “blackness” on U.S. commercial television, there was also an increase in the visibility of other racial bodies from the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America.

Introduction 5

Between 1950 and 1970, there were approximately sixty Asian and seventy-­five Latin American performers featured as guests on variety shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show and the Chevy Show. These ethnic entertainers included the Kim Sisters, the De Castro Sisters, Yukiji Asaoka, Grace Chang, Bach Yen, Ginny Tiu, the Hermanos Castro, Alfred Apaka, Charles K.  L. Davis, Pupi Campo, and the Rodríguez Brothers.12 Scholars have not given them due attention because they were considered irregular guests whose appearances were brief. Further, many of them had made a crossover from nightclub acts in Las Vegas to television; hence they were not considered true TV stars. More importantly, these ethnic entertainers quickly faded away from the television screen with the demise of the variety show genre in the 1960s, further relegating them to the fringes of U.S. popular cultural memory. Despite the marginal status of the ethnic performers examined in this book, they were important contributors to the U.S. nightclub scene. Even though nightclubs and television were understood as two separate and independent entertainment spaces in the postwar period, Las Vegas nightclubs had been a key supplier of ethnic talent to U.S. commercial television since the early 1950s. Despite their quick disappearance from U.S. cultural memory, the growing number of Asian and Latin American performers on variety shows coincided with popular music emerging as valuable content to early television programming. As Murray Forman explains, one of the main reasons that popular music dominated early programming was because there was no clearly defined understanding of television genres. Hence television content was still in its infant stages of development, and ethnic as well as amateur musicians served as cheap substitutes to fill in schedules due to their affordable labor costs.13 Furthermore, ethnic performers fulfilled television’s need to offer novel entertainment to the American family. The visible presence of Asian and Latin American performers on U.S. commercial television from the 1950s and 1970s is what I describe as “ethnic spectacle.” Guy Debord defines spectacle as not a collection of images but as “a social relationship among people, mediated by images.”14 Debord further argues that spectacle as a 6  Beyond the Black and White TV

by-­product of advanced capitalism mediates a false representation of reality through the mass dissemination of images. He writes, “The spectacle appears at once as society itself, as part of society and as a means of unification. As a part of society, it is that sector where all attention, all consciousness, converges. . . . This sector is the locus of illusion and false consciousness.”15 I argue that television as mass media and an embodiment of capitalist logics mediated representations of ethnic spectacle to project a false reality of U.S. race relations in an effort to battle Communism at the crux of the cultural Cold War. But what was noteworthy about the ethnic spectacle on television during this period was how music became a cultural lens to our understanding of Cold War politics. In other words, the growing number of ethnic talents from Las Vegas nightclubs appearing on television variety shows was not so much about providing entertainment for the “home” audience as it was about using racial integration to sell American Cold War policy while attempting to disguise domestic race relations. More significantly, ethnic performers on variety shows highlighted U.S. popular music as a global language in an effort to promote internationalism while subsuming the U.S. government’s imperialistic aspirations. Therefore, many of the songs featured in variety shows underscored the themes of “getting to know” one another and “international understanding” as fundamental tenets of U.S. foreign diplomacy in order to publicize the United States as a nation that embraces diverse races and globalism under the rhetoric of “racial liberalism.” Thus the “white” American variety show hosts such as Dinah Shore and Gisele MacKenzie participated in musical collaborations with ethnic guests. The guests sang in perfect English phonetics despite their inability to master the English language, which was not apparent to the audience. When the white hosts asked their guests how they had mastered the language so well, many of them often responded that they had learned English from listening to American songs, crediting the U.S. military for its contributions to their English language and cultural competency. These problematic moments of intimate cultural interaction between the white television personalities and Introduction 7

their ethnic guests not only underscored the host playing the role of a cultural interlocutor but also suggested the imperial power of the United States rooted in whiteness through its military presence across the globe. Moreover, U.S. popular music was more than just an aural language composed of easily translatable rhythms, tunes, beats, and lyrics. It was imagined spatially as a transnational conduit through which global cultural exchange could take place. Music thus became both a productive and contested space of creative interplay of cultural interventions and interactions. As Josh Kuhn points out, music resembles cultural spaces where racial, ethnic, and gender identities can be asserted. He notes, “The audio-­racial imagination is my way of acknowledging a fact all too commonly overlooked in the ‘culture wars’ and debates about diversity and multiculturalism, that race and popular music have always been experienced not alongside each other, not as complements, supplements, or corollaries of each other, but through each other.”16 Music, therefore, is an ideologically inflected space used to investigate the different “-­isms” significant in Cold War geopolitics: racism, Americanism, Orientalism, sexism, liberalism, internationalism, and globalism. The creative interplay of popular music, ethnic spectacle, and variety shows further materialized in the medium of television to circulate geopolitical knowledge where the Cold War logic of globalism and racism converged. It is this examination of internationalism and racial politics as by-­products of the U.S. cultural war and geopolitics that Beyond the Black and White TV aims to engage with critically. The book addresses three central questions: (1) How do we understand the growing display of ethnic performances in U.S. nightclubs and on television during the Cold War? (2) How did commercial television demonstrate the United States’ global Cold War politics? (3) How did the variety show shape interactions among geopolitics, popular music, and ethnic spectacle? While it is tempting to characterize the cultural Cold War as a coherent geopolitical period centered on the binary of the United States and the Soviet Union as the two dominant power blocs, this book expands the discussion 8  Beyond the Black and White TV

to include three seemingly disparate yet interconnected Cold War events: the Korean War (1950–­1953), the Cuban Revolution (1959), and the statehood of Hawai‘i (1959). On the surface, the peninsula of Korea and the islands of Cuba and Hawai‘i appear to be geopolitically and culturally disconnected from each other. However, there are less apparent ties among these three noncontiguous territories. Korea, Cuba, and Hawai‘i all underwent significant economic development via tourism in the 1950s. Tourism reached new heights in Cuba as Hawai‘i became the fiftieth state in 1959. Similarly, the South Korean government implemented a major initiative to increase tourism with the establishment of the Tourism Bureau in 1954 after the conclusion of the Korean War.17 Indeed, the intertwinement between the flourishing tourist economy and the U.S. military presence in these three minor geographies is what defined them as important sites central to the expansion of U.S. hegemony. In other words, the Cold War in the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America was “a complex and manifold project of American empire and gendered racial formation.”18 Furthermore, South Korea, Cuba, and Hawai‘i were spaces where Communism and Cold War politics intertwined. For instance, in Korea, the intrusion of the North Korean army across the thirty-­eighth parallel in 1950 resulted in violence and migration as fears of Communist swept the nation. In the case of Hawai‘i, as the political tensions grew between the United States and the Soviet Union, the possibility of Hawai‘i’s ascension into statehood prompted fears among politicians, as labor strikes on the islands were seen as a form of Communist activity. In the words of U.S. Representative John R. Pillion, admitting Hawai‘i into statehood would be to “actually invite two Soviet agents to take seats in our U.S. Senate.”19 In the case of Cuba, the 1959 revolution not only ousted the Batista regime but also forced the migration of many Cubans to the United States as exiles and further prompted fears of Communist infiltration across Latin America. These three small territories, all under the imminent threat of Communism, developed into critical geopolitical spaces to experiment with U.S. Cold War cultural diplomacy through the medium of television. Introduction 9

By focusing on these islands and peninsula, Beyond the Black and White TV illustrates how these “minor” Cold War geographies were the sites of ideological and cultural battles between the United States and the Soviet Union as the transnational circulation of ethnic talent from the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America on U.S. commercial television mobilized the “race card” as a significant political asset to American internationalism. The three Cold War events cannot be solely characterized as historical events; as Jodi Kim writes, they constitute “an epistemology and production of knowledge, and as such it exceeds and outlives its historical eventness.”20 More specifically, the migration of ethnic talent—­particularly Asians, Latin Americans, and Pacific Islanders—­to U.S. television contributed to discourses about race and nation. While the racialized manifestations of the variety show were unique to the United States, the variety show in South Korea and Cuba illustrates the genre’s inherent geopolitical roots. In the case of South Korea, the variety show has its origin in akkŭk (musical drama), which encompassed music, drama, dance, and comedy.21 Its popularity waned in the 1960s as the U.S. military base show emerged as a new form of a variety show. The U.S. military base show featured popular Western music, including soul and folk, that was catered to the American GIs stationed in South Korea.22 The history of the variety show in South Korea illustrates how the genre developed in tandem with the U.S. military occupation, further acting as an infiltration channel to disseminate American pop songs and expand U.S. political and cultural influence. In Cuba, the variety show evolved from casino cabaret performances, which had ties to African culture. More significantly, the variety show was coded as a racialized and gendered genre for its representations of Afro-­Cuban culture in the form of mulatto musicians, rumberasvedettes, and maboletas.23 Hence variety shows were vibrant cultural spaces in which racial ideologies were mediated and negotiated. As Yeidy M. Rivero writes, “The problem was not the presence of black bodies; it was the types of performances enacted on television.”24 After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro used 10  Beyond the Black and White TV

the variety show as a vehicle to promote Cuban musical culture.25 These instances underscore the variety show’s geopolitical value for the United States during the Cold War. Furthermore, their uniquely segmented format, which enabled a variety of different acts, enticed U.S. broadcasters to not only experiment with ethnic spectacle but also subvert the black-­white racial paradigm. Therefore, a comparative analysis of Asian, Latin American, and Hawaiian performers enables us to think of race relations beyond the black-­white dichotomy, ascribing to what Claire Jean Kim describes as “a field of racial positions” in which other raced bodies have been triangulated vis-­à-­vis whites as well as each other.26 Moreover, while American television is understood as a national medium and industry catering to a domestic audience, the interplay of popular music and ethnic performances on variety shows fed into American broadcasters’ and TV personalities’ aspirations to develop global television. Also, there were no better measures than to use television as a tool to carry out this political agenda at the height of the Cold War. While the distribution of these variety shows was limited to the United States, the hosts often created the illusion that the show was being watched by a global audience. More significantly, variety shows were distributed globally through military television networks. For example, the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Los Angeles (AFRTS-­LA) managed twenty-­seven television stations for the air force, army, and navy. More importantly, they broadcast fifty hours of weekly programming consisting of popular variety shows such as the Ed Sullivan Show and the Dinah Shore Chevy Show.27 Even though the distribution of variety shows was targeted to the military personnel stationed around the world, as Sueyoung Park-­ Primiano argues, “The services’ [military television] effect on soldiers was of less significance than the influence they had on the shadow audience of foreign civilians, which was estimated to be much greater than the audience tuning in to the propaganda programs of the Voice of America or Radio Free Europe.”28 Indeed, many local citizens residing near the American GI camps were able to intercept U.S. military TV network signals, allowing them Introduction 11

to view popular American programs via an illegitimate distribution outlet. As a result, variety shows as a quintessential American genre in the 1950s created the illusion of a global audience despite their limited international distribution. While the concept of global television has often been studied in terms of time-space compression, inscribed in the discourse of instantaneity and liveness, the variety show as a crucial genre was not so much manifested in its global circulation and distribution but was rooted in Raymond Williams’s concept of mobile privatization—television’s ability to transport the outside world into the private space of the home. More specifically, variety shows promoted tourism of the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America, underscoring mobility and ethnic spectacle as key logics of globalism. Tourism, according to Dennis Merrill, works as a “probing analysis” to understand the shifting U.S. relations with other nations, including Asia and Latin America.29 Hence variety shows used the travel narrative as a means to produce and circulate geopolitical knowledge amid fluctuating U.S. foreign relations with the Asia-­ Pacific and Latin America. The logic of globalism was further invoked by music’s ability to travel beyond national borders and forge cross-­cultural connections between people of different races. Indeed, many of the ethnic performers examined in this book navigated different geographical spaces to perform and entertain the audience. For example, Cuban musician Xavier Cugat toured Korea in 1953, the Korean Kim Sisters performed in Italy, and the Cuban De  Castro Sisters released the song “Rockin’ and Rollin’ in Hawai‘i” in 1956. By listening to and watching their performances travel beyond geographical, racial, and ethnic boundaries, the listener/viewer imagines and experiences the forging of new cultural horizons, further constructing the possibilities of a new transcultural configuration among Asians, Latin Americans, and blacks within the United States. While the presence of racialized images within the national imaginary offered a sense of global connectivity, this book claims that the nation-­state continued to exert its significance. More specifically, the transnational migration of ethnic performers from 12  Beyond the Black and White TV

Asia and Latin America at the crux of the Cold War contributed to the construction of a U.S. national imaginary. Hence the interconnection between the ethnic spectacle and the variety show highlights the United States’ increasing anxieties, fears, and debates about the development of global television. The U.S. government would use this “new” medium to elevate its political power over the Soviet Union and further carry out its imperialistic endeavors to strengthen its international efforts. Thus beginning in the late 1950s and continuing into the 1960s, U.S. television executives worked to establish a transnational network of broadcasters in an effort to use television as both a political and cultural weapon against the threat of Communism, particularly in Asia and Latin America. For instance, the First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was held in New York City in 1961. The pamphlet distributed at the meeting clearly outlined the purpose of global television with the following words: “To stretch the minds, to raise the sights, to challenge the future of the television artists and scientists of all the nations.”30 As a result, the variety show was no longer considered a lowbrow form of entertainment catered to the American masses; rather, it was viewed as a crucial middlebrow geopolitical genre instrumental in the United States’ battle against the forces of Communism. Moreover, this book looks critically at the television industry as a discursive space where dominant racial discourses and ideologies are produced. While much discussion of representations of race  and ethnicity in television has centered on the binary of positive and negative images, I move beyond the question of stereotypes to focus on the ideological work underpinning racialized performances to address issues of agency, power, and competency within the space of television. The performances of Korean, Hawaiian, and Latin American entertainers examined here not only used music as a performative mode but also involved the use of code-­ switching and dance that projected an illusion of full assimilation into mainstream culture while granting subtle power and agency to performers to display their competency as minority subjects who were not readily identifiable by the American audience. For Introduction 13

Fig. 1. Pamphlet cover for the First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences held in New York City in 1961. Courtesy of Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

instance, when the Korean trio the Kim Sisters performed the Korean folk song “Arirang,” many viewers interpreted the performance through the lens of Orientalism and exoticism, but the Kim Sisters’ performance of the song in the traditional Korean costume hanbok challenged the politics of sameness and difference that have governed representations of Asian Americans in the American media. While this subversion of white power was not visible to the general public, and the Kim Sisters were marked as perpetual foreigners and racialized “Others,” the cultural specificity in the form of ethnic Korean identity asserted via their performance offered a far more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the politics of Asian American representation. Accordingly, this book moves beyond the dominant black-­ white racial paradigm that has structured our thinking of U.S. race relations. By examining both Asian and Latin American performers, I illustrate how television framed them within the U.S. racial hierarchy at the expense of blacks. The ethnic guest performers 14  Beyond the Black and White TV

affirmed how “racial triangulation” (borrowing from Claire Jean Kim) valorized Asians and Latin American entertainers over blacks for their musical talents and racial ambiguity grounded in off-­whiteness.31 Thus the variety show’s display of ethnic spectacle continued to underscore commercial television’s “possessive investment in whiteness,” as it was a carefully orchestrated political attempt to represent both Asian and Latin American performers as nonthreatening racialized figures while simultaneously legitimizing the U.S. military’s occupation of the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America in its battle against Communism.32 While television’s racialized discourses contained Asianness and Latinidad—­the different attributes that define Latinx without essentializing them—­within “ethnic typologies,” these visual rhetorics could not police the linguistic and musical code-­switching practices performed on the small screen. Hence my argument centers on a critical analysis of racial images in the national imaginary via television, aligning with Herman Gray’s seminal work on how struggles over the meanings of race continue to be waged on television.33 More specifically, I am concerned with investigating television as a representational system of racial imagination and as a transnational entertainment industry capable of constructing discourses of race and nation. For instance, in the post–­civil rights era, according to Gray, sitcoms deployed different discursive practices—­assimilationist, pluralist, and multiculturalist—­in their representations of blackness. On the contrary, during the Cold War, the variety show emerged as an effective tool to display race relations because of its segmented format that not only enabled the display of diverse ethnic guests but also racialized narratives with their ties to vaudeville as well as  minstrelsy and blackface performance. Historically, vaudeville was highly racialized and gendered, as it featured mostly white male performers while excluding people of color and women. Henry Jenkins, in his examination of vaudeville, argues that the idiosyncratic quality of vaudeville resides in its ability to communicate “the pleasure of infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” a formulation that provides a useful grid for locating the intersection Introduction 15

between the logic of variety and discourses of ethnic pluralism.34 Hence the ethnic spectacle on variety shows helped break away from vaudeville’s past as a racialized and gendered format as variety shows projected a false myth of racial liberalism through their integration of female Asian and Latin American performers. Moreover, in contrast to other television genres, such as sitcoms and anthology dramas in which ethnic characters are contained within a fictional narrative, variety shows articulated the idea of openness. The different acts expressed the logic of freedom. Hence the variety show asserted the ordinariness, authenticity, and intimacy of the ethnic entertainers, subsuming their markers of racial oddity. According to Meghan Sutherland, the spectacular aesthetics of variety entertainment aligned with discourses of liberal democracy and capitalism in various moments of American culture and society. She explains that since the early 1940s, the logic of variety was also evident in consumer products, such as children’s variety-­pack cereals and snack foods, which further ascribed to the idea that there is something for everyone.35 Additionally, the amalgamation of different acts into a coherent television program coalesced different races into the national imaginary, where they could intermingle and coexist harmoniously. The segmented format of the variety show projected an image of the United States as an amalgam of diverse races—­Asians, blacks, and Latin Americans. While each performance was understood as a discreet and self-­contained act, the overall “flow” of the program highlighted the U.S. melting-­pot mythology.36

Methodology Using an interdisciplinary methodological framework grounded in archives, institutional history, textual analysis, oral history, cultural studies, and diplomatic history, this book investigates the interconnections among the U.S. commercial television industry, race, ethnic performances, and Cold War politics. In order to map out these relationships, I develop both a transnational and transcultural framework with which to study television during the cultural 16  Beyond the Black and White TV

Cold War. As we witness a discursive shift toward transnational perspectives in the field of media studies, transnationalism does not solely encompass the movement of peoples, cultures, ideas, products, and capital across national borders; it also entails the deployment of multicultural and multivocal approaches. In order to undertake this methodological task, I include both Korean-­and Spanish-­language materials to map out a transnational cultural history of U.S. commercial television with ties to the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America. In doing so, this book does not aim to provide a coherent linear history of American television during the Cold War; rather, it illuminates the challenges and difficulties within the historiography of U.S. television in the absence of archived variety shows from the 1950s to the 1970s. More significantly, I illustrate how other researchers can envision and employ a transnational framework to the cultural history of U.S. commercial television, situated within the vexed geopolitical triangulation of the cultural Cold War in South Korea, Cuba, and Hawai‘i.37

Organization of the Book The chapters are organized geographically rather than chronologically to illustrate how the four different spaces of Las Vegas, Korea, Cuba, and Hawai‘i were intertwined during the Cold War. This structure further prompts us to think of how the history of the cultural Cold War is not fluid, as it requires the navigation of different historical times and multiple spaces—­similar to the careers of the ethnic performers examined in the book. Chapter 1 studies Las Vegas as a destination site for television entertainers. It explores how Las Vegas, once considered an experimental geographical space of U.S. atomic bomb tests in Nevada, evolved into an entertainment mecca and an important supplier of ethnic labor to the television industry beginning in the 1950s. The need to shape Las Vegas as a modern city devoid of indecency and immorality at the time was an attempt to integrate Las Vegas into U.S. cultural imaginary, further underscoring the city as a significant contributor to the United States’ image as a nation of Introduction 17

democracy and racial equality. The chapter also traces the symbiotic relationship between the medium of television and Las Vegas casinos in an effort to construct a positive televisual image of Las Vegas that would contribute to America’s battle against Communism during the cultural Cold War. Hence the flourishing scene of ethnic spectacle in the spaces of nightclubs and television in Las Vegas was not about providing entertainment for the domestic audience but about contributing to Washington’s political efforts to curb Communism as well as highlight racial integration as a driving narrative force behind U.S. Cold War diplomacy. Chapter 2 examines the performances of Asian performers on variety shows, focusing on the Kim Sisters to examine the transpacific exchange of talent between the United States and Korea. It illustrates how the intertwinement of U.S. military occupation, popular music, and Cold War diplomacy was visible in variety shows at the outbreak of the Korean War. The chapter expands on Christina Klein’s concept of Cold War Orientalism—­ the extensive dissemination of cultural products that addressed Asia and the Pacific in the middlebrow culture in the United States between 1945 and 1961—­to examine how variety shows created a false projection of U.S. race relations, using ethnic spectacle to win the cultural Cold War and legitimize military presence in South Korea. The Kim Sisters constitute a unique historical case study that demands our critical attention, as they navigated the complex structures of televised American Orientalism ascribed to them as both racialized and sexualized Asian female subjects. Chapter 3 surveys the growing display of Latin American performances on American commercial television between 1950 and 1970 despite the conclusion of the Good Neighbor Policy in 1947. The newly emerging rhetoric of “Good Partners” shaped these Latin American performances, demonstrating U.S. global Cold War politics while using U.S.–­Latin American musical partnership to curb Communism. This chapter examines the performances of Xavier Cugat and his wife, Abbe Lane, and the De Castro Sisters as lenses to understand how the variety show played an instrumental

18  Beyond the Black and White TV

role in circulating geopolitical knowledge, promoting globalism, and framing narratives of partnership. Lastly, chapter 4 focuses on Hawai‘i as a newly emerging space of Cold War geopolitics after the Cuban Revolution. It focuses on how the development of commercial television in Hawai‘i in conjunction with growing tourism and real estate development publicized the islands as the new frontier of the Pacific. The increasing visibility of mixed-­ race Hawaiian performers such as Alfred Apaka and Don Ho, whose racial ambiguity promoted Hawai‘i as an exceptional U.S. state with the amalgamation of different races and ethnicities at the exclusion of blacks, further entrenched the narrative of modernization and coexistence. In sum, this book examines how the triangulation among Cold War geopolitics, globalism, and U.S. racial logics informed the variety show as an early itineration of global television. More specifically, I investigate how ethnic spectacle in the form of Asian and Latin American performers played a pivotal role in the construction of U.S. national imaginary under the guise of racial liberalism at the height of the Cold War. The variety show as a form of popular entertainment took on an instrumental role in disseminating narratives of democracy, equality, and globalism to curb Communism in the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America.

Introduction 19

1 Narratives of Integration Ethnic Spectacle and Las Vegas

The popular imagery of Las Vegas in the American cultural imagination consists of bright neon lights, breathtaking shows, and high-­rolling casinos—­an oasis in the desert. The desert not only epitomizes an empty, arid space but also allegorizes a land waiting to be tamed, civilized, and modernized, further invoking the American frontier myth. According to Catrin Gersdorf, the desert is an iconic metaphor of America, symbolic of its national and cultural identity.1 On the one hand, the names of such Las Vegas hotels as the Sands, the Sahara, and the Desert Inn resonate with the cultural image of the tourist city within the desert. On the other hand, the abundance of bright city lights and entertainment elevates Las Vegas as one of the top tourist destinations of the world. Thus the desert is pivotal in shaping the cultural imagery of Las Vegas. The desert as a geographical landscape undergoes a transformation in its symbolic meaning from a signifier of lack and absence to a signifier of abundance and excess. More specifically, the phrase “The desert will bloom” aptly characterizes the transformation of Las Vegas from a nonsignificant geopolitical space to a flourishing site of ethnic spectacle that was instrumental in integrating the city into the U.S. national imaginary during the Cold War. Indeed, the polarizing Cold War narratives of containment and integration informed the need for Las Vegas to develop into a modern capitalist city in order to curb the threat of Communism. 20

Las Vegas and the Cold War While Las Vegas has been relegated to the margins of the cultural Cold War, the desert evolved into an essential geopolitical space in which mythical narratives of racial harmony manifested in Cold War racial logics would enhance U.S. internationalism. Prior to the development of Las Vegas as an entertainment capital featuring Asian Pacific, African American, and Latin American performers, the city was chosen as an important site of military defense during World War  II. In 1941, the U.S. government unveiled its plan to establish a large magnesium factory to subsidize the British explosives industry affected by Luftwaffe bombings.2 The issue of civil defense was at the forefront of political debate when President Harry Truman established the Federal Civil Defense Administration in January 1951 “to quell America’s fears about a Soviet attack.”3 Civil defense was believed to be instrumental in training Americans about self-­control, and the U.S. government hoped the initiative would “eliminate the moral deficits that made them such unsatisfactory weapons in the struggle against communism.”4 Thus mass media, including radio and television, played a pedagogical role in disseminating information about civil defense to the American public, further instilling the idea that each citizen was personally responsible for helping the United States in the battle against the Soviet Union.5 Hence Las Vegas emerged as an important site of U.S. national security. In the words of Las Vegas historian Eugene P. Moehring, “But as it did for cities in California, New Mexico, Texas and other Sunbelt states, World War II both created and confirmed the strategic importance of Las Vegas, thereby enhancing its chances of attracting future defense programs.”6 Furthermore, Las Vegas was a key entertainment supplier to the United Service Organizations (USO), as it “organized recreation and resident centers” across the country.7 The Las Vegas Army Air Field (LVAAF) was renamed the Nellis Air Force Base in 1950 and became an important site to train pilots for combat duties during the Korean War.8 And President Truman, in 1952, Narratives of Integration  21

described Las Vegas as a “critical defense area,” as it transformed into a large beneficiary of federal defense and housing funding.9 In the postwar era, Las Vegas was again brought to the forefront of national publicity not only as a benefactor of U.S. defense spending but also for its growing affiliation with the organized crime that was sweeping the country at the time. Las Vegas became the center of public attention when news reports surfaced that there was a strong connection between the mob and the casinos in the city. The city’s strong ties with mobs and gangsters shaped a negative representation of Las Vegas as grounded in gambling, alcohol, and prostitution, which further threatened the national image of the United States and impacted its fight against Communism. As a result, in 1950, Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver was appointed to oversee a committee to combat organized crime across the nation.10 The seventeen-­month investigation discovered monetary connections between the casinos in Las Vegas and the mafia.11 The Kefauver Committee traveled to fourteen cities across the country to conduct interviews with hundreds of witnesses. These meetings were considered television events, as cameras captured the fascinating details of crime leaders in the nation. While Las Vegas received massive media exposure in the national press, television cameras were not allowed in the room when the committee arrived in the city to conduct its investigation on November 15, 1950. The committee not only aimed to curtail the dangers of organized crimes but also planned to stall the casino operations in Las Vegas by implementing a 10 percent federal tax on gambling. Surprisingly, these efforts did not discourage Americans from visiting Las Vegas; instead, the media attention prompted tourism. In 1952 alone, there were seven million tourists visiting the city, and they spent approximately $122 million on gambling, hotels, food, and entertainment.12 While the federal tax bill on gambling would have been a detrimental blow to the financial economy of the city, Nevada Republican senator Pat McCarran helped kill the bill. McCarran was the man behind the anti-­Communist campaign sweeping the nation

22  Beyond the Black and White TV

at the time. According to Michael J. Ybarra, the real force behind the anti-­Communist crusade of the 1950s in the United States was not Joseph McCarthy but Pat McCarran.13 In 1952, McCarran, along with Pennsylvania democratic congressman Francis Walter, devised a piece of immigration legislation that became known as the McCarran-­Walter Immigration and Nationality Act. The 1952 act lifted the racial quota on immigration while simultaneously maintaining the national origins quota system, further establishing a restriction of two thousand visas for immigrants from Asian countries. The act controlled Asian immigration to the country because McCarran was concerned about the infiltration of Communism through immigration.14 The intrusion of the “Red Scare” menace into the American political consciousness during this period elevated the U.S. government’s concern that China might be dispatching secret agents to the country.15 While the threat of Communism swept the nation, Las Vegas entered into the U.S. popular consciousness as a city where Communism’s influence could not be ignored. McCarran even attempted to destroy the career of Hank Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, when Greenspun voiced harsh criticisms against McCarran’s immigration policies. As an act of retaliation, in 1952, McCarran ordered every major Las Vegas hotel and casino to pull out their ads from the Las Vegas Sun. Additionally, McCarran arranged Joseph McCarthy’s visit to Las Vegas in 1952 to speak on behalf of Senator W. Malone, who was seeking reelection. In the speech, McCarthy called Greenspun an “ex-­communist.”16 While the connection between Las Vegas and Communism was tenuous at the moment, it was becoming more apparent that the city had an important role to play during the Cold War, when containment was the dominant political strategy for U.S. politicians. Las Vegas, then a distant and isolated geography affected by organized crime, violence, and gambling, underwent a drastic makeover with the introduction of television to the city.

Narratives of Integration  23

Televisual Las Vegas The arrival of television cameras to the city not only captured the vibrancy of Las Vegas but also promoted the city as contributing to the United States’ cultural battle against the Soviet Union with its flourishing scene of entertainment featuring ethnic performers. When the American audience came into contact with Las Vegas through the medium of television, they witnessed a new cultural image of the city inscribed in racial harmony and solidarity. More significantly, Las Vegas entered the U.S. national imaginary at the height of the Cold War when two local Los Angeles television stations—­KTLA and KTTV—­broadcast live images of the atomic test bombing on Yucca Flat in Nevada in February 1951. The two stations televised the event atop Mount Wilson near Pasadena.17 Many reporters used the phrase “Doom Town Nevada” to describe the event. As one of the earliest depictions of Las Vegas on television, the destruction of the desert by the bomb was a metaphor of the United States’ military power in the midst of rising fears about a potential nuclear war. On television, the test explosion was visually projected as a “brilliant flash that faded quickly.”18 More specifically, the physical destruction of the desert via a test bomb integrated Las Vegas, often viewed as a wasteland and as Sin City, into the U.S. Cold War imaginary. The live broadcast of atomic bomb tests showed the American public how the city was contributing to U.S. national security. As Nevada senator Dina Titus observes, the atomic bomb was an opportunity to subvert the negative image of Las Vegas within the American popular imagination. She elaborates, “Up until that point, we were just a spot in the desert. We were prostitution. We were gambling. Suddenly, we were helping to win the Cold War, and I think people could grab a hold of that because it was a good thing to do for democracy.”19 The live television broadcast of atomic test bombing drew a positive response from the Las Vegas community, as it meant more government funds would contribute to the financial security of the city. In the realm of popular culture, such marketing items as “atomic hairdo,” “atomic cocktail,” and “Miss Atomic Bomb” all 24  Beyond the Black and White TV

contributed to narratives promoting Las Vegas as a critical site of national security for the American public. More specifically, after the historic broadcast, many Las Vegas hotels and casinos collaborated to disseminate a particular image of the city, making ethnic performers, especially black entertainers, more visible on television in order to circulate false narratives of racial integration. There was not only an increasing visibility of ethnic spectacle in the form of black performances in the Las Vegas nightclub scene but also a growing population of African Americans in the city as a whole. The Nevada test site, located ninety miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas, was in high demand for labor to prepare the ground before and after the atomic bomb tests.20 Despite the harsh working conditions that involved radioactive particles, many African Americans flocked to the city in search of social class mobility, forming a vibrant black community in Berkley Square located on the west side.21 As a result, the population of African Americans in Las Vegas grew from 4,302 in 1950 to 13,484 in 1960, constituting 5 percent of the total population.22 The visibility of blackness in the city and the entertainment scene supplanted the old image of Las Vegas with a new one rooted in ethnic pluralism. The integration of African Americans and Las Vegas into the diegetic world of television not only provided entertainment for the “home” audience but also helped the United States win the cultural Cold War at a time when the nation was under severe criticism from the international community for its discriminatory practices. Thus Las Vegas hotel owners and entertainers saw themselves as informed public citizens contributing to U.S. internationalism efforts. For instance, on April 26, 1955, Jake Freedman, an oil tycoon from Texas who also owned the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, wrote a letter of apology to his guests, explaining that the hotel was not able to accommodate their reservations because of a postponement of the atomic tests. He wrote, “I regret very much to have to disappoint you in your reservations this week at the Sands—­but I urge you to read this letter carefully so that as a citizen of this country you might have a better understanding of why the Sands cannot accommodate you at this time.” He added, Narratives of Integration  25

“As part of the National Defense effort I feel it is my responsibility and duty to help the Government and the Press and the States to fulfill their mission here—­and because we realize the importance of this mission so strongly, I must ask you to bear with the Sands when you do not find your accommodation available. We will do everything possible to help you but please try to understand that our first responsibility at this time is to the National Defense effort.”23 Freedman’s statements illustrate how Las Vegas casino owners and entertainment directors firmly believed that they were participating in national security measures as well as helping the United States in its battle against the threat of Communism. Additionally, Las Vegas was no longer just seen as a tourist and entertainment city, as many foreign political leaders stopped at the city when they visited the United States. For example, when Khaireya Khairy of Egypt was a guest of the U.S. Department of State under the Foreign Exchange Program in 1955, her visit to Las Vegas had a lasting impression on her. In a letter written by Robert L. Kirkpatrick of the Governmental Affairs Institute in Washington, DC (affiliated with the American Political Association), to Wilbur Clark, owner of Desert Inn, Kirkpatrick said, “Miss Khairy was most enthusiastic about her visit to your city. . . . It was most kind of you to grant her the interview, for experiences such as these leave the visitor with a good impression of America and Americans.”24 Similarly, two years later in 1957, H. Philip Mettger, vice president of the Governmental Affairs Institute, wrote a letter to Al Freeman, public relations director, asking him to host Abol Hassan Ebtehaj’s visit to Hoover Dam. Mettger cautioned Freeman not to publicize the visit because people in Iran might perceive it as a “recreational trip.”25 These examples illuminate how Las Vegas embodied American values and ideals that made it an exemplary city of the United States. As Las Vegas was emerging as a geopolitical space of U.S. cultural diplomacy, the city was also evolving into an entertainment mecca of the world with its attraction of top-­notch entertainers from across the country. Las Vegas drew national attention when the first interracial casino, the Moulin Rouge, opened its doors 26  Beyond the Black and White TV

to the public in 1955. The opening of the casino drew many black newspaper reporters from New York and Chicago, but for many black residents, it was considered a publicity stunt when, in fact, the city was still heavily engaged in its own discriminatory practices against African American performers. For example, Sammy Davis Jr. was not allowed to stay in the hotels in which he performed and was asked to find a room on the west side of Las Vegas, predominantly a black neighborhood. This conflict was not apparent to the general American public. In fact, Las Vegas continued to transform itself as a major center of television production featuring African Americans. In 1955, two black activists, Alice Key and Bob Bailey, produced a talk show titled Talk of the Town, which is considered one of the first all-­black TV shows in the nation. Alice Key began her entertainment career as a dancer at the Cotton Club in Culver City, California. The club featured black dancers who performed for the white spectators. She also played with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and appeared in the Paramount film Murder at the Vanities in 1933.26 After the end of her dancing career, Key became a writer for the Los Angeles Tribune. In 1954, she moved to Las Vegas and became a leader of the black civil rights movement. In Las Vegas, she met William (Bob) Bailey. Bailey had started his music career as a vocalist in the Count Basie Orchestra and later became the host of the Tropicana Revue at the Moulin Rouge. He had a keen interest in the newly developing medium of television and attended the School of Radio and Television in New York City, crafting and mastering his television production skills. With a seed money from local business owners such as Earl Turman (owner of Town Tavern), Andy Bruner (owner of a local liquor store), and Hank Greenspun (owner of KLAS-­TV, Channel 8) as well as monetary contributions from the Moulin Rouge, Talk of the Town, under the direction of Bailey, was broadcast Friday nights at 10:30  p.m. on KLAS-­TV (Columbia Broadcasting System [CBS] affiliate, Channel 8). It was a half-­hour show and featured two or three black guests, including Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Billy Ekstine, and Billy Daniels. The show was Narratives of Integration  27

on air for a few months before it was eventually canceled due to sponsorship issues.27 Despite the cancelation of the locally produced Talk of the Town, the symbiotic relationship of U.S. commercial networks and Las Vegas took a new turn. The introduction of television to Las Vegas homes was drawing attention from local newspapers and magazines. In 1952, in a short commentary published in Fabulous Las Vegas, Jack Cortez wrote, “It is our opinion that T.V. is not yet ready for Las Vegas any more than Las Vegas is ready for T.V.” Cortez’s main reason for his skepticism toward the new medium was because of television’s inefficacy to reproduce the same quality of “mature entertainment” that Las Vegans enjoyed in nightclub settings. His writing also conveyed to the readers that Las Vegas shows simply could not be replicated on the small screen. He wrote, “[Television] is too spotty in its programming to give full value to its viewer. Too often, one has to sit for hours to gain 15 minutes’ worth of entertainment. The investment is not worth the gain. . . . How can T.V. (at this time) compete with the benefactors of our fabulous town?”28 His comments further alluded to the strict censorship codes informing the containment of television as a domestic medium being incompatible with live Las Vegas shows featuring crude and bawdy humor. The negative perception of television in the city was common among Las Vegas entertainers who were hesitant to make the crossover to the small screen. For instance, Las Vegas comedian Joe E. Lewis expressed his discontentment with television when he appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show: “[The networks are] so strict with gag, you can’t say broad or hag. Give me those old nightclubs, where a fag is a fag. Here’s to your networks, CBS and NBC, you can keep television because I live piracy. When I do matinee, there’ll be no cameras on me! Please close the transom . . . I’m too sexy for TV.”29 Despite Las Vegas entertainers’ slow transition into the new medium of television, the city was known for its display of ethnic spectacle in the form of diverse international performances. In January 1960, the front cover of Variety published an article titled “Las Vegas Outstrips Paree” in which it outlined Las Vegas’s evolution 28  Beyond the Black and White TV

into a “nitery capital of the world,” surpassing Paris by gathering diverse talents from all over the globe, including Argentine tango bands, European circus acts, Spanish clowns, and Tokyo’s Ginza. In the article, the author specifically mentioned Bill Miller’s “Holiday in Japan,” a popular all-­Oriental revue at the New Frontier Hotel. He compared this Las Vegas show with “Oriental Fantasy” at Frank Sennes’s Moulin Rouge in Hollywood. The article claimed that “where the Hollywood tourist trap errs on its hybridization of Orientals making with an Occidental brand of song-­and-­dance, the New Frontier revue adheres to authenticity and native charm.”30 Accordingly, Asian acts in Las Vegas was considered more authentic compared to the Oriental shows in Hollywood because they were not simply replicas of Asian impersonations. Prior to the introduction of television to Las Vegas, Hollywood movie studios had begun developing close business partnerships with Las Vegas resorts and casinos, resulting in exclusive deals that would allow the studios to conduct publicity shootings of famous Hollywood stars.31 It was in the early 1950s when TV production in Las Vegas flourished. And what distinguished Las Vegas from the other production centers such as New York and Los Angeles was its attraction of diverse ethnic and international talents. Defying racial boundaries, Asian, Latin American, and African American performers were granted the opportunity to showcase their musical talent to a live audience. Concurrent with the influx of ethnic and international talent into Las Vegas, top American television personalities such as Red Skelton, Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, and Ed Sullivan also contributed to the televisual and ethnic spectacle of Las Vegas as they headlined the nightclub scene when reruns of television shows dominated the small screen during the summer season. While these stars could often be seen on television, many people still flocked to Las Vegas to catch their live acts. Cecil Smith, a noted TV critic for the Los Angeles Times, even described Las Vegas in the summer as “one gigantic television set.” He explained that the main reason that people were willing to pay to see these already familiar faces performing in hotels, resorts, Narratives of Integration  29

and casinos was indicative of television’s inability to bring out the “full scope” of the performer.32 And for the stars, the presence of a live audience—­not always available in a TV studio—­revitalized them.33 More significantly, many of the television personalities flocking to the city had another motive: they were in search of fresh new talents and novel acts to feature in their own shows. An important figure that attracted top-­notch stars to Las Vegas was Jack Entratter, who was widely known as the “producer” and later became the president of the Sands Hotel. John Gunther, in his article “Inside Las Vegas” published in the American Weekly in 1956, credited Entratter for being more than “responsible for the transformation of Vegas from a dusty, desert village to a town boiling with talent and glamour.”34 Entratter adapted the Holly­wood star system to the Las Vegas nightclub scene. Just like Holly­wood stars were often identified with their films and vice versa, hotels were beginning to affiliate themselves with star performers. In an interview, Entratter commented, “Entertainers sell their product through a brand name, a personal name, that is just as important as Heinz 57 or Campbell or Lucky Strike Cigarettes, to them and to the public.”35 In securing top talent for his nightclub productions, Entratter spent more than $18 million from 1952 to 1962.36 Moreover, Entratter was a visionary man who had a keen interest in the medium of television. This was evident in a letter Pat McDermott of the Directional Public Relations / Personal Management company wrote to Al Freeman (Entratter’s right-­hand man and director of publicity at the Sands) informing him of the New York Times West Coast TV editor Oscar Godbout’s first visit to Las Vegas. He wrote, “It seems to me that I have heard your interests and those of the Sands are associated with television, and I therefore mentioned his importance in that direction.”37 In fact, the Sands was the first hotel to install closed-­circuit TV cameras to monitor gambling tables. Entratter, therefore, grabbed the opportunity when the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) decided to include Las Vegas in their program Wide Wide World in December 1955. 30  Beyond the Black and White TV

Wide Wide World represented early U.S. aspirations toward global television, as it showcased international mobility without the need for physical travel as well as how television could produce new kinds of contacts across the world. The fact that such a program devoted an episode to Las Vegas exemplifies how a U.S. commercial TV network aimed to promote it as an important American city. In conceiving the “American Rhapsody” episode of Wide Wide World featuring Las Vegas, NBC used imagery of roads and highways to introduce different genres of music emanating from various parts of the Americas—­Cuba, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. For the Las Vegas segment, NBC requested that the Sands build a wooden platform on its iconic Sands sign to capture a view of the desert.38 In total, six cameras were set up for this special episode, in which a twenty-­minute segment about Las Vegas was shown. Dave Garroway, host of NBC’s Today, was the narrator of the program, and in introducing Las Vegas, he says, In Las Vegas, a modern audience hears a modern minstrel . . . . . . in an old desert where the echo of “Old Susanna” is lost in the mountains. An old Spanish guitar. . . . once plunked along this road. A road through a desert. A road where your nearest neighbor was the howl of a coyote. A road where the only traffic was the track of a rattler through the sand. But now it’s a . . . . . . road of pleasure. Through the desert was bulldozed, a long shot they call “The Strip.” Three miles of entertainment, “The Broadway of the Sagebrush!” It was once an old Spanish trail, but the cowboys named it “Glitter Gulch.” It never stopped glittering.39

While Garroway’s narration is heard through a voice-­over, the camera stationed at the tower employs a long shot to capture the desert and mountains in the distance. It then pans down to capture the vibrant shot of the “Strip” with its hotels, people, Narratives of Integration  31

and heavy traffic. The use of this particular shot transition, from the desert to the Strip, highlights Las Vegas as vital to the expansion and development of U.S. cultural geography, further invoking the American frontier myth. In the original script of the program, Freddie Bell and the Bell Boys were scheduled to be the first guests who would perform the song “Teach You to Rock ’n’ Roll,” followed by the Copa Girls dance routine and Nat King Cole’s short musical number. After Cole finishes his musical act, Garroway would comment, “Nat ‘King’ Cole can make you feel like the Sands is like a luxury liner, a ship in the desert that floats on warm sand and cold martinis.” However, Cole was not able to appear on the program because he had an exclusive binding contract with the CBS network.40 The highlight of the Las Vegas segment spotlighted Frank Sinatra engaging in a rehearsal for the “Variety International Goodwill Tour” to entertain GI troops abroad. Sinatra and the troupe were hoping to tour the world, including Moscow, as cultural ambassadors of the United States. In the segment in which Sinatra appears, he says, “Those of us in the show will do basically the things we do best—­entertain. But by entertaining abroad, we hope to raise funds for underprivileged children in each country we visit. And we kinda hope we can do a little to further better relations abroad.”41 The thematic linkage among Sinatra, the International Goodwill Tour, and Las Vegas integrated Sin City into the U.S. Cold War imagination, where it was making important contributions to U.S. internationalism. The Las Vegas segment in Wide Wide World was a harbinger of many more TV productions to originate from the city. Interestingly, many of the programs shot in Las Vegas were variety shows, including the Milton Berle Show, the Nat King Cole Show, the Red Skelton Show, the Ed Sullivan Show, and the Merv Griffin Show. As Carrie Tirado Bramen claims, “For most architects of modern Americanism, variety rather than heterogeneity was the preferred term, because it implied a measure of plenitude that was considered temperate rather than excessive.”42 In other words, the interplay of variety shows and ethnic performers was 32  Beyond the Black and White TV

not only successful in disseminating the myth of a racially diverse televisual Las Vegas; more importantly, it integrated Las Vegas into the U.S. cultural imagination as a modern city that was representative of American ideals and values. Therefore, in 1957, four special episodes of the Nat King Cole Show were broadcast from the Sands Hotel. In a review of the program for the Las Vegas Review-­Journal, John Cahlan wrote, “Millions of dollars in publicity, unaccountable value in promotion—­countless sons of goodwill and eventual business created for Las Vegas with this exposure—­a network TV show. The headaches, the problems, the differences of opinion, the submergence of ideas for the sake of the show—­all fade beneath the brilliant sun of national exploitation.”43 Employing the trope of the desert, Cole introduces his guest, African American singer Ella Fitzgerald: “You know, Las Vegas is a few miles from the proving grounds here in Nevada where they test the atom bombs—­but I don’t think anything causes the same explosion as when the First Lady of Song bursts into town.”44 It was in this period that NBC implemented the “integration without identification” policy, which allowed for more representations of African Americans on television. This variety show hosted by an African American and broadcast from Las Vegas illustrates how the city contributed to the dissemination of the mythical narratives of U.S. Cold War racial logics. The promotion of televisual Las Vegas in the form of the ethnic spectacle was only a constructed visual myth serving the purpose of U.S. internationalist aspirations because many of the African American entertainers were victims of discriminatory practices in the city. In addition to these network programs, Entratter had greater aspirations to produce original and more “authentic” Las Vegas TV programs to improve the cultural image of the city and to incite tourism. In 1957, Entratter formulated a plan to develop a closed-­circuit television in which “lavish nitery” productions would be transmitted to giant screens in two hundred nightclubs across the nation. What Entratter envisioned as “Café TV” would allow the live transmission of Las Vegas nightclub entertainment Narratives of Integration  33

across the country, giving more exposure to black performers like Lena Horne and Nat King Cole. Further, Café TV would not only bring patrons back to the nightclubs but also highlight that their shows would make “anything they’ve seen on television look sick by comparison.”45 For the first closed-­circuit transmission, Entratter invested $30,000 in equipment to convey Peter Lind Hayes’s nightclub act that involved a monkey and a horse.46 Despite many failed attempts to produce an original Las Vegas TV program, the vision was finally materialized when CBS approached Stan Irwin (TV producer) and Larry Sloan (publicity director) at the Sahara Hotel. Both Irwin and Sloan believed the variety show would be the most appropriate genre. The program was titled Fabulous Las Vegas, and the first episode was broadcast on January  5, 1957, from 11:00  p.m. (local time) to midnight from the Congo Room at the Sahara Hotel. It was a collaborative production among many Las Vegas hotels. The live variety show, however, was only broadcast in Los Angeles over KNXT (Channel 2). As a result, many local residents were not able to witness this historic broadcast on their television sets. Still, even though the program was televised at a late-­night hour, it attracted nine hundred thousand viewers. The foreword to the program’s promotional pamphlet read, “Since World War II Las Vegas has become the entertainment capital of the world. During the same period Television came of age. It was natural then that local television stations and the networks should look toward the modern day Arabian Night’s village in the Nevada desert with dreams of television extravaganza.”47 It was a grand-­scale television event, and many performers’ exclusive contractual obligations that prevented them from appearing on television had to be amended for the program. The Hollywood Reporter wrote a favorable review of the  show: “Aside from a sock lineup of entertainers, judiciously balanced production had the cameras moving from the Royal Nevada Hotel’s Crown Room to the lounge, to the swimming pool, to the Luau Room, to the patio, in a manner calculated to make the show worthy of serious network consideration.”48 The Las Vegas Review-­ Journal lauded the program for being Las Vegas’s first homegrown 34  Beyond the Black and White TV

television show and, more importantly, for “presenting our town the way we want it shown.”49 A few months later, Entratter was involved in the production of NBC’s live TV special also originating from Las Vegas. The program was titled Holiday in Las Vegas and was produced with a modest budget of $50,000. Unlike Fabulous Las Vegas, this one-­ hour special featured more recognized performers, including Ann Southern as the hostess, Vic Damone, the Will Mastin Trio, Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, David Rose, and a thirty-­piece orchestra. Entratter was also planning to invite the top seven New York TV critics to the weekend media junket in Las Vegas.50 Interestingly, the show was sponsored by Exquisite Bra and featured its commercials. After the broadcast, many female viewers wrote letters to the network complaining about the inappropriate bra commercials. Stockton Helffrich, who headed the censorship department at NBC, attributed audiences’ aversion to the program to the Las Vegas setting.51 Helffrich’s comment illustrates how the old ideas about Las Vegas still lingered in Americans’ popular consciousness. This was also the case when the famous TV impresario and variety show host Ed Sullivan made the unexpected decision to broadcast two episodes of his highly rated and successful variety show, the Ed Sullivan Show, from the Desert Inn in 1958. Sullivan had notoriously refused to host his show in Las Vegas and was well publicized for his unwillingness to deal with controversy on his show, especially when he censored Elvis Presley’s hip shakes by shooting him from the waist up. But in the end, Sullivan could not refuse the lucrative $25,000 per week contract offered by Wilbur Clark, the owner of the Desert Inn. However, CBS and the program’s sponsor, Ford, were reluctant to grant Sullivan permission to broadcast his show from Las Vegas because they did not want their names to be affiliated with Sin City. When a Variety reporter questioned Sullivan about his controversial decision, he responded, “The fact that Jack Benny played a Vegas saloon made it okay for me and my sponsors.”52 Traditional American values and beliefs—­ more specifically, ones that Entratter believed catered to “ordinary” and “average” Narratives of Integration  35

Americans—­informed his idea of televisual Las Vegas. He did not want Las Vegas to be known for tawdry entertainment. Therefore, his productions conformed to clean, family oriented standards. For instance, when NBC approached the Sands with the idea to film the episode “I Love You, Bill Baby” for the TV series Name of the Game, Freeman recommended to Entratter that the hotel should not cooperate fully because of the way the program portrayed Las Vegas.53 After perusing the script, one identifies such phrases as “Drinker, friend who suddenly has amassed” and “Jeff ’s squashed car” underlined with blue ink. These phrases were believed to be detrimental to the televisual construction of Las Vegas that Entratter worked hard to instill in the minds of mainstream Americans. On the contrary, when NBC shot three segments for the TV series Julia at the Sands, Freeman noted, “These three segments of Julia have a family type scheme and should be good for the image of Las Vegas and especially the Sands.”54 Julia represents the growing number of sitcoms that featured black families in a domestic setting. Julia (Diahann Carroll), the black, middle-­class, working mother as the protagonist, personified the “civil rights subject” that was visible on television during the civil rights era. According to Aniko Bodroghkozy, as a domestic sitcom set in a white neighborhood in Los Angeles, Julia embodies interracial harmony through the female protagonist character.55 While the show enjoyed unanticipated success, black and white audiences read the show quite differently. Many black audiences saw the show shying away from the real social conditions of African Americans and expressed their discontentment with the show for its exclusion of a father figure in the black family. Black audiences considered that the middle-­class family is predicated on patriarchy, while lower-­class and dysfunctional families relied on a matriarchal figure. On the contrary, white audiences enjoyed watching the show because it illustrated a successful integration of a black family into white society, further resonating with white liberals who supported the coverage of the civil rights movement in news and documentary programming.56 While audiences were ambivalent about the politics of black 36  Beyond the Black and White TV

representation, the intertwinement of African American TV characters with Las Vegas brought a greater awareness of the city to the American audience. More importantly, Julia constructed Las Vegas as a racially diverse and integrated city that was representative of the United States as a nation. As a result, entertainment personalities were deeply invested in using television to capitalize on the ethnic spectacle in order to shed previous depictions of Las Vegas as tied to the mafia, gambling, and alcohol. However, these efforts were stymied when a controversy erupted surrounding the appearance of six seminude chorus girls at the El Rancho Hotel. Entratter did not hide his disappointment when he described the scandal as “the death knell of show business itself here in the entertainment capital of the world as well as all over America.”57 In support of Entratter’s stance against nudity, a man named L. M. Chandler from Sacramento, California, wrote a letter to him explaining that the popularity of such television personalities as Lawrence Welk, Roberta Sherwood, and Kate Smith was due to the fact that they “have endeared themselves to the average Mr. and Mrs. America.”58 Even Entratter’s famous Copa Girls, who were known for their beauty and glamor, had to conform to the censorship by agreeing never to get undressed onstage or put on excessive makeup.59 These examples not only illustrate the negotiation of modernity through television and nightclub entertainment but also show how a negative image of the city would be detrimental to the development of Las Vegas as a modern U.S. metropolis. Furthermore, the public relations initiatives of hotel executives demonstrate how they tried to circulate a modern image of Las Vegas; they were also very conscious of the effects that a negative image of the city could have on their industries. In the early 1960s, two production companies, Warner Bros and Goodson-­Todman, were in negotiations with the Vegas Chamber of Commerce Promotion Committee to produce TV shows set in Las Vegas titled Las Vegas File and Las Vegas Beat for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and NBC, respectively. Both Las Vegas File and Las Vegas Beat were detective shows dealing with crimes and Narratives of Integration  37

violence in the city. However, there were many disagreements concerning the content of these programs. The city’s Chamber of Commerce Promotion Committee, which included some of the hotel owners, raised concerns and debated whether these Las Vegas–­based TV shows would contribute to the negative image of the city and destroy the gambling business. In the chamber meeting, Al Freeman raised concerns over the production of TV shows based in Las Vegas with the following words: “The only thing I am biased against is violence or something that makes us look bad in Washington and the people around the country.”60 According to Larry Gragg, “Civic leaders and hotel owners understood that the federal government could eliminate their vital gambling industry if Americans perceived that it was an industry tainted and controlled by organized crime.”61 Freeman’s statement is a testament to how hotel and casino publicists were invested in a positive representation of Las Vegas; the decision they made not to green-­light the shows was informed by their political awareness of how a violent portrayal of the city could affect the efforts of the U.S. government to use Las Vegas to disseminate a particular understanding of the nation rooted in democracy, modernization, and racial equality during the cultural Cold War. In spite of the efforts of Las Vegas producers to place race at the center of their television programs, the desert continued to be a trope used in constructing the national image of Las Vegas in the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, in the 1960 episode titled “Freddie in Las Vegas” of the Red Skelton Show, a stock film of a freight train going through the desert was used for its opening segment.62 Additionally, an exterior shot of the desert was also featured in the Post Grape-­Nuts cereal commercial filmed at the Sands in 1963, starring Danny Thomas, a Lebanese entertainer.63 The desert continued to appear in later TV productions when NBC filmed segments of I Spy and Julia in Las Vegas, both of which featured African American protagonists: Bill Cosby as Alexander Scott in I Spy and Diahann Carroll as Julia Baker in Julia. In reading the script for the I Spy episode set in Las Vegas, one notices that the location sites are described as “desert high,” “desert road,” and “deep in desert.”64 38  Beyond the Black and White TV

Similarly, in a handwritten note by an anonymous writer regarding the Las Vegas segment for Julia, the word “desert” is used to describe one of the three episodes.65 While Las Vegas, considered the “Babylon of the Desert,” was a land that needed to be contained, it was also significant in national security efforts that needed to be integrated into the American geopolitical imagination via the interplay between television and ethnic spectacle.

Destination Las Vegas While Las Vegas was known for its headline acts involving famous TV personalities, what made Las Vegas truly a unique place was its transformation into a destination site for ethnic performers, further operating as an entry point to U.S. commercial television. Without the development of Las Vegas into an entertainment city, many ethnic performers, such as the Kim Sisters, the De Castro Sisters, and Maye Kaye Trio, would not have been able to make a successful crossover from nightclubs to television. The need for ethnic talent in Las Vegas, with its flourishing nightclub and revue entertainment scene, led to the influx of many international entertainers from across the globe. Furthermore, Las Vegas was considered an informal site of television auditions, where famous TV show hosts visited the city to catch the acts of relatively unknown but extraordinarily talented performers in hotel lounges and nightclub venues. During the Cold War, a flood of showcasing performers came in from the Asia-­Pacific and Latin America. For example, in 1953, Xavier Cugat and his Latin American Orchestra performed at the Last Frontier Hotel.66 The famous Brazilian film star Carmen Miranda also performed at the Desert Inn, doing a rendition of “I Love to Be Tall.”67 And the Cuban sister band known as the De  Castro Sisters played at the Rivera Hotel in 1957. Jack Cortez of Fabulous Las Vegas described their performance as “impish and incorrigible.”68 The Desert Inn featured the Latin male group known as The Caballeros. The promotional slogan of the show read, “Having a ball Latin Style nightlight in the Lady Luck Narratives of Integration  39

Lounge.”69 In the same year, the Dunes showcased the Havana Mardi Gras, a Latin Revue, starring Caesar Romero, Milo Velarde, Eva Flores, and the Marques Sisters.70 In addition, the El Cortez Hotel featured Tito Guízar, who was known as the “Bing Crosby of Mexico,” and his daughter Lilia.71 The ethnic spectacle of African Americans on television did not call attention to their skin color and hairstyles, conforming to the “integration without identification” policy and its influence on the representation of blacks. On the contrary, the race and ethnic origins of Latin American performers were often mentioned, highlighting their foreignness and cementing their status as perpetual aliens and racialized figures. More importantly, television’s preference for lighter-­skinned Latin American entertainers because of their ethnic ambiguity not only continued to privilege the white norm but also illustrated a narrow understanding of Latinidad confined to people with a Spanish background. Hence U.S. commercial television’s investment in “white” Latin American performers negated the existence of diverse racial and ethnic formations in Latin America. Las Vegas producers also featured Asian talents. For example, the China Doll Revue at the Thunderbird in 1957 included Asian entertainers Ming and Ling and Francis Fong. Ming and Ling were known for their satirical impressions.72 The Thunderbird Hotel staged a Japanese Revue titled “Geisha’rella,” an Oriental topless revue, featuring eight women known as the Imperial Japanese Dancers as part of the trope as well as acclaimed Japanese star Keigo Takeuchi.73 In the late 1960s, Las Vegas also featured many Hawaiian performers. For instance, in 1967, the Sands Hotel hosted Don Ho, who performed alongside George Kirby. Ho sang songs such as “Gonna Build a Mountain,” “It Ain’t No Big Thing,” and “Tiny Bubbles.” Two years later in 1969, Don Ho hosted a gala of his own at the International Hotel in a Hawai‘i-themed party.74 Ho also performed at the Flamingo Hotel in 1969 along with Angel Pablo and Robin Wilson.75 While the television networks preferred lighter-­skinned Latin American performers, the ethnic spectacle of Asian performers on 40  Beyond the Black and White TV

variety shows was predicated on their Americanization. Similar to Latin American performers, many of the Asian performers’ countries of origin were called out when they appeared on TV shows, but their foreignness was highlighted when they could not speak fluent English during their conversations with the white hosts after the conclusion of their acts. The performers’ unfamiliarity with the English language reinforced their status as aliens. But as they continued to make appearances on variety shows over the years, their foreignness was domesticated through the influences of American consumer culture, which were easily identifiable in the performers’ modern cocktail dresses and hairstyles that closely resembled the all-­white girl group bands of the 1950s. Similar to Latin American performers, the use of code-­switching was a pattern that audiences witnessed in many of the nonblack performers. And the visible markers of ethnic excess of Asian performers were made apparent as many of the performers wore kimonos, hanbok, and Hawaiian shirts. The list of Asians and Latin Americans who have performed in Las Vegas from 1950 to 1970 is remarkable, as the city evolved into an entertainment site of cosmopolitanism and ethnic pluralism that continued to define the United States. While the explosion of ethnic spectacle in Las Vegas can be attributed to the development of the city as a global entertainment mecca, the influx of talent, particularly from Asia and Latin America, was aligned with the shifting U.S. diplomatic relations with those regions at the height of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the transnational migration of ethnic performers was not as glamorous as it appeared, as it involved the entertainers navigating complicated diplomatic and racial politics. In other words, the sudden explosion of ethnic talent in Las Vegas did not happen by chance, as these performers were envisioned as ideal figures of cultural internationalism and diplomacy, further strengthening the United States’ endeavors to gain political power and influence in those regions to counterbalance the growing political power of the Soviet Union. In 1950, the outbreak of the Korean War and the escalating political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union Narratives of Integration  41

marked an important phase of the Cold War. The Korean War was a catalyst in prompting the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s decision to hold future atomic bomb tests within the borders of continental United States. And as a result, President Truman declared the Las Vegas–­Tonopah Bombing and Gunnery Range as the ideal nuclear test site. While Cold War geopolitics informed these two historical events in different nations, the two seemingly isolated spaces of Las Vegas and Korea would be far more closely intertwined with the arrival of the Kim Sisters in 1959.

42  Beyond the Black and White TV

2 Narratives of Exchange Asian Performers after the Korean War

In 1960, the Ed Sullivan Show won a Peabody Award for its contribution to international understanding, an odd accomplishment for a popular television variety show that attracted fifty million Americans every Sunday night. James Lardner of the New Yorker described television host Ed Sullivan as a “natural born ethnologist,” suggesting that the Ed Sullivan Show was more than just a popular lowbrow television program. “It can probably be accounted for,” he added, “by Mr. Sullivan’s scientific emotion at finding himself in a hive of nationalities, and by his grateful thought that America is a melting pot in which races have not melted as thoroughly as they have elsewhere.”1 Lardner was at least partly right—­the Ed Sullivan Show was indeed a global talent show that aimed to promote international understanding in the form of ethnic spectacle. It also responded to Cold War geopolitics when the United States played the “race card” to mobilize itself as a harbinger of racial democracy ready to assume a global leadership role in international affairs. In 1961, Sullivan featured 102 African Americans on his show, a remarkable number considering that racial discriminatory practices were still prevalent in the South.2 Among the sheer number of ethnic guests on the show, the Kim Sisters, a trio of female performers from South Korea, played an instrumental role in uplifting the popular variety show into a televisual spectacle of U.S. cultural

43

internationalism when U.S. militarism converged with Cold War racial and sexual politics.

The Korean War and the Kim Sisters The transpacific migration of the Kim Sisters to the United States needs to be examined within the larger political context of U.S. military presence in East Asia, the Korean War, and the Cold War. In contrast to the Vietnam War, which received mass publicity on television, the Korean War (1950–­1953) is considered the “forgotten” war for its lack of coverage in the mainstream American media. One reason for this is because television was still in its developmental stage when the war broke out in 1950. Despite its marginalized status within the discussion of the cultural Cold War, the Korean War did receive some publicity for its economic impact on the U.S. television industry. During the Korean War, television executives attempted to make television a commercial success. Television content consisted primarily of what one scholar has called “dog acts and one-­hour dramas,” with very little news programming.3 With America’s intervention and involvement in the Korean War, an executive at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) predicted that the demand for television sets would eventually grow due to an increasing demand for news coverage. His prediction was wrong, however; Americans, in fact, tuned into radio for news coverage of the Korean War.4 While the NBC executive’s prediction was based on a positive outlook for television as a pedagogical medium, there was also a growing concern that the war would devastate the American television industry as a whole. In July 1950, New York Times critic Jack Gould posed the question, “What will be the effect of the Korean War on television and radio?” According to Gould, the answer was that President Truman’s added expenditure for military equipment (estimated at approximately $10 billion) would curtail the production of television sets by 20 percent.5 Additionally, the Pentagon’s allocation of resources and labor to the production of electronics 44  Beyond the Black and White TV

equipment for the army would not only halt the production of television sets, which had been thriving since the end of World War II, but also impede the development of color TV. Moreover, there were rumors circulating that the U.S. government could order a complete shutdown of all television sets, since they could interfere with military communication. E. G. Fossum, then general manager of the radio and television division of Stewart-­Warner Corporation, estimated the potential impact that the war could have on the television industry: “The Korean War is a factor which can overnight paralyze the television industry because of electronic needs of the armed forces.”6 These perceptions illustrate two contrasting views of the Korean War’s impact on television. On the one hand, television executives viewed the war as an opportunity to improve the status of television with increased news programming. On the other hand, military industrialists foresaw a decline in the development of television as both an industrial and technological form. On June  25, 1950, the Korean War broke out when the North Korean army crossed the thirty-­eighth parallel after a series of bloody confrontations with the American-­trained South Korean army. At the request of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), member states were asked to send military assistance to resist North Korean forces. As a result, the U.S. government deployed American troops to aid South Korea. The growing presence of American soldiers in Korea meant an increasing demand for military entertainment. All-­girl bands had been popular during World War  II—­one scholar describes these bands as “reminders of and even substitutes for their [GIs’] girls back home” and as “a reward for fighting the war.”7 Similarly, during the Korean War, seemingly exotic all-­Asian girl bands such as the Kim Sisters, Tokyo Happy Coats, and the Korean Kittens became popular among American GIs. In collaboration with Asian performers, the United Service Organizations (USO) toured U.S. camps to provide entertainment for the soldiers. From 1941 to 1959, the USO arranged 450,460 performances and operated twenty-­two clubs in multiple countries, including France and Korea. To meet Narratives of Exchange  45

the growing need for rest and relaxation, the USO needed approximately $11.5  million to provide entertainment to U.S. servicemen in 1959. Indeed, the April 1959 issue of Billboard magazine reported that U.S. servicemen stationed across the globe, 50 percent of them under the age of twenty-­five, wanted “music, music, music.”8 Therefore, the USO urged big entertainment companies, including record companies and television networks, to join its efforts. As a result, many actors and comedians traveled to Korea to entertain the troops. For example, actor and comedian Bob Hope took his traveling show to Seoul’s National Theater in 1950, where three thousand soldiers gathered to watch the show. Actor Al Jolson and cartoonist-­comedian Don Barclay also traveled to Korea in 1950 to entertain the United Nations (U.N.) troops stationed there. While these shows were important sources of entertainment, recordings of popular television variety shows were more economical, as they could replace the traveling performers and provide higher-­quality entertainment. In 1950, Robert Longenecker, president of Telepak Inc., submitted a proposal to the Army Recreation Service Branch that outlined his plan to record popular television programs for American soldiers. His idea was to establish an organization that would be responsible for recording original network programs on 16-­millimeter and 35-­millimeter films that the branch could distribute to military camps.9

Music and TV Diplomacy Television variety shows, with their segmented format consisting of numerous musical acts, emerged as appropriate entertainment outlets for the American troops. These shows often explicitly acknowledged the dedication of soldiers because American servicemen stationed abroad watched the programs through the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) network. For example, the Ed Sullivan Show hosted its fourth annual salute to the army in August 1957, and a reviewer of the show opined that it was “a solid GI show that would generate plenty of goodwill for both Sullivan and the sponsoring Lincoln-­Mercury.”10 Even 46  Beyond the Black and White TV

during Sullivan’s visit to Japan in 1956, a photo of Sullivan visiting an injured soldier at a hospital was featured in Life magazine, with a caption explaining that Sullivan recorded the soldier’s name and address and called his parents when he returned to the United States.11 These early intersections between television and music are testaments to television producers’ conception of music as a main recreational form for the American military—­but also as a valuable cultural asset to U.S. diplomacy at the height of the Cold War. Music could play an instrumental role in improving international relations with other nations. There was a common perception among U.S. diplomats that American popular music could be easily picked up by foreigners in terms of its rhythm and tunes; they also thought it could disseminate American ideals rooted in democracy, capitalism, and racial equality. For instance, in a 1960 episode of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show, Dinah Shore commented, “The amazing thing about it is that they [the Kim Sisters] still don’t speak English too well, but you never know it when you hear them sing.”12 And in 1959, Billboard reported that music was one of the most effective tools to “acquaint other peoples with American ways.”13 Therefore, during the Cold War, American popular music carried out the political task of promoting a positive image of the United States. Historians have illustrated how the U.S. government sponsored African American jazz tours abroad, featuring Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, to instill a positive image of the nation amid the Soviet Union’s growing criticism of the United States as racially segregated.14 To deflect such criticism, the U.S. government took measures to promote American music abroad. For instance, in 1962, the United States Information Agency (USIA) distributed a special episode of the musical variety show the Dinah Shore Chevy Show to sixty-­ two different countries, featuring musical guests such as the Gerry Mulligan Quintet, Bessie Griffin and the Gospel Pearls, and Frank Sinatra. Two hundred fifty million viewers watched the program, and host Dinah Shore donated the prints of the program to organizations overseas. The guest performers even declined residual Narratives of Exchange  47

payments as an act of goodwill.15 More importantly, NBC did not see the need to translate the program for overseas audiences because it primarily featured music. As one reviewer noted, even “Sinatra, whose dialogue is sometimes hard to translate even in this country, was crystal clear Sunday night.”16 This special international episode opened with Shore’s long introductory speech that underscored American music as a cultural tool of international diplomacy: “Music has been my love. Music has always been my life. And I say this with pride because of the pop tunes, the show tunes, and the jazz. This ordinary music of America does extraordinary things. It takes off and it goes to the ends of the earth; these simple little songs really get around. They are heard wherever people sing. They miraculously climb walls and they go through curtains. And they make friends with strangers. They are America’s ambassadors and chiefs.”17 Nevertheless, there were reservations among journalists as to whether American music in variety shows could really depict “a representative sample of everyday American music.” Rick Du Brow, a reporter for the Beaver Country Times, a local Pennsylvania newspaper, questioned if a musical variety show could really remedy the negative image of the United States depicted through other network programs distributed overseas. Du Brow wrote, “International television’s major responsibility is to show people as they really are to promote understanding.”18 As a result, music was not only featured frequently in U.S. cultural exchange programs but also contributed to America’s diplomatic efforts during the Cold War. For example, from 1956 to 1959, under the auspices of the International Cultural Exchange and Trade Fair Participation Act of 1956, 141 artists performed in ninety-­two different countries with the aid of the American National Theater and Academy.19 In addition, the U.S. Advisory Commission on Information stressed the need for more music programming for the USIA. The commission suggested the need for more musical exchanges in countries outside of Western Europe and particularly directed attention to countries in Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East. It concluded by suggesting that 48  Beyond the Black and White TV

this musical outreach should be seen as a long-­term investment that would not bring any immediate results, just like the United States did not expect to win the Cold War in the foreseeable future.20 Furthermore, Ely Haimowitz, a Julliard-­trained pianist and the music advisor for the Department of Education of the U.S. Military Government in South Korea from 1945 to 1947, expressed concerns that the United States was not doing enough to solidify U.S.-­Korea relations through music. He stated, “If we could send their best students to universities in this country, their best musicians to the United States for training under our many fine teachers, singers, and conductors—­we would be performing a great service in equalizing Soviet influence in Korea.”21 On the contrary, the Soviet Union participated in cultural exchange with North Korea, sending North Korea’s actors, writers, and musicians to Moscow for training and education purposes.22 The United States began to recognize the potential of cultural exchange to combat the Soviet Union’s Communist influence in Asia; as a result, in 1951, a charitable organization named Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) invited a South Korean music group composed of twenty-­one boys and girls on a goodwill tour.23 The circulation of a wide range of popular American music across the globe, including rock ’n’ roll and jazz, was a way to claim American hegemony. The United States used popular music as a tool to claim its hegemonic power and to further assert its political influence. More significantly, for instance, despite rock ’n’ roll’s roots in African American music, variety shows did not acknowledge the contribution of African Americans to the development of the genre, as they continued to illustrate popular music’s investment in whiteness. Furthermore, ethnic entertainers’ cultural appropriations or renditions of popular music underscored America’s cultural power and dominance, as they performed songs that were familiar and easily recognizable by the U.S. audience. Thus ethnic entertainers’ renditions of popular American music on variety shows were acknowledgments of the global influence of American popular culture. In particular, the United States’ use of popular music enabled the triangulation of Asians, Latin Americans, and Narratives of Exchange  49

Africans into a clearly defined racial hierarchy, with whites holding the power at the top.

Asian Entertainers in Variety Shows As Asia evolved into a significant geopolitical site of U.S. Cold War diplomacy, American TV director and producer Alan Handley planned a variety special featuring fifteen Japanese performers in 1958. Instead of just including foreign nightclub acts, Handley wanted the show to possess a “great exchange value.” He added, “A variety show with such an exposure can contribute to understanding between two countries that are important to each other.”24 Therefore, in the midst of growing U.S. political and cultural interest in Asia, Japanese actress Miyoshi Umeki made a guest appearance on the short-lived Gisele MacKenzie Show in March 1958. A day before, Umeki had won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Katsumi in Sayonara. Similar to Umeki’s numerous television appearances, she is introduced to the audience wearing her signature kimono. Gisele MacKenzie, a Canadian-born singer, actress, and the host of her own variety show, asks Umeki about Red Buttons winning an Oscar as well. When MacKenzie states, “Well, I can bet that you enjoyed working with Red,” Umeki responds, “Oh, yes, very much. He taught me how to do American songs.” Then she tries to sing a segment of the song with a slight comic touch, but MacKenzie advises her that it is not her type of song. Instead, MacKenzie suggests “How Deep Is Your Ocean?” to Umeki. Then Umeki appears onstage sitting on a bench and sings the song in perfect English phonetics. Umeki and MacKenzie then perform the song “Buttons and Bows” together. During the performance, Umeki engages in code-­switching between the English and Japanese lyrics. The use of code-­switching creates ambivalence as to whether Umeki is fully Americanized, as the Japanese lyrics elide her Americanness and reinforce the exoticism of her Japanese cultural identity, which is embodied in her kimono. The display of ambivalent cultural identity further aligns with the United States’ political relationship with Japan before and after World 50  Beyond the Black and White TV

War  II, from an enemy to an ally. Before the show concludes, Umeki makes another brief appearance on the program. This time she presents the “Best New Star on Television” to MacKenzie on behalf of TV Radio Mirror based on an audience poll conducted by the magazine. MacKenzie’s acceptance of the award also marked the end of the series, which had broadcast every Saturday night on NBC. Umeki’s act on the Gisele McKenzie Show must be analyzed in conjunction with her past roles and appearances in Flower Drum Song (1961), The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963), and the Donna Reed Show (1958–­1966), which were released or broadcast during the Cold War. Umeki’s performance on the Gisele McKenzie Show in a kimono evokes the character of Mei Ling in Flower Drum Song. The American media’s construction of Umeki as a foreign alien can be ascribed to the tension between tradition and modernity that structures the representation of Asian women in Hollywood. On the one hand, Asian women have been highly sexualized in

Fig. 2. Miyoshi Umeki performs “Buttons and Bows” with Gisele MacKenzie on the Gisele MacKenzie Show (March 29, 1958).

Narratives of Exchange  51

Hollywood; on the other hand, they have been represented as ideal figures of subservience with the arrival of war brides during the Cold War. In Flower Drum Song, Umeki plays an undocumented immigrant from China whose traditional values are not tainted by the forces of modernity and capitalism. Yet Umeki becomes Westernized in the sense that she is finally able to express her opinions and feelings. Also, she shows that she is willing to make decisions on her own rather than obeying her family members when she professes her love for the second-­generation Chinese American Wang Ta, played by James Shigeta. In the words of Anne Anlin Cheng, Umeki’s character illustrates how “the ‘essence’ of these ‘foreigners’ is also being transformed.”25 Similar to Flower Drum Song, television also capitalized on Umeki’s persona as an “alien body” via exoticism while also highlighting her transformation into a “domestic body” through the process of Americanization. The representation of an Asian woman that oscillates between traditional femininity grounded in her Asianness and her domestication via Americanization resonated with the American audience because she was not perceived as a threatening racial figure. Umeki’s intertextual star discourse manifested in domesticity is also apparent in the TV show The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, in which she plays Mrs. Livingston, a Japanese war bride who works as a domestic servant for a white family consisting of bachelor-­father Tom Corbett (Bill Bixby) and his six-­year-­old son, Eddie (Brandon Cruz). As L.  S. Kim argues in her analysis of the representation of Umeki in the show, Mrs.  Livingston is represented neither as a victim nor as a subordinated character.26 While Kim claims that Umeki’s performance of domestic work as a mother and wife is a “function of both patriarchy and whiteness and capitalism as well,” her subservient status as a domestic worker also does not instigate a fear of rebellion or resistance.27 Instead of solely representing her as a stereotypical character, there is a negotiation that occurs within the discursive representation of Umeki. Her “traditional model of womanhood” is linked to her Asianness, and her liberation and freedom as a modern woman are associated with Americanness. Thus according to Kim, “Racialization as a function of American Orientalism, 52  Beyond the Black and White TV

enables a negotiation of racial identity within a discursive struggle.”28 In a similar vein, Umeki’s appearance on the variety show wearing a kimono and her code-­switching between Japanese and English during her performances asserted her Asianness, while her stardom and independence as a successful professional Asian woman working in Hollywood resonated with the idea of an emancipated and Westernized American woman who emerged within the women’s movement during this time. Asian women thus became more appealing to the white American audience through their ambivalent performances and racialization that required a negotiation between tradition and modernity as well as between exotic Asianness and average, ordinary Americanness. The intertwinement among television, domesticity, and the politics of Asian representation coincided with the development of television as a domestic medium in the postwar era. As Lynn Spigel notes, the introduction of television to suburban America in the 1950s aligned with the postwar ideology of “neighborhood bonding and community participation.”29 While the suburbs in the postwar era were considered “white,” television programs, particularly sitcoms, introduced ethnic characters, including Asians, into white suburban communities in the 1950s and early 1960s. Melissa Prkusarchart’s work on the representation of Miyoshi Umeki in the domestic melodrama sitcom the Donna Reed Show illustrates the  reconciliation between “Asian femininity and the norms of American domesticity.”30 Rather than rendering Umeki as a figure whose foreignness threatens the white suburban neighborhood, it is her display of passivity and submissiveness to her white husband that concerns her female neighbors because this behavior is in opposition to Western femininity. Hence Umeki’s intertextual stardom continues to frame her within domesticity. More specifically, Umeki’s representation on television is in constant oscillation between her status as a subservient Asian woman and her transformation into an assertive, modern female professional who has achieved independence through American cultural influence. A year after Umeki’s guest appearance on the Gisele MacKenzie Show, NBC TV producer George Schlatter returned to Hollywood Narratives of Exchange  53

after spending seven weeks scouting talent for an all-­Asian color episode of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show. The October 25, 1959, episode, titled “Pacific Festival,” featured an all-­Asian cast, including performers Yukiji Asaoka of Japan, Grace Chang of Hong Kong, Rosa Rosal of Philippines, and ten-­year-­old Kim Hŭitŏk of South Korea.31 The episode begins with host Dinah Shore in front of a background image of the Golden Gate Bridge as she speaks: “This is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and it’s called the Gateway to the Pacific. And we had the most wonderful time rehearsing all this week and learning all about each other. There was a little language problem at first, but we really had no trouble at all communicating. We found many things in common, in addition to music and our appreciation of humor and fun.” In this special episode, Shore wears a dress and assumes the role of a cultural educator, as she is surrounded by Asian children. Each child is wearing a costume that is representative of his or her nationality. Shore is seen with a large black photo album; as she flips to a new page, a photo of the guest appearing on the show is revealed to the children. After she introduces Chinese guest Grace Chang, Ms. Chang appears onstage wearing a cheongsam and sings “The Autumn Song.” After the conclusion of her performance, Chang comes to the stage to greet Shore and Yukiji Asaoka, who is dressed in a kimono. Shore compliments Chang on her English and acknowledges that she cannot speak either Chinese or Japanese but that she is learning. Asoka explains to Shore that she learned English from Frank Sinatra. The highlight of the episode is when Asaoka, Shore, and Chang perform Oscar Hammerstein’s song “Getting to Know You.” The song not only invokes pedagogical sensibilities but has a close historical affinity with Asia. The song was first featured in the 1951 Broadway musical The King and I and was later adapted into a Hollywood film by Walter Lang in 1956. In the film version of the musical (in a scene similar to Shore’s variety show episode), Anna Leonowens (played by Deborah Kerr), an English governess, sings “Getting to Know You” while surrounded by the king of Siam’s children in Bangkok, Thailand. 54  Beyond the Black and White TV

As they are singing the song together, Chang pauses and says, “Oh, Dinah, I would like to show you how we sing this in Chinese.” After Chang sings a verse of the song in Chinese, Asaoka also pauses and says, “Dinah, in Tokyo, we sing this way,” and performs a verse of the song in Japanese. Shore surprises her guests when she sings segments of the song in both Chinese and Japanese. The act concludes with the three women holding hands, kneeling down, and bowing to the viewers, ending the act in the traditional Asian custom. The use of code-­switching during the musical performance highlights cross-­cultural dialogue among three people from different nations and underscores the rhetoric of exchange as an essential narrative informing the performances of Asians in the variety show. The special episode ended with Shore’s performance of a song while dressed in a cheongsam as if the exotic Asian costume on her body was a validation of her acquisition of cultural knowledge of Asia. A review in Variety noted that “the lingo barrier perhaps dissipated some of the values of singers Yukiji Asaoka from Tokyo and Grace Chang from Hong Kong but they managed to project enough charm to compensate for the strange tongue.”32 The episode was a phenomenal success, as sixty million Americans tuned in to catch the special color episode. More significantly, after Chang’s debut on American television, Capitol Records released a record of her Chinese songs in 1961, further illustrating the United States’ investment in Asia. The high visibility of foreign-­born Asian musical talent in variety shows also coincided with the popularity of international music in the United States. The growing demand for foreign music resulted in Capital Records’ release of 119 foreign singles, signaling Americans’ desire for more ethnically authentic music rather than renditions of foreign songs.33 As Ed Sullivan said in his speech to accept a Hollywood Foreign Press Association award, “After all, we’d been doing shows from New York for 11 years and it was time we got out to present people from other parts of the world.”34 In 1959, he negotiated to bring Japan’s Takarazuka Dance Theater, comprised of Japanese female dancers, to his show for $125,000.35 The episode Narratives of Exchange  55

featuring Takarazuka dancers would eventually become an Asian-­ themed show featuring talented musical guests like the Kim Sisters, Amatsusan, and child piano prodigy Ginny Tiu. Furthermore, this was a period when Asian musicians began to attract the world’s attention, winning major international competitions and performing around the world. Seiji Ozawa won the Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors in 1959 and earned the Koussevitzky Prize at the Tanglewood Music Center in 1960. In 1960, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Japan’s first professional orchestra formed in 1926, also toured the world with a sixteen-­year-­old pianist named Hiroko Nakamura.36

The Kim Sisters and American GIs The Kim Sisters emerged in the midst of this American military occupation and growing interest in Asia for U.S. policy makers and cultural institutions. The girls were born into a musically gifted family. Haesong Kim, the father of two of the girls, was a famous and well-­respected composer and orchestra conductor who produced musical shows, such as Carmen and Romeo and Juliet, under the production name Kim’s Popular Korean (KPK) shows. Mr. Kim also received national attention for becoming the first Korean to perform with Danny Kaye onstage in Seoul in 1945. The mother, Nanyoung Lee, catapulted to national stardom with her sentimental ballad “Mokpo Tears.” Prior to the Korean War, Haesong Kim was detained at a police station for interrogation. After the police learned that he was a gifted composer and orchestra conductor without any proof of wrongdoing, they released him. However, at the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the North Korean army arrested Kim; he was taken away in handcuffs, and his daughters never saw their father again. The sisters later found out that North Korean Communists had murdered him. There were many speculations behind the murder of Haesong Kim. On the one hand, South Koreans believed that the army abducted him because of his musical talent, which was a critical asset to the development of the culture industry in 56  Beyond the Black and White TV

North Korea. On the other hand, Americans believed that he was abducted because his shows instilled South Korean nationalism, as they often portrayed the South Korean army defeating North Korean forces. Americans attributed the murder to Kim’s close interaction with American GIs, because he taught them choral singing despite warnings from the North Korean army not to fraternize with the Americans.37 After her husband’s abduction in 1950, Nanyoung Lee started performing for the troops to make a living. Lee first discerned musical talent in Youngja ( Jane), the eldest daughter, and Sue, the second-­eldest daughter, and they started performing together with their mother at GI nightclubs in Pusan. But Jane did not want to continue to pursue a career in the entertainment business; as a result, Mia, their cousin, replaced her, and Aija, the youngest daughter, also joined the group. With the addition of Mia and Aija, the three Korean girls formed a band in 1954 that became known as the Kim Sisters. American GIs taught the three girls—­ages eleven, twelve, and thirteen—­how to sing “Ole Buttermilk Sky” and “Candy and Cake.” They performed primarily in nightclubs for the American GIs and slowly started to garner attention because of their extra­ ordinary musical abilities. The rising popularity of all-­Asian girl bands such as the Kim Sisters—­even at their young age—­had to do with the increasing visibility of the sexualized Asian female figure resulting from the U.S. military occupation and its association with both prostitution and interracial romance. At the outbreak of the Korean War, 147,211 American soldiers were stationed throughout East Asia. That number nearly quadrupled a year later to 513,104 troops. Of these, 326,863 soldiers were camped in military bases in South Korea, including Yongsan, Paju, and Dongducheon.38 The establishment of military camps across Korea resulted in the growth of prostitution, which, in the words of the scholar Sengsook Moon, “became a naturalized fixture of the American military presence in South Korea.”39 According to Moon, in the 1950s, there were approximately 180,000 sex workers in the Dongducheon area alone.40 In addition, American soldiers patronized Narratives of Exchange  57

local nightclub venues for relaxation, which led to their fascination with what they viewed as exotic Asian women. Between 1950 and 2005, more than 100,000 military brides arrived in the United States—­ part of the growing trend of transnational romance between U.S. servicemen and Korean women.41 The popularity of Asian women was the outcome of renewed interest in Asia during the Cold War as the United States used Japan as a bulwark against Communism. Moreover, the rising popularity of all-­Asian girl bands among U.S. troops was due to the feminization of Asia, especially Japan. According to historian Naoko Shibusawa, U.S. troops feminized Japan through the image of “baby-­sans” to portray the nation as a U.S. ally. The term baby-­san originated as a serviceman’s nickname for any attractive young Japanese woman—­it combined the American slang baby with the Japanese title of respect, san. Shibusawa explains that baby-­sans, especially in the popular Babysan pinup comic series, were portrayed as beautiful sex kittens, with their “narrow waists, long flowing hair, slim legs, and gravity-­defying breasts.” They became “the fantasy of a heterosexual Euroamerican man” that helped diminish America’s animosity toward Japan.42 As the Kim Sisters entertained American soldiers in nightclubs, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Asian American performers in the United States enjoyed what historian Trina Robbins characterizes as the “Silver Age of Chinese nightclubs” from the 1950s to the 1970s.43 A vibrant Asian American nightclub culture existed in California, beginning with the establishment of the Forbidden City and the Chinese Sky Room in San Francisco.44 One of the most prominent nightclub owners during this time was Tom Ball. In 1946, Ball purchased the old New York London Club for $30,000 and transformed it into a popular Asian-­themed club known as the China Doll.45 Ball also produced traveling shows such as the China Doll Revue and Geisha Revue at the Thunderbird Hotel and Desert Inn Hotel in Las Vegas, respectively. For the China Doll Revue, Ball had already secured Chinese and Japanese performers for the acts, but he was looking for another group of talented Asian performers to headline the revue. During this time, Dan Sawyer, 58  Beyond the Black and White TV

an owner of an entertainment production company in Japan, was surveying the Tokyo Happy Coats, a group of five Japanese singers and dancers, for Ball. As word spread that Ball was scouting for Asian talent, American GIs who had seen the Kim Sisters’ act in South Korea persuaded Sawyer to check out the Korean trio. Bob McMackin, an American GI stationed in South Korea and president of the American Asiatic Attractions, was working with Sawyer as a business partner in Hong Kong. He managed to arrange an audition for the Kim Sisters in front of Ball in Yongsan, South Korea, in 1958.46 Initially, Ball was not entirely impressed with the group, as he revealed later in an interview: “My first reaction was that they [the Kim Sisters] had a lot of possibilities. They could sing, but they didn’t know what they were singing. They harmonized well. They couldn’t play all the musical instruments they play today, just one or two.”47 Despite failing to impress Ball at the audition, the Kim Sisters were still able to secure their trip to America. But the South Korean government delayed the trio from obtaining their passports

Fig. 3. Poster promoting the China Doll Revue at the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 1959. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

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because “there was a fear that they might disgrace Korea overseas.”48 More specifically, the Rhee administration (Syngman Rhee) was concerned that even the slightest connection between the Kim Sisters and Communism could be seen as a threat, given South Korea’s political efforts to ally with the United States and define itself as a pro-­American nation.49 Amid these growing political concerns, Dr.  Yang, who was the Korean ambassador to the United States at the time, assured the president that the Kim Sisters would solidify diplomatic ties between the United States and Korea as cultural ambassadors.50 In 1959, the Kim Sisters arrived in Las Vegas to perform as part of the China Doll Revue. The China Doll Revue at the Thunderbird Hotel was truly an all-­Asian show featuring a wide array of performers from all over the Asia-­Pacific, including Toy and Wing, Misou Shuree, three Tong Brothers, and Gene Chan. While the China Doll Revue exploited the exoticism of Asian entertainers, it also distinguished itself from other Asian American nightclub venues for its showcase of “authentic” Asian performers. Theater historian Esther Kim Lee explains that while all the characters featured in Asian-­themed shows were depicted as foreigners, the actors playing the roles were often U.S.-­born Asian Americans.51 A newspaper advertisement promoting the China Doll Revue read, “20 of the most beautiful oriental showgirls ever assembled on stage; direct from so. Korea, Honolulu, Hong Kong, and Macau.” The slogan describing the Kim Sisters also included the phrase “By special permission of Pres.  Sigmund [sic] Rhee,” which underscored the idea that they were not exploiting Asian talent but promoting the performers as representatives of U.S.-­Asian cultural exchange.52 The Kim Sisters opened their debut act for the China Doll Revue with renditions of “Personality,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Wake Up Little Susie.” After the Kim Sisters’ successful four-­week engagement at the China Doll Revue (with another four-­week option granted), Tommy McDonnell of the Stardust Hotel signed the group to perform in the Stardust Lounge, and the sisters performed there for eight and a half consecutive months. 60  Beyond the Black and White TV

In 1959, Ed Sullivan brought his television crew to tape the Lido Parisian Revue Show at the Stardust Hotel for his variety show. During Sullivan’s stay in town, Tom Ball and Frank Sennes, entertainment director at the Desert Inn Hotel, who were known as “the agents” of Las Vegas, managed to arrange the Kim Sisters’ first guest appearance on Sullivan’s show. On September  20, 1959, the Kim Sisters—­now ages sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen—­made their live U.S. television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show from the Stardust Hotel, sharing the stage with Louis Armstrong and Venezuelan baseball player Luis Aparicio. Their performance was a rendition of the McGuire Sisters’ hit cover song “Sincerely.”

Around the World with Ed Sullivan The Ed Sullivan Show stood out from other variety shows because of its extraordinary showcase of global talent as guest entertainers. Bill Precht, Sullivan’s son-­in-­law who worked with him as the show’s producer since 1960, recalled, “Hurok and other managers were very anxious to place one of their performers or groups on the Sullivan show, especially if they were new American artists or European, Asian, or African artists who were new to the American audience.”53 Even Donald F. Conway, the national executive secretary of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, wrote a letter to Robert B. Lindsey, chief of the application section of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, commending Sullivan’s achievements in discovering foreign talent. Conway noted Sullivan’s “vast experience, personal contact, and qualification as a producer” and praised him as “an outstanding judge of foreign acts and talent, as to their uniqueness, novelty and artistic ability.”54 As the host of a global talent show, Sullivan traveled around the world in search of novel acts. When Sullivan visited Japan in 1956, Life magazine wrote that the “meeting between the Westerner and the inscrutable Japanese was a case of love at first sight.”55 After broadcasting the show live from New York City for eleven years, Sullivan traveled to Belgium and broadcast from the Brussels World Fair in 1958, which expanded the geographical scope of the program. Narratives of Exchange  61

The Ed Sullivan Show was anomalous due to the hypervisibility of race—­and Sullivan carefully orchestrated the ways that race was portrayed. His correspondence regarding the guest appearance of an Asian male and a white female performer, a husband-­and-­ wife act known on stage as Chu Fu and May (their real names were Shing Duck and Ingeburg Mook), reveals how the politics of casting and race informed the popular variety show. Roger Bernheim, a talent agent based in France, recommended the duo. Sullivan seriously considered having them as guests on his show, but in February 1959, he wrote to Bernheim, “I couldn’t use them in America because the American public would take offense at a Chinese man working with a white woman. This is strictly for your information, Roger, because the act would naturally be incensed if they realized that this is the fact.”56 This episode illustrates not only Sullivan’s keen understanding of the country’s racial climate at the time but also his reluctance to feature a real-­life interracial couple on the small screen, illustrating the limits of his show’s image as a racial melting pot. Due to the immense success and popularity of the Ed Sullivan Show, in December 1958, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network asked Sullivan to do a separate program in addition to his Sunday night variety show called “Sullivan’s Travels.”57 In his detailed account of Sullivan’s life and career, James Maguire described it: “He turned his trips into travelogues that he presented along with other acts on Sunday evenings. In his Asian travelogue, the black and white footage was like his own home movie, as he played baseball with Japanese schoolchildren, talked about the architecture in Hong Kong—­the most exciting place on the globe.”58 In a travelogue that captured Sullivan’s visit to Japan, the shot of a Pan American plane stationed at the airport in Tokyo accompanied Sullivan’s voice-­over narration, in which he explained that Japanese television gave him such a warm reception because he had “revealed so many of their performers on my show down through the years.”59 By featuring a wide array of foreign talent, Sullivan not only highlighted globalism in his program but also transformed his 62  Beyond the Black and White TV

variety show into an international television event. In the 1960 special episode of the Ed Sullivan Show featuring Japan’s famed Takarazuka Theater troupe, Sullivan introduced the Kim Sisters with these words: “Quite naturally, all of the Japanese youngsters were tremendously interested in meeting the Kim Sisters, three Korean youngsters who won stardom in the United States. So we got them for you.” Afterward, Sullivan asked the Kim Sisters what songs the Japanese Takarazuka girls would most like to hear. The Kim Sisters responded, “Some American songs.”60 By addressing the Japanese youngsters as his viewers, Sullivan created the illusion that his variety show was a live international broadcast catering to a global audience. Although the show was only broadcast live in the United States, Sullivan’s comments laid out his global ambition for the show. The concept of global television was relatively new in the early 1960s. The Blade, a local Ohio newspaper, published an article in May 1961 that informed its readers about the First International Assembly meeting scheduled to be held in New York City. What was interesting about the article was its title: “Ready for Global TV?” The article explicated how “General” David Sarnoff foresaw the potential of global television and believed that it offered “a bright new promise for moving the world closer to civilized harmony.”61 The two defining features of global television manifested in the rhetoric of “mobility” and “immediacy,” which aligned with the introduction of commercial jet travel in 1958. The number of Americans traveling abroad increased drastically from more than one million in 1953 to seven million in 1959. While the number of Americans traveling to Asia was relatively small compared to other continents, approximately five hundred thousand Americans visited Asia in 1961.62 With a surge in international travel, American TV networks shot and taped abroad many television programs. For example, in 1960 alone, Jack Paar traveled to England to tape his show, Dave Garroway’s Today show was set in Italy, Dinah Shore taped her show in Mexico, and Arthur Godfrey recorded his travels in India for his TV show.63 These examples not only illustrate the international aspirations of American TV programs Narratives of Exchange  63

but also underscore the anticipation of the development of global television. While global television is often discussed in terms of its mobility—­the ability to bring the outside world to the living room—­media scholar Lisa Parks points out that television’s transnational mobility often translated into multicultural spectacle. Parks explains that while transnational connections in the form of travel highlighted television’s mobility, “they also brought forth the imperialistic underpinnings of melting-­pot mythology.”64 Sullivan’s investment in global television came from both his personal ambitions and his awareness of the United States’ role in fighting a cultural Cold War. There was a vibrant exchange of ideas surrounding global television among executives gathered at the First International Assembly of the Academy of Television and Sciences, held on November 4–­­11, 1961, in New York City. Sullivan was the chair, and the meeting’s theme that year was “Greater Understanding through International Television.” In his speech on the development of global television, Sullivan stated, “You can rest assured that, right now, as we sit here, Moscow has some of its finest minds at work, planning how to distort global television to another victory for their ideology. If we fail to remember that, then we will have lost what could prove to be the most decisive of all battles—­the battle for men’s minds and hearts.”65 While there was great enthusiasm and optimism among the executives, Sullivan also made a cautionary remark: “But while global television is filled with glittering opportunities, let us not fail to recognize that global television, for Americans, could easily prove to be a Pandora’s box, which opened, would plague us with additional headaches.”66 He added, “Hollywood motion pictures, for instance, have spread throughout the world a cruel caricature of America and Americans. Much of the European and Asiatic dislike and distrust of us has been caused by Hollywood’s misrepresentation of Americans.”67 Sullivan’s statement suggests that the dissemination of an accurate portrayal of America was critical once global television was fully realized. His remarks also outlined the main objective of this endeavor: the promotion of international understanding rooted in accuracy and authenticity. 64  Beyond the Black and White TV

While Sullivan’s speech hinted at the responsibility that the United States must assume in the wake of global television, he also predicted that television would evolve into an important outlet in the diffusion of Communism. To combat Communism, Sullivan believed producers must invest in programs that featured the “ordinary” and “authentic” qualities of American guests—­shows in which “everyday, average, decent Americans in action” are highlighted. He added, “Let us not give the impression that the entire American population is a compound of gangsters, bullies, rock and rollers, and private eyes.”68 This is the reason for the spectacle of ethnicity that is evident on his show. Sullivan wanted to showcase the extraordinary traits of ethnic guests in terms of their skin color and musical talents in order to accentuate the ordinariness and authenticity of Americans. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded him for his efforts in promoting international understanding through the medium of television in 1959.

Rockin’ Koreans: The Kim Sisters on the Ed Sullivan Show During the time that the Ed Sullivan Show aired from 1941 to 1971, Sullivan invited more than ten thousand guest performers.69 Among the thousands of different ethnic guests, no performer came close in popularity to the Kim Sisters, who made twenty-­ two appearances on the show. On the surface, the Kim Sisters’ performances on the Ed Sullivan Show can be read as an embodiment of American Orientalism that depicted Asian women as sexual, submissive, and docile, further reinforced through the lotus blossom and the dragon lady archetype. American Orientalism, according to L. S. Kim, “is based on America’s unique race relations” and “examines the American focus on Far East countries and the cross-­cultural dynamics of the Pacific Rim.”70 Kim also points out how American Orientalism as a discourse “sets up a system of interracial identity formation” where “identities struggle for meaning.”71 In other words, American Orientalism is not just about the exoticization of Asian Americans and the political, cultural, social superiority of the United States but where meanings Narratives of Exchange  65

of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and nation are constructed and negotiated. The Kim Sisters’ outfits—­cheongsams that accentuated their figures with a high slit that revealed their legs—­reinforced the images of hypersexualized geishas and prostitutes that were popular in the mainstream American media, stereotypes that were further informed by the U.S. military occupation in Japan and Korea. The playful use of Asian hand fans during their performances highlighted the sisters’ self-­Orientalizing tendencies they used to please the American audience by exploiting the exoticism of an Asian cultural artifact. As scholar Celine Parreñas Shimizu has shown, hypersexuality has bound representations of Asians and Asian Americans in film and video. While the hypersexuality of Asian women often oscillates along the binary of moralism and decency, it can also provide a space for critique in “charting viable new subjectivities for raced and gendered subjects.”72 Accordingly, the Kim Sisters’ personal narratives illustrate how they navigated the structures of American Orientalism to claim their ethnicity as Koreans. Many American journalists commented on the racialized performative traits of the Kim Sisters. For example, in 1966, the Waikiki Beach Press described them as “beautiful in typical Oriental fashion.”73 A review published in Newsweek took a similar tone: “On the small stage in the intimate, dimly lit lounge of Las Vegas’s Stardust Hotel, within earshot of the grinding slot machines, stood three prim Korean girls, in brightly colored Oriental attire.”74 Another newspaper observed that “the girls arrive dressed in souvenirs of their country’s proud history, wearing silken brocaded kimonos and carrying a Ka-­un-­gum and ancient Korean versions of the drum and banjo.”75 These examples of the Kim Sisters’ reception in the American press point to how television framed them within the dominant structures of American Orientalism as both racialized and sexualized subjects to meet the demands of the white American audience. Nevertheless, Sue Kim’s personal narrative challenges this stereotypical label. According to Kim, the Sisters wanted to wear the 66  Beyond the Black and White TV

Fig. 4. The Kim Sisters perform on the Ed Sullivan Show dressed in cheongsams ( January 24, 1960).

traditional Korean hanbok dress throughout their appearances on television, but the different layers of the dress were not suited for musical performances. Kim further explains, “The act we were doing, there is no way we are going to move around the stage with a Korean costume. It is too much material.” Although cheongsams showcased the sisters’ narrow waists and slim legs, the Kim Sisters’ decision to wear the Chinese dress allowed them to move around the stage with greater flexibility and freedom while playing different musical instruments.76 Sue Kim further credits her mother for having a big influence on the sisters’ performances outside Korea, inciting them to assert their Korean identity. Kim explains that if her mother had not passed away, the sisters would have recorded and performed more songs with Korean lyrics.77 The oscillation between ascribed and avowed Korean identity was far more complex than one could have visibly discerned on television. The Kim Sisters conformed to the Orientalist codes and exploited the Japonisme boom when they performed the Japanese song “Shina no yoru” (China night) with Asian parasols. The Narratives of Exchange  67

Fig. 5. The Kim Sisters and Nanyoung Lee with Ed Sullivan on the set of the Ed Sullivan Show in 1963. Courtesy of Sue Kim Bonifazio.

sisters had to participate in the act of self-­Orientalism in order to reach stardom and as a means to assert their agency. Kim’s commentary further revealed that the group was fully aware of the stereotypical enactments they were ascribing to. They performed “Shina no yoru” for the simple reason that it was one of the most popular songs among American GIs in Korea, and they wanted to pay tribute to them. Sue Kim stated, “The GIs would go crazy when we sang rock ’n’ roll songs, even though we didn’t pronounce the lyrics correctly for ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ and ‘St. Louis Blues.’” She adds, “They were pounding their feet and saying, ‘More, more!’ . . . They would give us cases of whiskey and beer, and we would exchange them for rice. Without the GIs, we didn’t perform. I don’t know where we [would] be today. That’s how I feel, how grateful I am. Without them, we couldn’t have survived.”78 These personal narratives illustrated how the Kim Sisters negotiated the structures of American Orientalism that were manifested in their performances. More importantly, the racialization of the Kim Sisters embedded in American Orientalism resonates with 68  Beyond the Black and White TV

Kim’s argument that “racial identity is negotiated, rather than dictated through gender and nationality, and in accordance with a uniquely American Orientalism that sets up a system of interracial identity formation.”79 While the performance of American Orientalism on behalf of the Kim Sisters perpetuates the power of racial hierarchy that continues to structure the representation of Asian women, self-­Orientalism embedded with agency has the power to transform into a mode of subversive pleasure. While the American audience found pleasure in the sisters’ display of untypical musical talent, their performative acts enabled them to gain entry into the competitive and white-­dominated U.S. television industry. The Kim Sisters’ performance of rock ’n’ roll songs expressed the possibility of resistance against the hegemonic representation of Asian women rooted in traditional and submissive Asian femininity. As the Kim Sisters gained more visibility and star status through their performances on the Ed Sullivan Show, many national and local newspapers paid close attention to their social and cultural life in the United States, specifically focusing on the domestication of their foreignness through the process of Americanization. While there is a tendency to characterize containment and integration as two opposite ideologies of U.S. foreign policy, these political strategies are not mutually exclusive but far more closely intertwined. The narrative of integration was fitting for the Cold War containment policy because Americanization was an apt model to illustrate how Communism could be tamed via a successful transformation of “foreign” Asians into “Americanized” Asians.80 For example, in September 1965, Thomas Griffin of the New Orleans States-­Item wrote, “This is [the Kim Sisters’] second time around in the plush Roosevelt Hotel spot and their act is now ‘Americanized’ with surefire show-­biz appeal.”81 Similarly, Donna Lange of the Valley Independent wrote, “The Kims, who gained performing experience entertaining GIs at USO shows, may be Korean but in America they’re strictly westernized.”82 And in January 1966, Chicago American Pictorial Living concluded that the Kim Sisters’ Americanization was nearing its completion: “They have been in this country over a year, but as you can see in the pictures on Narratives of Exchange  69

this page—­especially the soda sharing shot at upper right—­their American transformation is complete. They love to shop around the hotel in typical American teen garb—­sweaters and bobby socks—­and their language is spiced with teen bebop phrases.”83 These examples of American media’s reception of the Kim Sisters not only highlighted the successful assimilation of foreign Asians into American society but also illustrated how journalists used the publicity of the Kim Sisters to alleviate fears of “Oriental despotism” associated with Asians as perpetual aliens. Nevertheless, the Kim Sisters’ strong avowal of their ethnic identity and their desire to preserve their cultural mores and traditions enabled them to resist the Westernization that American television audiences imposed on them. Sue Kim described a time when the group wore traditional Korean costumes out on the streets, fully expecting Americans to recognize the hanboks as Korean. “Everybody says, ‘What a beautiful kimono.’ We get so angry—­‘This is not a kimono!’” said Kim. “‘This is a Korean outfit!’ I told Aija and Mia: ‘We have to become successful. That’s the only way they are gonna know we are from Korea.’”84 The Kim Sisters understood that their rise to stardom in the United States was the only way to promote Korea as accurately as possible, as they stated in a Newsweek interview: “We stay here and become success. When we become big name and everybody knows us, then we go back to Korea.”85 The road to stardom meant that the sisters needed to navigate the structures of American Orientalism as perpetual foreigners and Americanized Asians. Sue Kim clearly articulates the sisters’ awareness of the politics of sameness and invisibility governing the representation of Asians and Asian Americans when she says, “As young as we were, we had strong patriotism in our heart. If anybody said we are from China, we used to get angry. They couldn’t tell the difference between Japan, China, and Korea.”86 Sue Kim also explains how others considered them as lesser people because they were from a smaller country. She adds, “They looked down us because we were Koreans. They didn’t know where Korea was, and we were upset.”87

70  Beyond the Black and White TV

While different Asian ethnicities were not discernible on American television, the Kim Sisters continued to communicate the logic of cultural competency on television. “Absolutely, we are from the Republic of Korea,” says Kim. “They couldn’t tell South or North. So our manager told Ed Sullivan, ‘It’s gotta be the Republic of Korea.’”88 Upon their request, Sullivan often included the word Korea as part of his introduction of the sisters whenever they appeared on his show. The sisters’ physical disavowal of Koreanness through their adoption of signature American ponytails, flowing tresses, and the “New Western style of the Twist” was therefore not an indication of their renunciation of their Korean ethnicity.89 While the reception of the Kim Sisters in the United States centered on assimilationist narratives, their reception in South Korea was quite different. In 1961, Cine Fan, a Korean film magazine, published a feature story about the Kim Sisters’ stardom in the United States. The article titled “Top Entertainers to Appear in America Come from Korea” detailed the sisters’ popularity. It explained how the nation perceived the trio and evoked nationalistic sentiments instilled in Koreans because of the group’s success in the United States.90 The magazine also published a letter written and addressed to Dr.  Yang, the Korean ambassador in Washington, DC, and the South Koreans, by an American woman of the last name Jones. In the letter, Ms. Jones wrote, “Korea has gained a great victory because of the Kim Sisters; they accomplished what many intellectuals of your country couldn’t do. They instilled respect and goodwill for your country in us.”91 The article further lauded the three Korean girls in handling diplomatic relations far more effectively than Korea’s president Syngman Rhee and his advisors had been able to accomplish.92 Moreover, in a 1966 article published in Vancouver Sun, the Kim Sisters stated, “In Washington we were told that we have done more for Korea than any ambassador could. We have a feeling of pride in representing it to the rest of the world.”93 American television and newspapers highlighted the Kim Sisters as embodiments of U.S. internationalism toward South Korea

Narratives of Exchange  71

and, more importantly, as surviving victims of the Korean War and Communism. The positive reception of the Kim Sisters allowed the U.S. government to retroactively justify military intervention during the Korean War. As the Boston Sunday Herald summed up, “And now we can see some tangible rewards for our aid to South Korea.”94 Even President Truman described the Korean trio as “one of the good things to come out of the Korean War.”95 More significantly, the Kim Sisters contributed to American liberals’ mission to solidify America’s image as a racially tolerant nation.96 It was not until 1970, two years after the Kim Sisters obtained U.S. citizenship, that they visited their homeland for the first time since 1959. According to Sue Kim, U.S. citizenship guaranteed the sisters’ return to the United States because there was no longer the fear that they would be held captive in Korea. For some politicians, the sisters’ visit to South Korea meant that they might use it as an opportunity to try to cross to North Korea to see their father, who they suspected was still alive and working for the Communist nation.97 The Kim Sisters did not receive a warm welcome when they returned to their homeland for the first time in more than a decade. Most Koreans had lost their sense of national pride in the sisters, especially now that they were naturalized U.S. citizens. Sue Kim recalled an immigration officer at the airport making an impolite remark about their U.S. citizenship as a sign of Korea’s new attitude toward them.98 Government officials had even hired an interpreter for them, and their homecoming concert did not sell many tickets. But when the Kim Sisters surprised everyone by speaking fluent Korean, the local perception of the group changed. The nation embraced them, and their concert at Sejong Center sold out immediately. During their stay in Korea, they recorded a song titled “Kimchi Kkakdugi” (“Cubed radish kimchi”) with the following lyrics: Our home is far away. Memories of yesterday. Now we found the other way. We are in the U.S.A. We will rock some songs today. We must eat the American way. 72  Beyond the Black and White TV

Fig. 6. The goodbye concert of the Kim Sisters in Seoul, South Korea, in 1970. Courtesy of Sue Kim Bonifazio.

The lyrics to the song not only describe the group’s cultural struggles in the United States but, more importantly, reinstilled nationalism and pride in their cultural identity as Koreans. Although the Kim Sisters continued to perform into the 1970s, their music career came to an end. Their final appearance on American television was on the Merv Griffin Show in 1970. They continued to perform with their brothers (also known as the Kim Brothers) in live venues. Their music and television career took a drastic turn when the members split and pursued their own separate paths.99 While the Korean War played an instrumental role in shaping the career of the Kim Sisters, a small island in the Caribbean would also benefit from the conflict. After World War  II, Cuba was experiencing a postwar economic boom, but by 1950, the slow recovery and instability of global sugar production were taking a toll on the country’s economy. However, the outbreak of the Korean War led to a sudden increase in sugar prices with a growing demand across the world, helping Cuba sustain its economy.100 More significantly, Cuba developed into a critical geopolitical site of U.S. foreign relations. Narratives of Exchange  73

3 Narratives of Partnership Latin American Entertainers after the Cuban Revolution

As Las Vegas was evolving into a tourist destination and an entertainment mecca with the arrival of ethnic performers, down in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean island of Cuba was undergoing modernization with the construction of high-­rise hotels, retail centers, and new highways, contributing significantly to the economic growth of Havana in its aspirations to brand itself as the “new” Vegas. Therefore, in 1952, Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista legalized gambling in Cuba and entrusted Meyer Lansky with the operations of Havana’s casino business. Afterward, Havana experienced a casino boom until 1955.1 Concurrently with the growth of tourism, television in Cuba evolved into a powerful commercial medium. For example, Cubans owned two hundred thousand television sets in 1956, which ranked first in Latin America and sixth in the world.2 With the introduction of commercial television infrastructure in Cuba and Latin America, the variety show genre evolved into a popular form of entertainment programming. More specifically, the variety show as a popular global television genre contributed to the U.S. government’s efforts to circulate geopolitical knowledge and strengthen U.S.–­Latin American relations while expanding the United States’ political influence in order to curtail Communism in Latin America. 74

“Good Partners”: Television and Latin American Talent By including Latin American performers as guests, variety shows not only promoted Latin America as an attractive site of tourism but also highlighted television as an important political instrument to disseminate the trope of “Good Partners” that would supplant the old rhetoric of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy. On December  18, 1959, Willard E. Walbridge, executive vice president and general manager of KTRK-­TV, wrote in a proposal letter to Emilio Azcarraga Sr., then president of Telesistema Mexicano, “People have talked for a long time about international television as an important contributing factor to a better understanding between nations, and I believe that we have here an opportunity to blaze a new trail, to do something constructive.”3 This letter anticipated the pivotal role that television would play in U.S.–­Latin American relations at the peak of the cultural Cold War. The variety show as a unique television format undertook an important albeit often ignored political role in U.S.–­Latin American relations at the conclusion of the Good Neighbor era. Prior to the development of television as both a commercial and cultural medium between 1928 and 1947, the Good Neighbor policy was instrumental in fostering amicable diplomatic, economic, and political relations between the United States and Latin American nations. Under the political leadership of President Roosevelt, the government aimed to improve the global image of the United States abroad and further purport a noninterventionist political stance in Latin American affairs. The impact of this foreign diplomacy extended into the media sphere, resulting in more visibility of Latin American entertainers than ever before on U.S. commercial television. For instance, there were approximately seventy-­five different Latin American performers who appeared on U.S. television between 1950 and 1970. The cultural entwinement of Latin American performers, music, and variety shows thus evolved into a larger strategic project that would further contribute to the containment of Communism in Latin America and underscore the Narratives of Partnership  75

continent’s need to depend on the United States in a joint effort to strengthen their diplomatic alliance. Early attempts to enhance U.S. internationalism in Latin America began with the establishment of two important organizations: the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Rio Pact. These groups aimed to unite the United States and Latin American nations under the rubric of “Pan-­Americanism.”4 As Ana López points out, Pan-­Americanism became an important metaphor for the Roosevelt administration to advance cooperation.5 The United States’ investment in Pan-­Americanism as a means to foster a political alliance with Latin American nations led to the growing presence of Latin American music and entertainers on U.S. television. There were two key industrial factors that prompted the popularization of Latin American music in the United States. First, in 1941, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) refused to grant new licenses to radio stations, prompting them to find new distribution outlets for music. This forced radio stations to acquire music from Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), which owned an extensive collection of ethnic music, especially Latin American and African American songs.6 Second, in 1942, the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) banned its members from recording with major record labels because it was concerned that these companies were making inappropriate contributions to the union fund. This ban presented new business opportunities for smaller record companies to emerge as competitive players in the music industry. To distinguish themselves from larger record companies, these small and less popular labels made acquisitions of popular Latin American music.7 Under these shifting conditions in the popular music industry and international affairs, the U.S. government foresaw the promotion of international understanding as a key political weapon against the spread of Communism. As discussed in chapter 2, since the conclusion of World War  II, the U.S. government actively sought to construct and disseminate a new national image across the globe based on America’s rhetoric of freedom, democracy, and 76  Beyond the Black and White TV

capitalism. To achieve this political agenda, many diplomats and politicians envisioned taking advantage of different forms of media to circulate geopolitical knowledge in the form of “international understanding”—­when, in fact, global imperialistic endeavors structured the operations of U.S. internationalism in Latin America.

Radio, Popular Music, and Pan-­Americanism There were no better measures to undertake this political agenda than to first experiment with radio. Radio programs featuring American music were conceived early as an effective communication vehicle not only to reach the masses but also to promote U.S. capitalism. More specifically, music, with its global and universal traits, was understood as an effective language to disseminate propaganda. This was evident when the United States’ Office of Inter-­American Affairs strongly recommended the need to double its budget on “information and cultural programs” to $325 million in 1955.8 Additionally, Voice of America (VOA) programs such as Music U.S.A., featuring Willis Conover as the host, not only promoted American music but were broadcast in Europe, Africa, and the Far East.9 In the words of historian Walter L. Hixson, “U.S. officials came to appreciate the potential of Western popular music as an agent of cultural infiltration.”10 Latin American entertainers also became an important feature of these shows. For instance, a Mexican bolero band named Los Panchos—­composed of Chucho Navarro, Hernando Avilés, and Alfredo Gil—­was formed in New York in 1944.11 The U.S. government took advantage of these talented Mexican musicians by inviting them to entertain soldiers at military camps. In granting these Latin American performers an opportunity to participate in this goodwill program, the government asked them to renounce their Mexican citizenship, join the U.S. Army, and obtain citizenship.12 Therefore, Los Panchos was featured in many music programs and concerts as they popularized the bolero on tours of Russia, Korea, and Japan.13 Narratives of Partnership  77

As Los Panchos gained international fame, Edmund Chester, then vice president of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), invited them to perform on the VOA program Viva América. Chester was an influential figure in U.S.–­Latin American relations. He served as the executive director of the Associated Press’s Latin American department as well as vice president of La Prensa Asociada, a Latin American subsidiary of the news division. Most importantly, he was the brainchild behind the formation of La Cadena de las Américas (the Network of the Americas) in 1942. This Pan-­ American radio network formed connections with seventy-­six stations in twenty South American nations.14 It broadcast seven hours of daily programming, including music, dramas, variety shows, sports, women’s programs, and talk shows. Viva América was the network’s most popular music program, airing on Thursdays at 11:30 p.m. The program featured Alfredo Antonini’s Pan-­American Orchestra, and regular musical guests featured on the show included Mexican tenor Nestor Chayres, Cuban singer Mercedes, and Mexican singer Eva Garza.15 Viva América showcased local Latin American talent, underscoring the program’s fidelity to cultural authenticity. In 1942, Washington Post reporter Eric Schier described the significance of local musical talent in these programs: “Native music of all the republics constitutes an important part of these programs, and it is interpreted by their own truly great stars. Thus, millions of Latin Americans who have never had an opportunity to hear their foremost artists will enjoy them through the medium of the new radio network.”16 Viva América not only epitomized the Good Neighbor policy but also anticipated the crucial role that Western popular music would play in Cold War diplomacy. Moreover, it illustrated how U.S. diplomacy, in the form of the Network of the Americas, strove to consolidate different Latin American nations into a cohesive pan–­Latin American national identity and strengthen its political alliance with the Global South. Because of the network’s contribution to “international understanding,” William Paley and Edmund Chester were awarded the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes National Order of Merit, the highest civilian honor 78  Beyond the Black and White TV

bestowed by the government of Cuba. In presenting the award, Roberto Fernández, consul general of Cuba in New York, explained that the recipients had earned it due to “the splendid work done to promote a closer and better understanding between the peoples of Cuba and the United States.” In his acceptance speech, William Paley described the network as “devoted to the simple proposition that continental understanding is essential to continental solidarity.”17 Under the auspices of the U.S. government, there were continuous efforts to promote Latin American music after the Good Neighbor era, when the music division at the Pan American Union took the first steps to acquire monographs on the history of music in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico.18 In 1950, a music bulletin titled “Boletín de Música Artes Visuales” was published monthly and distributed throughout the Americas, informing readers about the diverse music cultures present in different Latin American nations. After publishing seventy-­six issues with a circulation of no more than six thousand subscribers, the bulletin was renamed the “Boletín Interamericano de Música.”19 A supplementary publication in English, titled “Inter-­American Music Bulletin,” was also published and distributed. Moreover, in 1961, the Latin American Music Center was established at Indiana University with the generous support of a Rockefeller Foundation grant. The center’s objective was to not only promote the research of Latin American music but also foster musical exchange programs featuring live performances.20 These government initiatives were a clear testament to how music was emerging as a seismic cultural force of U.S. Cold War diplomacy.

TV as an Emerging Medium of Cultural Internationalism If radio played an instrumental political role in the 1940s, the 1950s can be characterized as the decade of television. Walter L. Hixson explains that the United States Information Agency (USIA) took advantage of the emerging audiovisual medium to educate foreign countries about the imminent dangers of the Soviet Union. Narratives of Partnership  79

To further carry out the global containment project, the agency distributed American television programs to Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico.21 The USIA worked strenuously to instill American ideas of democracy and capitalism that challenged the impending threat of Communism. In 1945, an intercontinental organization named Asociación Interamericana de  Radiodifusión (AIR) was formed to establish ties between Latin American entrepreneurs and two major U.S. commercial networks: the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and CBS. On the surface, the goal of the organization was to introduce television to Latin America on a commercial infrastructure model, but on a deeper level, it was a means to monitor and control the circulation of political messages that countered the power of the United States.22 Furthermore, as television evolved into a popular commercial apparatus across the globe, the United States and Latin America initiated efforts to coordinate an exchange of live transmissions. For instance, in 1951, three prominent executives—­Sylvester “Pat” Weaver of NBC in the United States, Emilio Azcarraga of Mexico, and Goar Mestre of Cuba—­were engaged in talks to create affiliates among their respective countries. According to an internal correspondence sent to Sylvester Weaver, John F. Royal, then vice president of NBC programming, wrote, “The affiliates cannot be figured on a strictly business basis. This was evident with our early radio planning. Even though you may decide on a limited dollars and cents plan, there were many, many public relations and program exchange features that are mutually worthwhile. In my opinion this will become more and more as television progresses.”23 The three powerful moguls hoped that the establishment of affiliates between the United States and Latin America would trigger a new phase in the development of global television. In 1951, John F. Royal wrote a letter to Goar Mestre: “Sylvester Weaver, who is head of Television, and I might say he is ‘Pat’ to you and all the gang—­is quite aware of the international phase of television, but he has been so burdened with the woes of the new art that up to now he hasn’t had much time to devote to it.”24 Seven years 80  Beyond the Black and White TV

later, in July 1958, Variety reported that Goar Mestre and Emilio Azcarraga were in negotiations to coordinate a talent exchange via live radio and television programs. It was considered as “the first major pact between two governments since Fidel Castro forcibly wrested power from the Batista regime.”25 Three years later, international television transmission was fulfilled when a boxing match between German American Frank Szuzina and American Randy Sandy was transmitted to a Cuban station (CMBF-­TV). The Spanish-­language newspaper La Prensa lauded this event as the “primera transmición internacional de televisión” (first transmission of international television), and a Cuban viewer expressed his excitement, commenting on the fact that he had waited thirty years for this to happen.26 In the same year, Mexico’s Televicentro also agreed to purchase from CBS thirty-­four educational and cultural shorts on U.S. history, sociology, customs, and dances for $20,000, expressing their interest in American culture.27 These early instances of collaboration not only prompted a mutually beneficial relationship between the state-­sponsored and commercial television networks but opened up the global distribution channel of American TV programs. Theodore C. Streibert, former president of the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, was named as the director of the USIA. Understanding the infinite possibilities of television as a political instrument, Streibert initiated plans to acquire more programs with a track record of success in the domestic market. Therefore, such state-­sponsored cultural institutions as the VOA obtained kinescopes and films from both the domestic commercial networks and independent producers for syndication abroad. These acquisitions expanded the reach of the USIA to eighteen individual television stations in fifteen different countries, with ninety-­minute programming composed of news, special events, history, and cultural events. In the words of Streibert, “The co-­operation from the industry has been excellent.”28 In addition to the commercial networks’ supply of programs to state-­sponsored stations, the USIA also increased its foreign television programming from thirty to seventy minutes Narratives of Partnership  81

per day.29 Streibert seized this golden opportunity to distribute programs that explicitly reinforced American ideals and values. By 1954, there were over three million television sets around the world, a 600  percent increase since 1950.30 In 1961, the Television Program Export Association estimated that overseas television sales by American syndicators had reached approximately $30  million, and sales more than doubled ($68  million) in 1964.31 Among the expanding international markets, Latin America proved to be one of the largest for American television. In the meantime, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) looked to expand its affiliate channels on the international front. In 1960, the same year that Central American countries formed the Central American Free Trade Zone, ABC established the Central American Television Network (CATVN) with its affiliates in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica.32 By 1963, three out of four prime-­time programs aired on American commercial networks were being sold for syndication abroad.33 The global distribution and syndication of American TV programs contributed to the dissemination of democratic ideals and was further emblematic of America’s diplomatic policy toward Latin America at the peak of the Cold War. The United States took active measures to shape a new global image under the disguise of internationalism in the form of racial understanding. One of the subtle means to achieve this mission was to make ethnic spectacle more apparent on television. In other words, television was used to highlight markers of ethnic particularities and excess. The variety show as a popular genre in Latin America facilitated the display of race while suppressing those markers that threatened the U.S. racial ideology.

The “Race” for Global Television The phrase race for global television is a paradox of its own. On the one hand, race alludes to the fierce competition between the United States and the Soviet Union over the development of global television. On the other hand, on a more connotative level, race invokes 82  Beyond the Black and White TV

the hypervisibility of different peoples—­African, Asian, and Latin America—­that became more apparent on U.S. commercial tele­ vision at the height of the Cold War. Television was not only a technological invention of visual novelty but also a cultural symbol of progress and modernity with political and ideological implications. This was clearly evident in the famous Kitchen Debate between U.S. vice president Richard Nixon and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, when television became the subject of political discussion. Nixon drew Khrushchev’s attention by pointing to a display set of color monitors. Nixon remarked, “There may be some instances, for example, color television, where we’re ahead of you.” Khrushchev responded that color television was nothing special, stressing the fact that the Soviet Union would soon overtake the United States economically.34 The debate between the two key political leaders is a testament to how the “race” over television became a significant polemical area of the cultural Cold War. Furthermore, television programming continued to be the subject of debate among Cold War politicians. For instance, the Soviets expressed their severe criticism toward American television “for its distance from the lives of workers, lack of artistic value, and celebration of violence.” Along the same lines, Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhov, during his visit to the United States in 1959, remarked, “If you sat in front of their TV long enough, you’d become an idiot.”35 The Soviets also openly expressed their disdain of Latin American music. In an article titled “La guerra fría contra cha-­cha-­cha” (The cold war against cha-­ cha-­ cha), published in the Spanish-­ language newspaper La Prensa in 1957, Barbara Wolfe, a Columbia University student, explains that despite the global popularity of Latin American music, the Soviet Union viewed it as “uncultured.” Wolfe recalls asking an orchestra director at a party she was attending in Moscow if he could play the samba; the man looked at her, puzzled. Wolfe further mentions that other European countries like Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland showed a similar bias against Latin American music.36 Similarly, an article in McCall ’s informed Narratives of Partnership  83

American readers about how Russians expressed their preference for “highbrow” music with these words: “Our people learn and love music that gives a good feeling of life; classical music, folk music, and national music.”37 Thus the increasing presence of Latin American performers on U.S. commercial television was not a coincidence. Instead, it functioned as a political and cultural weapon against the Soviet Union in the battle for global political power. American television’s fondness of Latin American music stood in stark opposition to the Soviet Union’s disdain toward the mambo, the rumba, and the cha-­cha and allowed the United States to propagate its image as a harborer of racial and cultural diversity. Moreover, the vexed triangulation of Cold War geopolitics among the United States, the Soviet Union, and Latin America over the foreseeable development of global television was debated at the First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in New York in November 1961. The theme of the assembly was “Greater World Understanding through International Television,” and the gathering was funded with seed money contributed by the Big Three networks: ABC, NBC, and CBS. Prior to the first international assembly in New York City in November, Ed Sullivan, Donald Coyle (president of ABC International and chairman of the assembly’s International Participation Committee), and Tex McCary delivered remarks at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting held in Washington, DC, on May  10, 1961. McCrary, chairman of the assembly’s board of directors, said, “As we have noted our associates in South America, in FDR’s day we became ‘Good Neighbors’; during the war we were ‘Good Allies.’ In this era of global television, we strive to become ‘Good Partners.’” He concluded, “It is felt, both here and abroad, that this First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is a clear example of how the American television industry, in its role as a member of a free economy, assumes initiative, responsibility, and leadership. By this token, we look forward to the utmost support and participation by all our cohorts in the American system of television.”38 84  Beyond the Black and White TV

McCrary’s statements highlight how the use of global television to circulate geopolitical knowledge and strengthen U.S. diplomatic efforts had become firmly entrenched in the minds of television broadcasters. In 1961, in a closed meeting, Ed Sullivan stated to a group of sixteen network and advertising agencies, “If they [the agencies] wish to keep Communism out of the most important means of communication, TV, it [is] a mutual obligation to support the Negro Actors Guild, which [needs] money desperately to take care of their ‘sick and indigent.’”39 Sullivan’s declaration is further evidence of how racial politics, globalism, and Communism all converged at the center of global television debate during the cultural Cold War. The growing interconnection between race relations and Communism is again pronounced in a publication titled “A Primer on Communism: 200 Questions and Answers” published by the USIA in 1956. The pamphlet’s authors sought to clear up any confusion Americans might have had about Communism. One of the questions included in chapter 5, “Equality under Communism,” was “Do the people of different nationalities have equal rights in the Soviet Union?”40 The response: “The national aspirations of people within the Soviet Union have been rigorously suppressed since the early 1920s.” It continued, “The history and culture of Great Russia are held up as models to be emulated by the peoples in the other 15 Republics who are not Russian.”41 These answers were formulated to reinforce the idea that the Soviet Union did not embrace racial integration and equality. Thus U.S. television broadcasters envisioned using television to construct a national imaginary grounded in racial liberalism as a way to challenge the political influence of the Soviet Union in Latin America.

Around the Globe with the Cugats As the debate over the development of global television ensued, in 1951, CBS premiered I Love Lucy, which became a landmark program in U.S. television history, as it featured Cuban entertainer Desi Arnaz as Ricky Ricardo. While many remember Arnaz as the quintessential Latin American figure in U.S. commercial Narratives of Partnership  85

television, in 1957, NBC premiered a fifteen-­minute variety show titled the Xavier Cugat Show featuring the famous Spanish Cuban performer Xavier Cugat and Abbe Lane as the hosts. The two programs shared one thing in common: both portrayed a Latin American in a “good partnership” with a white woman. The Xavier Cugat Show premiered on NBC at 7:30  p.m. on February  27, 1957. While the program enjoyed a relatively short run of only four months, it demonstrated how an interracial couple—­Spanish Cuban Xavier Cugat and his American Jewish wife, Abbe Lane—­became a visual embodiment of U.S.–­Latin American relations. Moreover, the use of code-­switching between English and Spanish functioned as a strategy to promote both Pan-­American alliance and globalism. The first Xavier Cugat Show began with the following voice-­over narration: La Nacional Broadcasting Company tiene mucho orgullo . . . The National Broadcasting Company proudly presents . . . . . . en blanco y negro y color compatible iniciado y desarrollado por la RCA . . . in black and white and compatible color started and developed by RCA . . . en traerles a Xavier Cugat! . . . the Xavier Cugat Show!42

A few weeks later, the introductory announcement was modified to “The National Broadcasting Company presents, in compatible English and Spanish . . .”43 and at the conclusion of the program, Cugat introduced a Spanish proverb followed by its English translation. When the show aired on NBC, Cugat had risen to stardom for his popularization of rumba and mambo music in the 1940s and 1950s. He was also known to have a discerning eye for new talent for his orchestra band. Desi Arnaz started his career performing for the Xavier Cugat Orchestra and credited Cugat with teaching him musical presentation skills. Cugat was also responsible for discovering the sensational Mexican singing talent Maria 86  Beyond the Black and White TV

Elena “Lina” Romay, who was featured in his radio program for two years and was famously introduced as “Cugat’s Latin doll.” He also recorded four hit songs with Dinah Shore, who would later become a famous variety show hostess and TV personality of her own. Cugat also worked as a caricaturist and was asked to work on a mural at the Waldorf Restaurant, where he drew the caricatures of Donald Duck and President Roosevelt, two iconic symbols of the Good Neighbor policy.44 While Cugat was widely known for his musical achievements, he was also involved in radio, TV, and film productions. He lent Desi Arnaz $10,000 to produce the first episode of I Love Lucy through his brother, Enric Cugat.45 What prompted Cugat to stardom was the tension between ASCAP and the radio stations. While ASCAP forced radio networks to play songs from the public domain, Cugat owned around five hundred non-­ASCAP Latin songs that allowed him to draw national attention.46 While one finds Cugat hosting a television program unsurprising given his stardom, it was his marriage to a white Jewish American woman that served U.S. political interests in Latin America. The Xavier Cugat Show was a musical variety show in which Cugat and Lane (born as Abigail Francine Lassman) performed most of the acts. The program showcased Latin American tunes, often referred to as what Gustavo Pérez calls “latunes”—­songs with Latin beats and English lyrics catered to American listeners.47 The only time the program featured a performer other than Cugat and Lane was when Cugat introduced the audience to “three distinguished members” of his cast known as Diablito, Pepito, and Frankie, who backed Lane in her songs, as they performed the musical number “El Cumbanchero.”48 The first episode featured Cugat and Lane performing popular latunes such as “Siboney,” “Jungle Flute,” and “Lola.” Instead of playing Afro-­Cuban music, Cugat and Lane’s performance not only underscored the perfect musical marriage between Latin tunes and English lyrics but also promoted a cohesive pan–­Latin American identity rooted in whiteness. John Storm Roberts describes latunes as “international pieces” in which Latin American musical Narratives of Partnership  87

influences have been blended into a generalized Latinity. In the postwar era, there was a surge of popularity of latunes, as many Hollywood celebrities started recording them. For example, in 1954, Perry Como recorded “Papa Loves Mambo,” Rosemary Clooney recorded “Mambo Italiano,” and Dean Martin recorded “Sway.”49 As a result, many Latin American–­themed LPs were released, and even Lawrence Welk, host of the Lawrence Welk Show, a program set in America’s heartland, released an LP titled “A Trip to Latin America with Lawrence Welk.”50 After the conclusion of their musical performances, Cugat and Lane would offer each other feedback, further underscoring their dependency on one another. The “mating” of a Cuban man with a white woman, as with Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in I Love Lucy, promoted the rhetoric of “good partners,” illustrating the need for Cuba to depend on the United States politically and instilling pro-­ American sentiments to counteract the influence of Communism while simultaneously suppressing nationalism in Latin America. As an anonymous writer wrote in a 1953 New York Times article, “For in truth the greatest threat to Pan-­American unity and peace is precisely nationalism. Communism is the menace that it is in Latin America chiefly because it utilizes and exasperates the already existing momentum of nationalism, with its predominant expression of ‘anti-­Yankeeism.’”51 Abbe Lane’s rendition of Latin American music successfully masked her Jewish ethnic identity when she started performing for Cugat as a teenager. In her television appearances, she would pass as Latina and would strictly play latunes to entertain white audiences. In her appearances on other variety shows, such as the Steve Allen Show, Lane displayed her dancing skills. In her earlier appearances with Cugat, Lane appeared with blonde hair, but her later appearances illustrate a drastic change in her physical look. Her hair was dyed dark, and her heavy facial makeup emphasized the physical attributes associated with Latinidad, highlighting her transformation from a Jew to a Latina. The U.S. audience’s preference for “white” Latinidad, embodied by Lane, continued to reify whiteness as superior in the racial hierarchy, further excluding 88  Beyond the Black and White TV

blackness. While many Latin American and Caribbean nations, including Cuba, underscore mestizaje, or racial mixing, as a key construct of national identity, Yeidy M. Rivero writes, “behind the comforting screen of racial mestizaje lies the racial ideology and process of blanqueamiento (whitening) where racial mixing with white (European) people make population whiter, thereby improving on or lessening the supposedly inferior black or Indian racial traits.”52 The pairing of a Cuban man with a white woman not only reinforces the whitening process but also demonstrates U.S. television’s attempt to racialize Latin Americans, denying opportunities for them to represent themselves on the small screen. Lane’s inherent white ethnic identity, inscribed in her Jewishness, did not require her to provide an illusion of whiteness or instill a fear of Latinization among the white audience. Rather, it disseminated a false narrative of racial harmony—­or more specifically, Latinidad grounded in both racial and cultural hybridity. Furthermore, Lane’s playful masquerade of Cubanidad or more diffuse Latinidad offered a false projection of U.S. nationalism foregrounded in its equal treatment of all races and ethnicities. Lane’s successful masquerade was evident in an interview conducted after her separation from Cugat. The interviewer commented on the fact that a lot of people thought Lane was a foreigner. Lane then added that people would often speak slowly to her and even yell at her because they believed that English was not her native language. This is a testament to Lane’s success in concealing her Jewish ethnic identity and constructing herself as an “authentic” Latina without any visible markers of racial excess. Yet Lane offered a more interesting remark when she explained that TV distorts certain people. For example, on July 17, 1962, Lane appeared on Talent Scouts to introduce Argentine flamenco dancers. Host Jim Becker asked Lane if it was true that Latin men are lousy lovers. Lane responded, “I’ll tell you, and that’s not true. I’m married to a Latin. I’m very happy, and I don’t look abused.” This example illustrates how television regarded Lane as a spokesperson and defender of Latino/as despite her Jewish ethnic identity, further underscoring whiteness as the hegemonic racial ideology in U.S. television. Narratives of Partnership  89

Furthermore, television succeeded in constructing Cugat and Lane as “good” or even “perfect” partners through their harmonious musical collaborations, disguising their abusive and tumultuous marriage behind the small screen, which was well documented in Abbe Lane’s novel But Where Is Love? (1993). Always dressed in a suit, reinforcing a public image of a gentleman, Cugat orchestrated the band in the background while Lane, in a sexy dress, would appear in front of the stage, singing and dancing to the tunes and rhythms of Cugat’s music. Similar to the narratives of integration that informed the transformation of Asians from perpetual foreigners to full-­fledged Americans during the Cold War, Lane’s cross-­ethnic impersonation helped Americans visualize the positive ramifications of U.S.–­Latin American partnership. Instead of having a Latina undergo the process of Americanization, Lane’s inherent white ethnic identity made her Latinization process nonthreatening to the American audience and further alleviated fears of Latin Americans jeopardizing U.S. racial mythology. Moreover, the Xavier Cugat Show attempted to brand itself as a program that catered to a Spanish-­speaking audience. For instance, the program concluded with Cugat’s or Lane’s concluding remark in Spanish followed by its translation. For example, in the first episode, Lane said, “Estamos algo retrasados así que buenas noches amigos.” Cugat followed with its translation: “Which means  .  .  . we’re a little late, so good night, folks.” Following the Spanish remark, the program further underscored television, particularly the variety show, as a pedagogical tool to educate Americans about foreign culture and further bridge gaps in cultural understanding. For example, in the third episode of the program, Cugat states, “C’est maqnifique . . . down in Venezuela, there is a new dance that has become very popular called the Joropo  .  .  . and I predict that it will soon follow the mambo and cha cha cha here in the United States.”53 Similarly, in the March 29, 1957, episode, Cugat assumes the role of cultural interlocutor when he informs American viewers that Latin music has a very distinct carnival sound because many of them were written for fiestas. After his performance of the song “Banana Boat,” Cugat remarks, “You know, that song has been 90  Beyond the Black and White TV

done so many times on television . . . we never could figure out just what we wanted to do with it.” In the episode, Cugat comments self-­reflexively, “I’m getting so used to being on TV, I may give up the music business and try for a job as a host on TV like Alistair Cooke or Arthur Godfrey.” Lane, however, responds that she is not quite ready for it. More interesting is the fact that TV pedagogy intersected with discourses of authenticity. In the third episode, Cugat makes flattering remarks about Lane’s beauty. In response to his comment, Lane says, “Cugie, that’s very sweet, but I wish you wouldn’t always be so complimentary. You always say, ‘Abbe, you sing beautifully,’ ‘Abbe, your gown is magnificent.’ Be honest! This isn’t the movies, and I know I’m not perfect. Now what didn’t you like about my looks or singing?” Cugat then rescinds his early comments: “Well . . . to tell the truth, I think that gown makes you look a little heavy.” This exchange demonstrates how by constructing television as a medium of greater authenticity compared to radio and film, it could function more effectively as a political tool. Therefore, instead of relying on an American host to promote Latin American music, the casting of a Spanish Cuban musician paired with his real-­time Jewish wife reinforced cultural authenticity and ordinariness. Seth Fein, in his study of U.S. media propaganda in Mexico, argues that “the more culturally authentic the production, the better for U.S. cultural planners.”54 Here, in the case of the Xavier Cugat Show, the interracial couple, emblematic of north-­south axis, assumed a pedagogical role in uplifting television in Cold War diplomacy. Furthermore, Cuba’s political alliance with the United States before Fidel Castro wrested power from Batista in 1959 during the Cuban Revolution informed the visibility of Cubans on U.S. commercial television as representatives of Latin America. Although the Xavier Cugat Show was considered an entertaining program, it interjected political commentary in subtle ways. In the April 17 episode of the program, when Cugat comments on his love for baseball, Lane asks, “Who is the greatest outfielder in baseball?” Cugat is unable to provide an immediate answer. Lane gives a hint: “He travels everywhere and covers more ground than any Narratives of Partnership  91

other man in the game.” Cugat responds satirically: “John Foster Dulles.” Despite the jocular context in which this name is brought up, the exchange has clear political ramifications, as Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a well-­known political figure in U.S.–­ Latin American relations. Two years later, in 1959, Carillo Flores, the newly selected Mexican ambassador in Washington, DC, credited John Dulles for his keen eye in identifying the significance of U.S.-­Mexican relations.55 In concluding the program, Abbe states, “But we have very high hopes that we’ll be seeing you in the fall on a half-­hour series of our own, thanks to the kindness of all you nice people out there tonight.” Despite Lane’s desire to continue the program, the show was canceled after four months. The final episode of the season featured the famous songs “Cuban Mambo” and “Babalu,” with Cugat explaining Mexican fiesta culture: “Down in Mexico when the natives finish a fiesta, they always play this next tune as their last tone. It’s a very polka [sic] called ‘Jesusita.’” Newspapers publicizing the Xavier Cugat Show reported that the premise of the show was based on the theme of “around the world with Cugats.”56 In fact, many musical variety shows promoted globalism through the lens of tourism. Accordingly, since the 1930s, Mexico and Cuba became important tourist destinations for Americans. In 1943 alone, Americans spent more than $19 million traveling abroad, and Mexico ranked first in the tourism industry, bringing in $300  million in 1952.57 In addition to Mexico, Cuba (under Batista’s regime) enjoyed a profitable tourism industry. As Merrill explains, “By the 1950s, Cuba had emerged as an investor’s utopia, a bastion of anticommunism, and the second-­most popular U.S. tourist spot in the hemisphere, trailing only Mexico.”58

The Zany De Castro Sisters As Cuba entered the American cultural imagination as an attractive site of tourism, a Cuban sister band captured the attention of the American audience, functioning as an embodiment of the United States’ shifting foreign relations with Cuba both before 92  Beyond the Black and White TV

and after the Cuban Revolution. The De Castro Sisters was composed of three talented sisters: Peggy, Cherie, and Babette. The De  Castro Sisters were born to prominent and wealthy parents Juan Fernandez de  Castro and Babette Buchanan. Their father owned sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic and Cuba. He was a leading business icon of Cuba, featured in a full-­page advertisement in Life magazine in the 1940s promoting Havana tobacco. More importantly, he was also known as a close ally of Fulgencio Batista. Their mother, whose birth name was Gretchen Beryl Buchanan, was the daughter of a prominent Chicago businessman and a descendant of President James Buchanan. Juan de Castro musically trained his daughters from a young age, and in 1942, he learned about a party being held at the Hotel Nacional hosted by the American Embassy in honor of George Washington’s birthday. He gave entertainment director Mr. Louis $200 so that the girls could perform at the event. Mr. Louis agreed, thinking that the performance would be a gesture of friendship for the Cuban children. In an unpublished manuscript written in memory of their parents titled “A Love Story,” the De Castro Sisters describe their first big stage performance as follows: “Made up by their mother, in the Ziegfeld Follies manner with lots of white powder, rouge, green shadow, mascara and very red lipstick and each carrying an American flag, they sang the American national anthem and brought down the house. They were a smash, a big surprise to their parents!!!”59 After their successful debut, the sisters performed at a Havana club known as El Club Montmartre.60 During their performance, the De Castro Sisters caught the attention of Harry Bartlett, the owner of the Clover Club in Miami. Bartlett signed the  girls to appear in his club, prompting them to leave Cuba. From there, their musical career took off. The sisters became true transnational stars as they traveled back and forth between Cuba and the United States to perform at different venues. While the sisters performed under the stage name Las Marvel Sisters in Cuba, they changed their stage name to “Fernandez De Castro Sisters” upon arriving in the United States. The decision to change the band’s name was perhaps Narratives of Partnership  93

a conscious effort to assert their Latin American identity and to further distinguish themselves from other white sister groups. Later in their career, they eliminated the name “Fernandez” and started performing as the “De  Castro Sisters.” And prior to De  Castro Sisters’ successful crossover to U.S. commercial television, they appeared in soundies and telescriptions (musical shorts produced strictly for television). In 1945, the De Castro Sisters appeared in a number of shorts titled Sun Sun Babae, El Cumbanchero, The Maharajah of Magador, and Shootin’ Iron. In 1954, the De  Castro Sisters released the song “Teach Me Tonight,” which became their biggest hit, selling more than five million copies. Despite the sisters’ success and popularity in the United States, their parents stayed in Cuba. In 1957, during Cuba’s period of political unrest and turmoil, Fidel Castro confiscated all of Juan de Castro’s properties, including his mansion in Havana. The death of the sisters’ father forced their mother to flee the country and arrive in the United States as an exile. The De Castro Sisters wrote about their mother’s nostalgic longing and desire to return to their homeland. Their memoir states, “If Cuba ever becomes a free country, hopefully Babette and Juan will lay side by side like they always wanted it to be.”61 The racialization of the De  Castro Sisters was discernible through their costumes. The sisters wore flamboyantly colored dresses and glitter in their acts. Additionally, they shook their hips and used hand gestures to accentuate the exuberant rhythm and passion associated with Latin music. Their performance in other TV programs featured maracas and conga drums with sudden outbursts of comical facial expressions, reinforcing their exoticism and ethnic excess. According to Yeidy Rivero, “Cuban women were commonly represented as sensual and attractive ladies who dressed in bright colors, wore gaudy jewelry, constantly made reference to the prestigious club Casa Cuba and its parties.”62 After their successful engagements in Miami nightclubs, an agent from the Copacabana in New York City invited them to an audition in the RKO Building. The audition did not go as they expected, but Perry Como was also in the building at the time rehearsing for 94  Beyond the Black and White TV

his variety show, the Perry Como Show (NBC, 1948–­1963).63 The De  Castro Sisters caught Como’s attention, and they made their national television debut on the Perry Como Show in October 1956. In their only appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, Sullivan introduced the group as follows: “And now from Cuba, ladies and gentlemen, De Castro Sisters interpreting ‘Birth of the Blues.’”64 Much like their performances on other variety shows, the sisters were dressed in colorful glitzy dresses. After they had sung a verse from their hit song “Teach Me Tonight,” Peggy introduced the next number: “And this time, you know, we come from Havana, Cuba, and the latest rhythm down there is the rhythm of cha cha cha. So for now, we would like to do a cha cha cha.”65 They began the song singing in Spanish: “Hoy te traigo esta canción. Este es mi corazón. Pon tu atención a mi pasión” (Today I bring you this song. This is my heart. Pay attention to my passion). The use of code-­switching by dark-­skinned performers dressed in white privileges whiteness in the form of blanqueamiento

Fig. 7. The De Castro Sisters perform “The Birth of the Blues” on the Ed Sullivan Show (December 29, 1957).

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(whitening). The De Castro Sisters’ performance is full of energy and vigor as they snap their fingers and clap their hands in their own rendition of Frank Sinatra’s song. In this way, the sisters’ playful use of their bodies elevates them beyond the stereotypical conventions of Latinidad, which are aligned with dance, sexuality, and passion. Also, as opposed to their earlier acts, their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show illustrates a more diffuse or Americanized Latinidad in which the use of light-­skinned performers not only appealed to the American audience but also elided Cuban music’s deep roots in African rhythms. In other words, while the United States promoted racial integration at this time, it did so by further investing in whiteness.

Variety Shows after the Cuban Revolution After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, American television networks shifted their attention from Cuba to Mexico and South America because Cuba’s anti-­Americanism had expanded into other Latin American nations. According to historian Hal Brands, “The single dominant rhetorical trope of the Cuban revolution was the mixture of anti-­imperialism and anti-­Americanism that characterized Castro’s public discourse.”66 Indeed, the revolution prompted political unrest in many Latin American countries, further engendering the word anti-­yanquismo. Latin American countries such as Brazil and Guatemala staged pro-­Cuban demonstrations; in Chile, the revolution mobilized rural works to fight against inequality and poverty; and in Peru, APRA (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance) dissidents turned toward guerilla violence. In 1960, La Prensa published an article titled “Latinoamérica y el comunismo” (Latin America and Communism) in which it reported that the number of Latin Americans affiliated with Communism had increased by 10 percent (estimated between 220,000 and 240,000 people), while the number of people who sympathized with Communism was estimated to range from 650,000 to 700,000.67 As Latin America emerged as an important geopolitical site of Cold War cultural politics, the United States saw Mexico as a 96  Beyond the Black and White TV

political ally that could help them in their fight against Communism. Mexico not only played an influential role in Latin America but, as Seth Fein points out, the United States valued the country for its “resources of men and strategic materials.”68 More significantly, Mexico was taking on an influential role in the development of Latin American television. Variety reported in 1959 that “concentration now is on developing of video-­tape, programming here [Mexico] for release in Central and South America as well as Spanish speaking Caribbean areas.”69 The article also informed its readers that American firms would provide the necessary support in the form of equipment or “technical know-­how” and concluded with the following words: “And American programmers are on the verge of a new developing frontier for their shows. Some production activity here is already slanting to turn out series especially for expanding Latin American home screens.”70 Moreover, as Communism was becoming a threat to the Pan-­American alliance that the U.S. government actively promoted during the Good Neighbor era, television (musical variety shows) aimed to reinstigate Pan-­Americanism in South America. In 1959, a traveling home show on wheels known as “The Goodwill Caravan” carried one hundred singers, dancers, and musicians and toured sixteen different Latin American countries via the Pan-­American Highway. The primary objective of this trip was to strengthen the ties between the United States and its southern border. The tour was conceived as a four-­month trip and was industrially sponsored, allowing for free admission. In the same year, Ford produced a special variety show for television titled La Hora Estelar featuring Lucho Gatica, Mapita Cortez (Miss Puerto Rico 1957), singer-­dancer Carmela Ray, Mexican actress María de Lourdes, the Cuban ballet troupe of Luis Trapaga, Argentinian dancers Lita Enhart and Amilcar Cortes, Spanish comedian Florencio Castello, and guitarist David Moreno. J. Walter Thompson filmed the one-­hour show in Mexico and distributed it to fifteen different Latin American countries with established TV networks. The program was estimated to reach approximately 2.5 million television sets.71 The shift of Narratives of Partnership  97

geopolitical attention of the United States from Cuba to Mexico and South America was also apparent on commercial television. The NBC network devoted two special episodes of the Chevy Show to Latin American music. The first episode was dedicated to Mexican music, while the later episode was devoted to South American music. On March  27, 1960, the Chevy Show presented a special episode titled “Mexican Fiesta,” featuring talented performers from Mexico. La Prensa devoted an entire page of the newspaper to profiles of the talents who would be featured in the show, including prominent stars such as Dolores del Río, Ricardo Montalbán, and Gilbert Roland—­all Mexican stars who had made the successful crossovers to Hollywood. The episode also featured local talents like Mexican torero Carlos Arruza, singers Tito and Lilia Guízar, Cuco Sánchez, and Lucha Moreno. The reporter for La Prensa wrote that most of these performers would be presented just like they would in nightclubs in Mexico.72 As a summer episode, Janet Blair acted as the hostess in place of Dinah Shore. In contrast to other variety shows, it was shot and filmed in color in a studio and closely resembled a classical Holly­wood film. Rather than the different acts feeling disjointed, it employed a coherent narrative arc throughout the program. Conversations between Blair and Gilbert Roland or Ricardo Montalbán occurred throughout the program. The frequent shots of Blair chatting with Roland and Montalbán reinforced the logic of cross-­ cultural interaction as significant in forging an international understanding between the United States and Mexico. The “Mexican Fiesta” episode opens with shots of neon signs, highlighting the different nightspots in Mexico: the Varadero Club, Fontana, and the Focolare restaurant. These exterior shots are proceeded by an interior shot of Janet Blair and Gilbert Roland sitting around a table. Roland explains to Blair, “Like you in the States, we have different kinds of music, but one of the most popular is the ranchera. Mexico is a nation of singers, and one of the greatest is Lucha Moreno.”73 Then Lucha Moreno appears onstage

98  Beyond the Black and White TV

wearing a traditional Mexican dress and performs the song “Guadalajara” with a mariachi band. After the conclusion of Moreno’s performance, Carlos Arruza, a Mexican bullfighter, is introduced as he joins Blair and Roland at the table. Throughout the program, a similar editing technique is employed, where audiences see Blair sitting with either Roland or Montalbán around a table. In the next act, we see Blair and Montalbán in a restaurant as the camera captures a close-­up of the menu in their hands that reads “Villa Juanita Cocina Internacional.” Montalbán suggests langosta (lobster) to Blair, and while he is about to explain to her what it is, a mariachi band appears onstage and serenades Blair, creating a romantic atmosphere. The depiction of Mexican culture in a romantic setting aligns with Mexican Embassy minister Rafael Aveleyra’s characterization of Mexican culture as “neither cold nor materialistic, but rather expressive, live, and sentimental.”74 Montalbán explains to the audience that these performers are known as Los Costenos and that they are famous in Mexico. Then Tito Guízar and his daughter Lilia, Cuco Sánchez and the Hermanos Zavala are introduced in a later act. Again, we find Blair and Roland sitting around a table. After the conclusion of the Hermanos Zavala’s performance, Roland says, “Now I think you are ready for Acapulco.” Then beautiful scenery of Acapulco—­composed of shots of cable cars, beach, hotels, sunset, and cliff divers—­is revealed on the screen. This episode of the variety show not only features a number of Mexican talents but also deploys tourism as its main motif in introducing Mexican culture to the American public, promoting Mexico as a site of many attractions. The highlight of the program occurs when Roland mentions to Blair that Dolores del Río owns a hacienda and that he will take her there. Blair looks at the camera directly, breaking the fourth wall, and says, “I have been in Mexico the whole day; it’s about time I saw something.” Dolores del Río welcomes Blair into her hacienda during a festivity. Del Río compliments Blair on how she was wise to choose Gilbert and Ricardo to show Mexico to her, since they know it better than most people.

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Del  Río then points out dancing performers with their regional costumes. She motions to each group and explains that they are from Puebla, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Jalisco. As she introduces the performers, they introduce their regional dances. After the display of their dances, Blair sings the song “Almost like Being in Love.” At the conclusion of the song, there are fireworks and a close-­up shot of the American and Mexican flags (made of light bulbs) side by side, highlighting the good partnership between the two countries. The program concludes with Roland accompanying Blair to her hotel. When she thanks them in Spanish (“Gracias, gracias. Muchas gracias”), Roland responds politely, “It was nothing, Janet. It was just a typical Sunday in Mexico City.” While the episode featured diverse Mexican talents, Variety was not very fond of it: “Some of the descriptive dialog given to Montalbán and Roland was right out of grammar school primer and was peppered with banalities, but pictures, filmed in Mexico, were quite effective.” The reviewer continued, “Chevy, of course, got its selling licks in, but for the most part the show was shill for the Mexican Chamber of Commerce.”75 As the article noted, this was a special episode meant to attract interest and tourism to Mexico. While Blair is portrayed as a foreigner touring the country, she still possesses more authority and power over the Mexican guests. In addition, she serves as a white interlocutor who not only acts as an ambassador of the United States but serves as a mediator who bridges the cultural gap between the two nations. The success of the “Mexican Fiesta” episode led to the production of another special dedicated to South American music. On April  10, 1960, the Chevy Show, this time hosted by Dinah Shore, broadcast “South American Carnival.” This episode focused on many South American nations. Again, the host played the role of a foreign traveler who acquaints herself with South American performers and culture along her journey. The episode featured mostly unknown local South American talent, such as Eber and Nélida Lobato, the Argentine Folk Ballet, Jonas Moura, the Carlos Machado Dancers, Los Huasos Quincheros, the Marinho Sisters, Trio Felix, and Lucho Gatica. The episode was divided into 100  Beyond the Black and White TV

several acts, each set in a specific country of South America, such as Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. The episode opens with Shore’s introductory remark about the smell of coffee, apparently alluding to the famous Brazilian coffee. She then explains why she boarded a Panagra airliner to South America as the audience hears the sounds of bongo drums in the background. After the introduction, an illustrated animation shows an airplane on a map flying to South America and arriving at its final destination in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The audience then finds Dinah lost in the studio, which has been converted into the Amazon jungle, when suddenly a native bongo player appears and asks her to follow him. We follow Shore to an open space in the jungle where she witnesses a festive scene, and the announcer introduces the name of each guest that will appear on the show. Dinah says, “It must be carnival time. That’s what drew me down here. I wonder who that marvelous trio was.” She then taps on the arm of Lucho Gatica and asks him in Spanish, “Pardone usted, señor.” Gatica responds, “Sí, señorita?” Dinah asks him in broken Spanish, “Quién es el wonderful trio and the girls?” Gatica answers in English, “El wonderful trio is Trio Felix. And the girls are the Marinho Sisters. Are you surprised that I speak English?” Diana says no and mentions that she has seen his face on an album cover; she then finally recognizes that he is indeed the famous Lucho Gatica. She adds, “At home, you’re the most popular South American singer in the United States. I’m glad I ran into you, because everyone in Rio speaks Spanish or Portuguese or something else. If anyone says ‘Hello,’ I’m stuck for an answer.” Gatica assures her that she doesn’t have to speak Spanish or Portuguese: “You can get along in South America without knowing the language.” After exchanging a few more words, Gatica starts singing in Spanish. Dinah tells him that she does not understand what he is saying. They start to sing “You Don’t Have to Know the Language” together, using music as a means to promote internationalism while also asserting the cultural power of American popular music: “You don’t have to know / The language isn’t necessary / ’Cause the meaning doesn’t vary.” Even the lyrics to the show’s popular theme song, Narratives of Partnership  101

“See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” were rewritten to accommodate the South American theme. A Latin American singer with a guitar appears during the commercial break and plays a revised version of the song, including the lyrics “If you take your Chevrolet down South American way / Muy bueno and precioso / Sí es Chevrolet.” Later in the episode, Shore appears on a train on her way to a coffee plantation. On the train, she meets Eber and Nélida Lobato. When Dinah asks Lobato, “What time is it?” he responds in Spanish that he doesn’t understand anything. Dinah explains that there are so many languages in South America. She says that she will illustrate how to solve the problem. She first asks the question in French to Olivia Marlanc; then Marlanc asks the same question in Italian to Oscar, who is sitting next to her; Oscar asks Nélida the same question in Portuguese; and Nélida asks Eber the same question in Spanish. Finally able to understand what Dinah is asking, he answers, “Tres y punto” (Three o’clock). Dinah responds, “Three o’clock . . . of course, I now add twenty minutes for what was lost in translation. Thank goodness we didn’t have that trouble with music. It’s the universal language.” After a mutual understanding has been achieved, the act concludes with all the train passengers singing together harmoniously on their way to the coffee plantation. In a later act of the program featuring Jonas Moura, a prominent Chilean dancer, Lobato asks the waiter in Spanish, “Cuándo baile Jonas Moura el Frevo?” (When is Jonas Moura going to dance the Frevo?). Dinah quickly interrupts and says, “That sounds delicious. I’m going to order Frevo too.” Despite her lack of knowledge and inability to speak Spanish, Shore’s knee-­jerk reaction in pretending that she understands highlights her inefficacy to convey meaning through a different language. Lobato corrects her kindly and explains that Frevo is not a type of dish but a dance. He adds, “Jonas Moura is the greatest Frevo dancer in South America.” On the surface, the act not only reinforces Lobato’s kindness toward Shore as a symbol of internationalism but also personifies the United States’ deep investment in disseminating narratives of U.S.–­Latin American partnership, as it offers an illusion of 102  Beyond the Black and White TV

how quickly mutual international understanding can be achieved through a single episode of a variety show. As expected, the final act of the program features every South American guest joining and dancing together in a celebratory and festive mood. Dinah waves to each guest and says goodbye. After all the guests have disappeared from the stage, Dinah sings “Adios,” switching back and forth between the English and Spanish lyrics. After she finishes performing the song, Dinah says, “My Spanish and Portuguese are not too good, but I would like to say gracias and obrigado to all the guests that appeared on the show.” Despite the first-­rate talents featured in the program, Variety wrote that “the Latin beat was a little unsyncopated on Dinah Shore’s Chevy display of Sunday. The various song and dance groups show this too [lack of cohesion] which didn’t help the variety aspects of the show.”76 Rather than limiting itself to the display of musical talent in short, segmented acts, the American audience was not very receptive to the integration of a narrative arc involving an American exploring a foreign country. Despite the showcase of South American musical talents, the representation of Latin American entertainers within a narrative structure was threatening to the mainstream American audience. The South American guests appeared more competent and talented than the Americans, undermining the cultural power of the United States. Accordingly, the visibility of Latin Americans on U.S. commercial television, especially in variety shows, mirrored the shifting geopolitical relations between the United States and Latin America during the Cold War. The United States’ investment in Cuba prior to the revolution and its shifting attention to Mexico and South America after 1959 illustrates how the public’s perception of Cuba changed drastically, with the island going from a paradise to a dangerous island to be reckoned with after Castro’s ascension to power. Even comedian Jack Paar, who had staged some of his previous TV programs in Cuba, refused to host a show there with this statement: “I don’t look good in a blindfold.”77 In the wake of the growing influence of Communism in Latin America, tourism was rerouted from Cuba to the Hawaiian Islands Narratives of Partnership  103

in the North Pacific Ocean. The U.S. turn toward Hawai‘i was mirrored in its commercial entertainment programming. Similar to Cuba, Hawai‘i emerged as a conflicted space of Cold War geopolitics, where mixed races, Communism, and globalism via tourism and real estate development converged. In the end, Hawai‘i became an alternative geographical conduit through which the United States could expand its military presence and carry out its political battle against the Soviet Union.

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4 Narratives of Coexistence Pacific Islanders and the Statehood of Hawai‘i

As Cuba was undergoing a significant political change as a result of the revolution in 1959, Hawai‘i became the center of national attention as it was granted statehood. Despite Cuba and Hawai‘i’s lack of geographical proximity, historian Christine Skwiot points out that Cuba and Hawai‘i emerged as “twin objects” of U.S. desire that were instrumental in the global projection of its power. While both places experienced a booming tourist industry in the postwar era, U.S. politicians and writers used travel narratives to promote Hawai‘i and Cuba to the American public because both locations “were American enough, civilized enough, republican enough, and white enough to warrant the support of a U.S. nation and citizenry intimately bound to them by ties of affection and kinship, destiny, and duty.”1 Additionally, the modernization of Hawai‘i through capitalism represented what the United States stood for—­namely, stark opposition to Communism. While the United States’ support of the Cuban Revolution would strengthen its global image for its commitment to democracy against the authoritarian dictatorship of Batista, the demographically diverse Hawai‘i would emerge as an exceptional model of U.S. race relations—­rooted in tolerance and acceptance and further invoked in the “Aloha spirit.”2 Accordingly, the United States turned from Cuba to Hawai‘i in order to circulate a narrative of mixed-­race coexistence at the exclusion of blacks.

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Hawai‘i in the U.S. Cultural Imagination In the 1950s, a white American entertainer by the name of Arthur Godfrey emerged as an iconic figure of Hawaiian music and culture. Godfrey’s performances of “For You” on his ukulele on his variety show Arthur Godfrey and His Friend became popular with the American audience. Hence Godfrey was labeled as an unofficial ambassador of Hawai‘i. Local newspapers such as the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-­Bulletin publicized Godfrey’s visit to Hawai‘i and further recognized him as a fellow Hawaiian (in spirit) invested in the promotion of Hawaiian culture. This popular imagery of Hawai‘i embodied in a white entertainer illustrates how U.S. commercial television shifted its attention away from Latin America to the Pacific Islands as Hawai‘i evolved into a significant geopolitical site where a war against racism, Communism, and the Soviet Union could be waged. As Christina Klein points out, “The U.S. government also treated Hawaii as an important location from which to wage the struggle for the hearts and minds of Asia.”3 As political tensions escalated between the United States and the Soviet Union, Hawai‘i’s entry into U.S. national imaginary as the fiftieth state became a highly polemicized issue among government officials and diplomats amid rising fears of Communist infiltration. In the words of Senator John R. Pillion, “Admitting Hawaii into the Union would be to ‘actually invite two Soviet agents to take seats in our U.S. Senate.’”4 At the conclusion of World War II, Hawai‘i was highly publicized for its R&R (rest and recuperation), where members of the armed forces rested peacefully after the war. It later transformed into a favorite destination site for military personnel during the Vietnam War when Congress launched a program that granted soldiers a period of rest and the choice to select their destination for recuperation. Indeed, many soldiers chose Hawai‘i.5

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Aloha! Television Before the emergence of Hawai‘i as a critical geopolitical site for the U.S. government, Hawaiian popular culture enjoyed tremendous success and popularity in the mainland since the 1930s, a phenomenon known as the “Polynesian craze” and “tiki subculture.” More importantly, Hawai‘i was an exemplary model of Cold War racial logics with its long history of immigration from different countries, including China, Japan, Portugal, and Germany. Therefore, it was envisioned as a transnational conduit through which the United States could disseminate narratives of coexistence as a means to strengthen its ties with the Asia-­Pacific while simultaneously battling the forces of Communism. More specifically, U.S. commercial television featured Hawaiian performers to promote tourism, real estate development, and globalism. The representation of Hawai‘i in U.S. commercial entertainment programming, especially in variety shows, showcased the islands as the new gateway of transpacific exchange, where the East and the West would coexist harmoniously. The characterization of Hawaiians as an off-­white race, a by-­product of racial mixing, illustrated the nation’s investment in whiteness in the absence of blacks. This narrative of Hawaiian racial exceptionalism manifested in Hawaiian spectacle was well captured in a 1957 episode of a variety show Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians. In the episode, host Harry Owens makes the following remark when he introduces the Polynesian version of swing music: “Here is an example of how East meets West at the crossroads of the world here in our classic Hawai‘i. Here is an example of the old blending with the new.”6 Owen’s introduction of Hawaiian music as a hybrid of two different cultures is susceptible to two different interpretations. On the one hand, it can be read as reinforcing the East-­West binary by designating the East as regressive and the West as progressive. On the other hand, it constructs Hawai‘i as an exemplary model of a racial and ethnic melting pot.

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Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians was produced for KNXT, a local television station in Los Angeles. Since television was introduced in Hawai‘i in 1952 and the islands were not within the reach of the West Coast transmission signal, mainland television programs were mailed to Hawai‘i either in two-­inch Quadruplex tapes or 16mm films; therefore, island viewers were only able to enjoy mainland programs a week after they had been originally broadcast.7 According to Ron Hashiro, an avid Hawaiian television viewer during the 1960s, mainland programs broadcast on the local Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) affiliate station contained the message “Programming was made available by means of mechanical transcription” accompanied by the network logo. The short message was shown after the commercials at either the beginning or conclusion of the taped program.8 Prior to the development of Hawaiian television, the physical migration of Hawaiian performers to the mainland enabled the construction of an imaginary connection between the two noncontiguous lands. And it was only in 1966, seven years after the statehood of Hawai‘i, that live transmission of television programs from the mainland became possible. Nevertheless, television in Hawai‘i was frequently at the center of discussion in conjunction with real estate development as part of the modernization project. In other words, the development of television throughout the islands was seen as contributing to Hawai‘i’s development into a fully modernized U.S. state. Accordingly, television was utilized to document the process of modernization in Hawai‘i through real estate development as well as through the influx of diverse ethnic groups, which in turn strengthened the narrative of the United States’ commitment to freedom and democracy and uplifted television as a new technological apparatus capable of carrying out U.S. political projects. In Adrian Imada’s words, “Americans needed to define Hawai‘i and Hawaiians for their own interests.” Hawai‘i’s significance to U.S. geopolitical interests prompted the mass movement of Hula performers from the island to the mainland to forge a new level of cultural intimacy between the people of the United States and Hawai‘i.9 108  Beyond the Black and White TV

Communism and Racial Politics in Hawai‘i Nevertheless, the projection of Hawai‘i as an exceptional model of U.S. racial politics had its drawbacks. For example, as John Okamura explains, Hawai‘i’s racial liberalism was firmly grounded in the idea that no single race dominated the islands.10 Furthermore, Hawai‘i’s racial model, which steered away from the black-­ white dichotomy, allowed the United States to continue to assert the dominance of whiteness at the expense of blacks. The migration of Hawaiian talent to the United States prompted a number of television productions on the islands after 1959, coinciding with the Polynesian craze in the 1950s, when there was a mass influx of Hawaiian-­themed dances, food, restaurants, and architecture. As Americans displayed a growing interest in Polynesian culture, tourism on the islands escalated to an all-­time high with 23,043 visitors. Concurrently, military activities also expanded on the islands as the armed forces population increased from 16,291 to 26,233 (61 percent) between 1930 and 1940.11 Tourism was not only an embodiment of global aspirations afforded by jet travel; it also became increasingly intertwined with internationalism and globalism. In August 1959, for example, a special issue of Jet Age Airlanes was published to commemorate both the statehood of Hawai‘i and the thirtieth anniversary of Hawaiian Airlines. The issue published Governor William F. Quinn’s salutary remark: “As the hub of the Pacific, Hawaii has become a great aerial crossroads between the continental United States and the countries of Asia. The new State of Hawaii is a cosmopolitan blend of East and West which is known the world over for its racial harmony.”12 In another article titled “Hawaiian’s Future Plans,” published in the same issue, Hawaiian Airlines president Arthur Lee Lewis reflected on the past thirty years with the following statement: “The new fiftieth State of Hawaii is known throughout the world for its harmonious blending of Asian culture and races. Due to the ethnicities of our multiracial population, these islands have had a close community of interest with all the nations in the Far East. If our state is to fulfill its ultimate destiny as the showplace of democracy Narratives of Coexistence  109

to the peoples of the world, we must foster and develop our strong friendship with the peoples of Asia.”13 These words instilled a positive image of Hawai‘i into the minds and hearts of Americans and underlined the islands as an exemplary model for the world. However, the debate about whether Hawai‘i should become a state prompted James Michener to write a letter to the New York Times supporting the statehood of Hawai‘i: “The citizens of Hawaii are well founded in American tradition. Leaders of the island get their education on the mainland, know mainland historical backgrounds, are versed in American history, government and law, and live according to American standards. At the same time, many of them are usually well instructed in foreign languages and an appreciation of problems that arise in foreign countries. They form a splendid resource from which our Government can draw in these difficult days of trying to work with many foreign governments.”14 Michener’s statement asserts that Hawaiians are fully integrated into U.S. culture. He contends that they have formed close ties with the mainland and could be claimed as full-­fledged Americans and as ideal citizens who have a lot to contribute to international understanding. Additionally, he sees Hawaiians as offering valuable resources that could aid the United States in its fight against Communism. Lastly, Michener’s letter also attempts to consolidate Hawaiian and American national identities into one in promoting the logic of coexistence. As Hawai‘i was undergoing drastic changes with the growth of tourism in the 1950s, and as the debate around its impending statehood ensued, the islands’ allegiance to the United States was also questioned because of its large population of Japanese Americans, who were classified as enemies during World War II. According to Giles Scott-­Smith, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, “The islands were placed under martial law and there was considerable suspicion on the American mainland about the loyalties of the large Japanese population.”15 Moreover, Hawai‘i’s multiracial population impeded the islands from becoming a U.S. state sooner.16 More specifically, the U.S. 110  Beyond the Black and White TV

government firmly believed that the racial diversity on the islands made Hawai‘i more susceptible to the infiltration of Communism. Many local papers thus publicized the threats and dangers of Communist influence on the islands. For instance, in an article titled “Hawaii Vital Pacific Defense for Canal,” author Paul R. Bish wrote, “The workers, a motely mixture of Japanese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans and a sprinkling of kanakas are easy victims of Communist propaganda. They are eager followers of trained American and German agents of the Communist doctorate of Moscow.”17 State senator Jack B. Tenney, chairman of the California Un-­American Activities Committee (CUAC), stated, “The Communist line, the attempts to create racial agitation, and all the other aspects of communism as we know it on the coast are being put into operation there [Hawai‘i].”18 Furthermore, in an article published in the Honolulu Advertiser on June 25, 1949, Edward Gibbons, copublisher of Alert, a weekly anti-­Communist newspaper published in Los Angeles, wrote that Communists “pose as staunch friends of racial minorities and as the greatest the Negro ever had.”19 In fact, many U.S. politicians claimed that racially diverse sovereigns were more prone to Communism because “the Communists consistently hide behind protective racial and labor minority groups.”20 These statements reflected the view of the U.S. government. This sentiment was further pronounced in Is This Tomorrow?, an anti-­Communist pamphlet composed of comic strips depicting the possible outcomes of Communist influence. The pamphlet was distributed nationally by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society and, more importantly, handed out at the door of an open meeting organized by the group “We, the Women” on the subject of Communism in Hawai‘i. One of the comic strips featured in the pamphlet explicitly states that Communists aim to stir up racial tensions with these words: “In other places, the red plan was white against black.”21 The comics featured images of violence acted upon African Americans. Nationally distributed pamphlets such as this aimed to instill a fear of Communism among the people via racial intolerance and violence. The concluding page of the pamphlet urges Americans to fight Communism with the “Ten Commandments of Citizenship.” Narratives of Coexistence  111

One of the commandments is “Be tolerant of other races, religions, and nationalities.”22 These government-­ sponsored publications clearly purported to define Communism as the absence of civil liberties and human freedom. As a means to counter Communist infiltration, U.S. political leaders and institutions viewed Hawai‘i’s unique racial makeup as a golden opportunity to disseminate narratives of ethnic coexistence. In other words, they envisioned highlighting how the United States values racial tolerance and civil liberties as exemplified by the harmonious racial interactions happening in Hawai‘i. As Christine Skwiot argues, Hawai‘i’s “statehood would enable the United States to improve relations with Asia and to demonstrate to the world that it accepted people of color as equals.”23 Further, in President Eisenhower’s words, “Hawaii cries insistently to a divided world that all our differences of race and origin are less than the grand and indestructible unity of our common brotherhood. The world should take time to listen with attentive ear to Hawaii.”24 Moreover, when Lyndon B. Johnson arrived in Honolulu in October 1966 to give a speech at the East-­West Center, he underscored Hawai‘i as an exemplary model for Americans when he stated, “I intend to ask the leaders that I see to visit America—­especially to come to this part of America, here in beautiful Hawaii, and to see for themselves a model—­a model of how men and women of different races and different cultures can come and live and work together; to respect each other in freedom and in hope.”25 Nevertheless, this nationally constructed rhetoric about America’s embrace of racial diversity as a means to suppress Communism was also subject to severe criticisms. For instance, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in Hawai‘i who were accused of being a Communist group featured an article titled “Senator Eastland vs. the People of Hawaii” in their own publication, articulating their strong stance against Senator James O. Eastland, who helped kill the statehood bill in 1954. In the article, the union labeled the senator’s views as “Eastlandism,” which they described as “the very antithesis of Americanism” and “a blood

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relative of Hitlerism.” They mainly expressed harsh criticisms of racially discriminatory practices in the South and wrote, “Hardly a day goes by in Senator Eastland’s southern stronghold that some American, who made the mistake of being born with a colored skin, is not assaulted, insulted, maimed or murdered by East­ landites.” They added, “White people have been beaten to death in Eastland Land for treating a non-­caucasian [sic] as a full-­fledged human being. The people of Hawaii want no part of Senator Eastland nor his brand of Americanism.”26 Despite U.S. politicians’ firm belief that Hawai‘i could serve as an exemplary model of U.S. race relations, what were seen as  Communist labor activities delayed its statehood. The fear of Communism swept the islands in November 1947, when Governor Stainback initiated the process of screening twenty-­six thousand civilian employees of the army and navy.27 After Stainback’s declaration, which publicly proclaimed the islands’ battle against Communism, which came to be known as “Armistice Day Speech,” a controversial thirty-­two-­page pamphlet titled “The Truth about Communism in Hawai‘i” was distributed to the public. The booklet, written by Ichiro Izuka, former vice president of the ILWU, confirmed his status as a member of the Communist Party.28 The pamphlet not only opposed the Mundt-­Nixon Bill but also incited labor strikes in Hawai‘i. To combat the government, the ILWU sponsored a concert tour featuring African American performer Paul Robeson.29 As the anti-­ Communist movement gained momentum, in November 1949, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) revoked the charter of the Honolulu chapter in hopes of not aligning with Communism.30 These incidents demonstrate the mounting political tensions arising in Hawai‘i as an active political site of Cold War geopolitics. However, this negative image of Hawai‘i would soon be subverted by the introduction of television on the islands.31

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Hawaiian Television and Real Estate On September  4, 1951, coast-­ to-­ coast television transmission between Hawai‘i and the mainland was finally achieved. A year later, commercial television was introduced to Hawai‘i with the establishment of KGMB-­TV, an affiliate of the CBS network. Since it was the only television station available in Hawai‘i, KGMB-­ TV syndicated programs from the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC) networks. A year later, on December  2, 1952, Hawaiian residents experienced their first live television broadcast from the KGMB studio.32 The twenty-­five-­minute broadcast was a compilation of interviews in which Carl Hebenstreit, the host of the program, looked into the camera and greeted Hawaiian viewers with the words, “Hello, everybody.”33 This first live event was a harbinger of a rewarding symbiotic relationship between Hawai‘i and television in which the cultural logics of race, globalism, and modernization converged. As Hawai‘i slowly made inroads into the American cultural imagination, many Hollywood producers arrived on the islands to shoot films and TV programs for the mainland audience. For example, in 1951, motion picture and television producer Joe Rock came to Hawai‘i to produce film and TV programs featuring Hawaiian subjects.34 And television producer John Jay Franklin brought his production crew to Hawai‘i to shoot fifty-­two color films to be broadcast in the mainland. William F. Brody Productions Inc. was in charge of the production, which had an estimated budget of $300,000. The TV series was to be named Hawaiian Paradise and would feature a wide range of local Hawaiian performers, including Alfred Apaka and Ray Kinney. Larry Grant, a Honolulu radio personality, was selected to narrate the program. The Hawai‘i Visitors Bureau funded the show, anticipating that it would reach forty million viewers. The series had also been presold to seventeen regional markets.35 Aside from the islands’ attractive visual landscapes, television executives were adamant that Hawai‘i was well-­fitted for 114  Beyond the Black and White TV

television transmission because of its unique geographical location in the Pacific. Wesley Innes Dumm, the man responsible for the first television station in San Francisco, noted, “I would call Honolulu excellent for television. A tower could be placed high in the mountains and the reception ought to be very good.”36 Therefore, by 1954, there were approximately 6,500 television sets on the islands. The development of television in Hawai‘i not only resulted in an increasing number of television productions but also was responsible for producing one of its first own television personalities in Webley Edwards. Edwards arrived at Hawai‘i in 1928 and worked for the Honolulu radio station KGU as an announcer and was later promoted to assistant manager. He returned briefly to the mainland to work for KNX in Hollywood and then returned to Hawai‘i after six months to become the manager of KGMB. He was involved in the production of newscasts for the station and assumed the important task of informing radio listeners that World War  II had arrived in Hawai‘i. He became famous for his statement, “Some people think this is a maneuver. This is not a maneuver. This is the real McCoy.”37 Nevertheless, most Americans remember Edwards for his signature radio program Hawaii Calls. He produced the show with the aim to disseminate authentic Hawaiian music across the Pacific. It became a popular broadcast and was available through the Voice of Freedom on 572 mainland stations as well as in Canada, Australia, South Africa, and 135 armed forces stations around the world.38 Edwards later ventured into television when he was named as the executive producer of KONA-­TV. He had previously spent two months of his 1951 summer on the mainland studying and mastering the techniques of television. Upon his return to Hawai‘i, Edwards believed that his newly acquired knowledge of television production would put him in a better position to create more live TV broadcasts.39 While Edwards helped construct the televisual Hawai‘i for the American public, it was Henry J. Kaiser who played a pivotal role in the integration of Hawai‘i into the U.S. national imaginary by working behind the camera. Kaiser was both a successful businessman and a real estate developer who had a keen interest in Narratives of Coexistence  115

developing the Hawaiian television industry as well as the state of Hawai‘i. Kaiser was also a respected American steel and aluminum industrialist who was well known for his operations in Latin America. Kaiser had formed a close alliance with the U.S. government during Roosevelt’s tenure as president. As Elizabeth Anne Cobbs explains, Kaiser, along with Rockefeller, was a diplomatic actor who influenced U.S.-­Brazil relations.40 As an entrepreneur, Kaiser was a living embodiment of U.S. corporatism as his business operations expanded globally. Kaiser’s success is a further indication of how U.S. corporations were actively strengthening internationalism across the globe. As Mark S. Foster explains, in the postwar era, America as a nation was “committed to internationalism,” and “more American corporations became multinationals.”41 One of Kaiser’s ongoing projects on the islands was to transform Hawai‘i into a global tourist destination via land development projects.42 Since 1906, Hawai‘i was slowly being consolidated into the global economy with the formation of the Panama Canal and the installation of the transpacific cable, which opened the Eastern market to Hawaiian agricultural products and allowed for instant communication between Hawai‘i and the United States.43 With a booming economy in Hawai‘i, the haole (white heirs who had inherited businesses from their missionary and merchant forefathers) elites, who later became known as the Big Five, began to monopolize various sectors of industry on the islands—­for example, the sugar and pineapple industries. By 1940, the Big Five’s pineapple agriculture had expanded into a $50  million business operation.44 While Hawai‘i’s agricultural production had sustained the islands’ economy throughout the 1950s, it was beginning to face stiff competition without an annual quota to help subsidize pineapple exports with the addition of sugar consumption, and prices continued to drop.45 These newly emerging economic threats forced the Big Five to relocate their operations abroad. Instead of entering the saturated agriculture market, Kaiser shifted his attention to real estate development, on which he believed Hawai‘i’s future rested. 116  Beyond the Black and White TV

Real estate development in Hawai‘i was a microcosm of the larger political battle between the Soviet Union and the United States, as both nations competed to access and develop land across the globe. The development of real estate in Hawai‘i not only showcased the United States’ growing political power over the Asia-­ Pacific but also was viewed as a diplomatic measure to expand the United States’ global presence in order to curtail the dangers of Communism. Additionally, these projects would prompt a mass migration of Americans to the islands. It is within this larger Cold War political context that Kaiser understood the significant role that television could play in real estate development by bringing Hawai‘i to the forefront of national attention. In the mid-­1950s, Kaiser assigned Lambreth Hancock, his assistant, to produce a thirty-­minute 16mm romantic drama titled The Hawaiian Incident featuring Alfred Apaka’s songs and Kaiser’s products.46 Rather than looking to maximize short-­term profits, Kaiser formulated a long-­term plan using television to support his business. Therefore, in 1958, Kaiser agreed to purchase KULA-­TV for $685,000.47 He later established a fourth television station in Hawai‘i, which became known as KHVH-­TV. By 1960, KHVH-­TV emerged as one of the most popular TV stations in the state, with a viewership of 54.5 percent that year. Unlike other stations, KHVH-­TV focused on local programming, explicitly catering to native Hawaiians.48 Kaiser’s investment in television centered on the promotion of Hawai‘i Kai, a $350,000 land development project on the island of Oahu.49 He believed television would play a pivotal role not only in promoting Hawai‘i Kai but also in inciting migration to the islands, further leading to the growth of tourism. The Hawai‘i development team, consisting of diverse experts in their respective fields, was formed to develop Hawai‘i Kai into a profitable real estate project as well as to transform the land into a global tourist destination. The team devised different strategies to promote Hawai‘i Kai. One of the strategies outlined in the business plan involved having Henry Kaiser fly to different states on the mainland before the inauguration of Hawai‘i as the fiftieth state as a Narratives of Coexistence  117

public relations campaign.50 Harry A. Berk, in a letter addressed to the members of the Hawai‘i Kai development team, informed them that Mr.  Joseph McMicking, real estate expert and then chairman of the executive committee of Ampex Corporation, suggested that the team should look to sell Hawai‘i Kai to residents outside of California because there was a slim chance that Californians would find the need to move to Hawai‘i. He recommended that they should look into the Midwest and Texas. He explained, “The big interest for Hawai‘i Kai is among Texans and people in the Midwest where the climate is poor and to whom Hawai‘i is a paradise.”51 The development of Hawai‘i Kai included the construction and purported sales of three-­bedroom homes for less than $20,000.52 When the rumor circulated in 1961, the waiting list of applicants for Hawai‘i Kai homes escalated to four hundred potential buyers.53 One of the most discussed topics among the Hawai‘i Kai development team was what role television would play in their real estate project. A letter from December 1959 explains that an agreement had been reached between Kaiser and the development team in which Kaiser would take an active role in the production of TV shows originating from Hawai‘i.54 There were three written clauses in the agreement: the company would (1) produce spectaculars for its own use or for others, (2) produce its own variety shows or for others (meaning for other broadcasters), and (3) produce a daytime show filmed or videotaped at Hawai‘i Kai.55 A letter addressed to Henry J. Kaiser from the Hawai‘i Kai business partners not only emphasized the significance of television but also stressed the need to find a producer that they defined as the “businessman” and an executive producer whom they identified as the “idea man.” The letter stated that the “businessman” would oversee the production of commercials, whereas the “idea man” would develop creative concepts for spectaculars, variety shows, and daytime shows for Hawai‘i Kai.56 The partners found their “idea man” in Sylvester “Pat” Weaver. Weaver had established himself as a prominent television executive during his tenure as the programming head at NBC from the late 1940s to the 1950s. He devised 118  Beyond the Black and White TV

effective strategies for NBC and implemented the “Operational Frontal Lobes” policy, a plan initiated to convert NBC into a serious television network. Weaver also redistributed power from the advertisers to the networks, granting them control over their programming schedule. After Weaver’s term as president of NBC ended, he left the network in 1956 and found a new career as a consultant in advertising and public relations.57 In a 1960 letter written to Weaver from John M. Bridgman, then vice president of McCann-­Erickson, a global advertising agency, Bridgman explained precisely the reason why Weaver was brought into the project. Weaver’s role was to develop “television ideas for Hawai‘i Kai.” He added, “In practice, nevertheless, I have to assume that you are Mr. TV—­and we cannot afford any misunderstanding on that score.”58 Weaver worked closely with Kaiser to come up with effective ways to promote Hawai‘i Kai. In describing the creative logic behind the project, Weaver wrote, “The Japanese tradition merging with our far west, and Chinese, and Hawaiian, and other Pacific elements is bringing about a new revolution in homes, in life, in clothes, in attitudes.” More specifically, Weaver was adamant about deploying a narrative of coexistence, wherein Western and Eastern cultures would merge to create a distinctive Hawaiian identity and brand. Weaver and other members of the business development team explored the possibilities of promoting Hawai‘i Kai on the television series Maverick and Hong Kong. On April 25, 1960, Weaver addressed John Bridgman: “To sell Hawai‘i Kai, we will need pictures for television commercials to use as projected on ‘Maverick’ and ‘Hong Kong.’ We shall, of course, need more pictures for brochures and motion pictures for use in sales promotion activities.”59 Kaiser had experienced success previously with television in the summer of 1956, when he sponsored the short-­ lived drama series Kaiser Aluminum Hour, which ran on NBC on alternate Tuesday nights. In 1957, he had sponsored and invested $7 million into the development of a new TV series for the ABC network titled Maverick, which proved to be a big hit.60 Kaiser’s investment in those programs illustrated his deep personal stake in the medium of television. Kaiser was surprised Narratives of Coexistence  119

to find out that Weaver was contemplating whether to promote Hawai‘i Kai on Maverick. But as a television expert, Weaver understood how the Western genre could contribute to the promotion of Hawai‘i Kai, with Hawai‘i as the new frontier born of manifest destiny. According to historian John Whitehead, Hawai‘i has been excluded from the American West for its noncontiguity and failure to share a common history with the rest of the mainlanders. Whitehead writes, “Rather than being outside of western history, Hawai‘i may well be considered America’s first and last far West.”61 Weaver was keenly aware of how this narrative would be fitting for the western television genre, which further illustrates the American frontier myth that was attached to Hawai‘i after its statehood. William H. Weintraub, then head of an advertising agency, invoked this frontier rhetoric in a letter he wrote to Weaver: “There is again a new frontier, again springing out of desperate need, but it is not a geographical frontier in this century. It is the frontier of the human mind, of human thought and of the development of great and competent leadership in these difficult times. This is much rougher, tougher frontier than the one of 180 years ago. Muscles, speed and guts are not enough.”62 While Weintraub’s use of the frontier discourse is mentioned within the context of human creativity, his statement elucidates how the frontier rhetoric informed and shaped the development of Hawai‘i Kai. Weintraub further envisioned Hawai‘i setting a new landmark for America’s expansion into the Pacific. Given his extensive background as a television executive, Weaver adopted techniques that would construct an image of Hawai‘i as the new frontier paradise and, more importantly, as a site of real estate development. He even wrote a script for a promotional film for Hawai‘i Kai titled The Doer Who Dreams. The film would show the Hawai‘i Kai beach in its “wild and unfinished state” and then show it again “fully developed and in use—­perhaps Varadero or the Bahamas.”63 Weaver’s inclusion of such words as land, industrial, and modern in the script suggests how the film intended to portray Hawai‘i as a modernized state and as the new

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future of real estate development, further encouraging mainlanders to migrate to Hawai‘i. To carry out these visions, a Japanese filmmaker by the name of George Tahara, the head of Cine-­Pic Hawai‘i, was hired to produce a series of short promotional films, which included such titles as Discover Hawaii, Hawaiian Holiday, and Surfing in Hawaii. While these shorts would help incite tourism, Weaver believed that a musical variety show set in Hawai‘i could fulfill Kaiser’s long-­ term vision. This is evident in a letter written by John Magnuson of McCann-­Erickson Advertising to Pat Weaver in October 1960. In the letter, Magnuson informed Weaver of his intention to hire director LeRoy Prinz and Consul Films in order to produce a series of musical specials with the theme “South Pacific and the Orient,” which would be filmed at Hawai‘i Kai. Prinz had previously directed musical numbers for Sayonara and South Pacific and had a great personal interest in the Asia-­Pacific culture and traditions.64 While Weaver’s vision to produce an original variety show set in Hawai‘i never materialized—­perhaps due to the sudden death of Alfred Apaka, whom Weaver considered as the perfect person to host the show—­Kaiser’s vision was adopted by several commercial television networks as they began producing variety shows set in Hawai‘i. Indeed, these programs operated as a means to disseminate the narrative of coexistence in which Hawai‘i (East) and the mainland (West) could live together peacefully. In 1957, CBS produced a special episode of the Steve Allen Show titled “Hawaiian Night.” Steve Allen introduces the show with a remark in Hawaiian: “Aloha, kanes and washines, and as we say in Hawai‘i, ‘Kawali luoni pakula lapi lapi mu-­kona-­ha-­ha ku-­o-­rina vouti kalua Tippecanoe and a todd a-o,’ which means, ‘May an active volcano erupt right in your face, and may you have a mouthful of hot lava as you fall into the crater of Mauna Loa.’” He adds, “I guess it loses something in the translation. It is wonderful to be here on American television. Someday we hope to visit your country and meet your wonderful president, Mr. Arthur Godfrey.”65

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Allen’s brief introductory remark renders multiple meanings. His statement amplifies Hawai‘i’s foreignness and promotes it as a remote nation. In other words, Hawai‘i’s difference is underscored. Furthermore, although this musical variety show was catered primarily to American viewers, it seems odd that Allen has to point out that his show is, in fact, American. His use of American in his lexicon further reinforces the exotic, mystic, and foreign attributes attached to Hawai‘i. The show was broadcast in 1957, two years before Hawai‘i’s statehood. Based on the show’s script, it is thus not surprising that the first act featured dancers from the Hawaiian Room performing the famous Hawaiian slap knife dance, which perpetuates the extraordinariness affiliated with Hawaiian culture. But more noteworthy is the fact that Allen’s statement deters the American audience from forging an intimate racial and cultural relationship with either the performers or Hawai‘i.

Variety Shows, Hawaiian Performers, and the Statehood of Hawai‘i The Steve Allen Show depicted Hawai‘i as isolated geography from the mainland. On the contrary, in April 1959, NBC devoted a special episode of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show to Hawai‘i in celebration of its statehood. Despite its similar format as a musical variety show, the Dinah Shore Chevy Show offers a contrasting depiction of Hawai‘i compared to the Steve Allen Show. Rather than have American viewers experience Hawaiian music and culture from still relatively new and unfamiliar soil (this was prior to the availability of affordable air travel to Hawai‘i), the show invites famous Hawaiian performers to come to the mainland, which helps shape the image of Hawai‘i as a more familiar, intimate, and less alien space for the American public. While episodes devoted to Latin American music and culture did not overtly acknowledge that the program was broadcast from the network’s studio, the Hawaiian episode does not even attempt to construct any such illusion. At the conclusion of the show, Shore states, “I want to thank Tony Randall, Charlie Davis, Martin Denny, Leilani, and all the other lovely people who made the trip 122  Beyond the Black and White TV

all the way from Hawai‘i to be with us. . . . With all of you here, it actually felt like we were in Hawai‘i. . . . Now that Hawai‘i has become our fiftieth state, it might be a little difficult to see the whole USA in your Chevrolet unless you use a snorkel tube and keep your windows rolled up—­Aloha!”66 The Hawaiian episode opens with Dinah Shore and Tony Randall on an airplane. The shot of the airliner is meant to indicate affordable international travel and prompt Americans to travel around the world. Next, shots of passengers are juxtaposed with aerial shots of Hawai‘i that include views of volcanoes, beaches, hotels, and resorts, highlighting the state as modern. At the airport, Shore is greeted by hula dancers who put leis around her neck as a welcoming sign to the new U.S. state. The Hawaiian natives also hand hibiscus flowers to Shore to welcome her. Shore hesitates for a brief moment to wear the hibiscus flower before Tony advises, “Dinah, I think you’re supposed to wear it over your ear. Well, if you’re married or engaged, you wear it over the left ear, but if you’re available, you place it over the right ear.” This opening act affirms the pedagogical dimension of the variety show, wherein Randall educates Shore on Hawaiian culture. In addition, Hawai‘i is presented as an exemplary syncretism of Western and Eastern culture. As Weaver had earlier noted about Hawai‘i, “The merging of Western and Pacific elements will bring about ‘a new revolution in homes, in life, in clothes, in attitudes.’”67 Shore and Randall arrive at a village where they see a grandmother who will eventually teach them the hula dance. Grandma says, “Now, lesson number one: I will show you how we move the body. You fold your arms across your chest, you keep your head still, your shoulders still, your knees still, and your feet planted right on the ground. All right, now we move what’s left. One, two.” She continues, “Lesson number two: Now we move the hands and the feet. Continue to move what you learned to move in lesson number one. Put your hands on your hips, and we go all the way down the mountainside and come back up.” The language used here, including the word lesson, is imbued with markers of pedagogy and integration, which became valuable assets to the variety Narratives of Coexistence  123

show. Shore and Randall’s mastery of a foreign dance is an example of a bodily mode of integration in which Hawaiian culture is incorporated into the U.S. national imaginary. While the Dinah Shore Chevy Show’s primary intention was to introduce mainland viewers to the exotic and unique culture of Hawai‘i, references to the islands’ diverse racial and ethnic composition were made throughout the program. While the show featured Hawaiian talent, the inclusion of mixed-­race performances became a metaphor not only to disseminate and project Cold War racial logics but also to highlight the United States’ advancement in race relations. More specifically, the different genres of music featured in the show epitomized the harmonious intermingling of different races. For example, in introducing Martin Denny, Shore invokes racial sentiments: “The exotic sound you are hearing is a new kind of music that started in Hawaii recently. It’s a blend of all the cultures in Hawaii itself . . . Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Polynesian, and the American jazz. This style of music was originated by Martin Denny. Here he is with his group playing ‘Quiet Village.’”68 Martin Denny was an instrumental figure who popularized exotica music in the postwar era. Denny rose to popularity with his remake of Lex Baxter’s rock ’n’ roll song “Quiet Village.” Denny’s version quickly climbed the music charts in 1959, the same year that Hawai‘i was granted its statehood.69 “Quiet Village” did not contain any lyrics but consisted of instrumental sounds that aligned well with the exoticism of Hawai‘i. Moreover, the postwar recording culture, characterized by high-­fidelity sound and stereo, allowed instrumental musicians like Denny and Esquivel70 to gain popularity among listeners.71 As a result, Denny rereleased his album Exotica in stereo, and it became an instant hit among the fans of exotica and space-­age pop. As Francesco Adinolfi explains, the popularity of space music, a subgenre of space-­age pop and exotica, had to do with its ability to comfort listeners and suggest harmony.72 Shore’s introduction of Denny as the originator of hybrid music stemming from different ethnicities and cultures and the 124  Beyond the Black and White TV

show’s decision to feature his music was appropriate to underscore Hawai‘i’s racial harmony. As Denny performs his hit song “Quiet Village,” it becomes apparent that his normative whiteness renders its racial power over its invisibility, as he is the one in control of the music, while the exotic racial makeup of Hawaiians and the acoustic sounds resonating from the band highlights harmony. Further, the rising popularity of space-­age music, aligned with space fantasies popular in the 1960s, contributes to the construction of Hawai‘i as the new frontier that needs to be claimed, civilized, and controlled under the watchful eyes and power of the mainland. Following Denny’s performance, Shore introduces another widely known Hawaiian performing artist, Charles K.  L. Davis, whose racial ambiguity makes it challenging for the American audience to identify him as either American or Hawaiian. For his act, Davis sings “Ku’u I’ini,” a song written by Charles E. King. After Davis finishes singing his second song, “La Boheme: Che Gilda Maniha,” Shore joins Davis to perform a song together. Davis says to Dinah, “There’s a beautiful song we could sing together” as he hums a few tunes from “The Wedding Song.” Dinah comments, “That’s an American wedding song.” Davis replies, “It is. Now, do you mind if we do it in Hawaiian?” Shore and Davis end the act with their rendition of “Hawaiian Wedding Song.” The show concludes with Davis’s explanation to Shore, “When you leave the island, you must throw your lei into the ocean, and if it drifts toward Diamond Head, then you are bound to return someday.” The special Hawaiian episode concludes with a goodbye to its viewers as Dinah thanks the fifty guest performers who have appeared on her show, again underscoring musical collaboration as a gesture of internationalism. The special episode was a success, as several newspapers including Variety reported that the “show succeeded in suggesting the flavor and atmosphere of the 50th state within the confines of the NBC studios in Burbank.” Interestingly, however, Charles K. L. Davis’s performance received a lukewarm response. One reviewer described him as “a legit Hawaiian tenor . . . who did both pops and an operatic aria for solid impact.”73 Despite Narratives of Coexistence  125

Davis’s formal training in classical music, his rendition of popular Hawaiian songs not only undermined his mixed racial heritage but also defied the elite status of musicians trained in classical music. In contrast, Martin Denny’s apparent whiteness in contrast to his racially ambiguous band members was appealing because his performance of exotic music perpetuated the power of whiteness over racial mixing. The review of the episode in which Denny performed noted, “Martin Denny, head of a small combo which has broken through disks, provided an instrumental highlight with its medley of native and jazz motifs combined with a drummer who supplied a colorful array of bird sounds.”74 Among the many Hawaiian performers featured as guests on variety shows, Alfred Apaka was one of the most iconic, as he made numerous appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. On the April 28, 1957, episode, Ed Sullivan introduces Apaka with the following words: “Here from Honolulu, the greatest of Hawaiian singers. That’s a nation that has produced many, the great Alfred Apaka.” Apaka appears onstage dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and performs the song “Akaka Falls” in his native Hawaiian language. While he occupies the foreground, hula dancers in the background dance to the rhythms and tunes of the song. After the act is over, Apaka walks toward the back of the stage, where a hula dancer is seated. He approaches her gently from behind and performs the song “Queen’s Hula.” The racial makeup of the hula dancer is ambivalent, as one is not sure if she is Hawaiian or Caucasian. But after the conclusion of the act, viewers learn that some of the hula dancers are from the Hawaiian Room at the Lexington Hotel.75 Apaka’s first guest appearance on the show features a rendition of a romantic song. His baritone voice projects the strong masculinity embodied in his corporeal body. More interestingly, the pairing of a Hawaiian male entertainer with a hula dancer underscores the logic of dependency that informs the acts of ethnic performers in variety shows. The need to depend on one another for harmonious musical collaboration challenges Hawai‘i’s sovereignty as a nation. In addition, Sullivan’s emphasis on Apaka’s Hawaiian racial markers reinforces Apaka as a foreigner who is yet to become a full-­fledged 126  Beyond the Black and White TV

Fig. 8. Alfred Apaka performs “Queen’s Hula” with hula dancers on the Ed Sullivan Show (April 28, 1957).

American. While Apaka’s code-­switching between Hawaiian and English lyrics reasserts his mixed-­race heritage, it further highlights his markers of racial oddity. Therefore, his musical talents are subsumed under his ethnic markers. Five months later, Apaka appeared again on the Ed Sullivan Show, once more wearing a Hawaiian shirt that asserts his racial and ethnic background. In introducing Apaka to the American audience, Sullivan states, “Right now, we are going to go out the Honolulu way because we brought them in from Hawai‘i. Here is Alfred Apaka, the star of Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village out there, the Crosby of the Islands.” In contrast to his previous appearance, where he sang in both English and Hawaiian, Apaka begins the act singing a popular hapa haole (song about Hawai‘i with English lyrics) called “How to Do the Hula.” Similar to the latunes discussed in the previous chapter, Apaka’s rendition of the hapa haole not only elides markers of his racial oddity but also carries markers of integration as a Hawaiian performer. After his solo Narratives of Coexistence  127

act ends, Apaka is paired with Nalani, a Hawaiian hula dancer, and they perform the song “Mapuana” together. This pairing subsumes Apaka’s racial extraordinariness as a mixed-­race performer of Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese ancestry under Nalani’s Hawaiian orientalism, exoticism, and nativity. After Alfred Apaka’s unexpected death in 1960, Charles K. L. Davis supplanted him as the new iconic figure of Hawaiian music through his guest appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. In June 1960, Davis appeared with Haleloke Kahauolopua, a Hawaiian hula dancer, in a special episode produced to salute the statehood of Hawai‘i, featuring performers Momi Kai and the Hal Aloma Trio. The first act begins with Haleloke’s performance of the popular song “Blue Hawai‘i.” Haleloke was a famous Hawaiian dancer known for her improvised renditions of island songs who frequently appeared on the popular radio show Hawaii Calls and was given a role as a solo vocalist on the show in 1949.76 On October 8, 1950, she made her debut on Arthur Godfrey’s show and sang “Blue Hawai‘i.”77 On the Ed Sullivan Show, Haleloke is dressed as a hula dancer wearing leis and a hibiscus flower in her hair. As she dances in front of the stage, the camera captures the Hal Aloma Trio playing their instruments in the background. As Haleloke is performing the song, Davis suddenly appears in the background, giving the impression that he is about to join the act. After the conclusion of the act, Momi Kai sings “How to Do the Hula” while Davis stands next to Haleloke in the background, waiting his turn to perform, which further projects an image of unification between the two entertainers. Further, similar to earlier performances of Hawaiian enter­ tainers, the act pairs Davis with two female dancers whose race and ethnicity remain ambiguous. While Davis does not perform with either dancer, he stands out among them not only because of his off-­whiteness but also due to his dark suit compared to their light-­ colored dresses. More significantly, Davis’s gaze moves up and down Momi Kai’s body as she performs the song in a high-­slit dress, and his brief, intermittent smiles captured on camera transforms him into a spectator and evokes the white male gaze of a tourist who finds pleasure in watching the performances of Hawaiian female 128  Beyond the Black and White TV

Fig. 9. Charles K. L. Davis watches Momi Kai perform “How to Do the Hula” on the Ed Sullivan Show ( June 19, 1960).

dancers with their sexual, exotic, and native appeal. The Ed Sullivan Show also presented Momi Kai as a wholly authentic Hawaiian even though she was haole and Japanese because the Asian race was seen as a threat to the Caucasian race and Polynesian ethnicity on the islands.78 Therefore, while U.S. entertainment programming, particularly variety shows, featured Hawaiian performers to circulate mythical narratives of racial unity, television’s preferential treatment of Davis, an off-­white performer, illustrates the United States’ continuous investment in whiteness while suppressing the visible markers of Hawaiian ethnic identity—­further using hula skirts and dances for amusement and entertainment purposes. Coinciding with the popularization of Hawaiian music on the mainland, a number of Hawaiian performers became cultural ambassadors who would participate in U.S. diplomatic efforts during the Cold War. For example, in 1962, Davis joined Ed Sullivan and Rise Steves, an American soprano star, on the Ed Sullivan Show’s tour of the Soviet Union. In the show, Davis is dressed in a suit and performs Narratives of Coexistence  129

“The One” (a Hawaiian song). While Apaka was more appealing to populist listeners and audiences, Davis’s performative style had its roots in classical music training. Davis attended the Julliard School of Music in New York City and was the first Hawaiian to win the Metropolitan Opera audition. His sleek look and elite status as a musician appealed to the Soviet audience. The elite Soviets tried to promote classical music on television, disguising the fact, as James Schwoch has shown, that the Soviet masses were increasingly showing a proclivity toward popular music, especially jazz music by Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Oscar Peterson.79 Emulating an opera tenor, Davis performed the song with a stand-­up microphone, subsuming his unusual Hawaiian traits. The New York Post wrote, “Someone to hear, someone to watch, someone to remember is this young American whose lyric tenor voice of beautiful quality and vibrant fresh vocalism has marked him as an outstanding young star in the ranks of bel canto tenors.”80 While Davis often performed hapa haole songs on television, the review notes that Davis’s training in classical music and his elite status as a tenor prompted him to become “American” despite his Hawaiian heritage. And the color of his off-­white skin also helped him successfully cross racial boundaries. The episode was a clear testament to how the intertwinement of race and music would become a cultural asset to the United States in its battle against the Soviet Union for global power.

Don Ho and the Rise of a Hawaiian Star However, no other Hawaiian performers can match the fame and popularity of Don Ho, who rose to stardom in the late 1960s. He was considered one of the top entertainers in Hawai‘i, earning $25,000 per week at the height of his fame.81 Ho began his career as a pilot for the Armed Forces. After returning to Hawai‘i, he pursued a career in singing, and his song “Tiny Bubbles” catapulted him to international stardom. Ho embodied all the qualities that the United States government wanted in a racial performer. His service in the U.S. military was a sign of his loyalty and patriotism. Further, many journalists and newspapers characterized him as 130  Beyond the Black and White TV

charming, likable, and good-­looking. But while these traits made him more suitable to the medium of television as both an ordinary and intimate figure, his multiethnicity led him to become one of the most publicized and celebrated cultural icons of Hawai‘i. Indeed, Ho’s multiracial background made him more palatable to white audiences. In a posthumous 2007 New York Times article assessing Don Ho’s career, Nate Chinen wrote, “[Don Ho] had an ethnic background worthy of the islands’ melting-­pot ideal: he was of Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch and American descent.”82 Ho simultaneously embodied the amalgamation of different races and the reconciliation of Hawai‘i and the United States after Pearl Harbor. Ho’s television persona as a performer and his background as a former army officer helped reinforce America’s rhetoric of democracy and freedom during the Cold War. Ho also positioned himself as a patriotic American when he recorded a cover of the song “This Is America.” Ho donated the royalties of the song to Radio Free Europe and sent a letter to President Nixon in which he wrote, “Fortunately for my beloved State, Hawaii (the last outpost in America where the minority is the majority), most of the adverse political infractions unfortunately associated with the rest of the country do not fully affect us Hawaiians.”83 Ho also sent copies of his single “This Is America” to Nixon, Vice President Agnew, and Hawai‘i Senators Inouye and Fong, asking for public endorsement of the song. Ho’s strong personal attachment to the state of Hawai‘i and his assertion of his American pride and identity is further evident in this proclamation: “As a petitioner or as a defendant in the world-­wide political arena, certainly no state in the country has been and is more patriotic than the state of Hawaii. It is with respect to the foregoing that I have always tried in my own humble way to promulgate this ideal.”84 Ho’s statement is a testament to how the rhetoric surrounding Hawai‘i’s allegiance to the mainland would inform his performances. Ho’s first major television break came with the endorsement from Nancy Sinatra, landing him the opportunity to perform at the Coconut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Narratives of Coexistence  131

Angeles. The hotel was the perfect venue to showcase Ho’s talents because it was considered a hot spot for Hollywood celebrities. After his successful engagements at the Coconut Grove, the Singer Company presented a one-­hour special on NBC titled Hawaii Ho! in 1968 solely featuring Don Ho. The network also took a significant risk by investing $1.75 million into the production of the show in which a helicopter carries Ho in a gondola just like a hot air balloon ride around the islands of Hawai‘i. The aerial views of the islands regarded the territory as inclusive in the myth of the new frontier discourse. The program was a huge success and catapulted Ho into national stardom. His next big break came with Hawaii Ho!, which would eventually lead him to numerous appearances on national television, including the Mike Douglas Show, Laugh In, and the Andy Williams Show.85 In 1969, the Kraft Music Hall devoted five special episodes to Don Ho and the state of Hawai‘i. The segments captured the islands’ stunning landscape and featured many talented local performers. In the first episode, Ho is seen walking with children while he is singing. The children are waving American flags to commemorate the Fourth of July. After the commercial break, a shot depicting the breathtaking scenery of Hawai‘i is followed by a shot of Ho sitting on a couch. He then says, “For those who have been to Hawai‘i, you’ll find it very relaxing; you’ll find beautiful sights in Hawai‘i.” Ho, as a cultural ambassador of Hawaiian tourism, personified the reinvigoration of masculinity in the wake of the Vietnam War, as Hawai‘i operated as a staging area for military training and exercises in the 1960s.86 Further, as Verdanette Vicuña Gonzalez has argued, tourism not only undermined the violence of U.S. colonialism but also ratified “masculinized and militarized desires for security” that continued to validate U.S. imperialism in the Asia-­ Pacific.87 Thus Ho’s popularity on the mainland might have been connected to the U.S. government’s need to suppress and alleviate Ho Chi Minh’s military and Communist threat during the Vietnam War. Nonetheless, Ho’s romantic performances were primarily tailored to women as a means to simultaneously masculinize

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and feminize the state as well as obscure the history of U.S. imperialism and violence on the islands. The first guest of the Kraft Music Hall is Carol Lawrence, who appears in front of the beautiful scenery of a Hawaiian beach. The long shots accentuate the stunning visual imagery of Hawai‘i. After her performance, Don Ho engages in a conversation with Carol in which she mentions that it was raining in Hawai‘i when she arrived three days ago. Ho responds, “It must have been before Hawai‘i became a state. Congress doesn’t allow it to happen.” They start to walk and perform the song “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” The interchange of dialogue between an islander and a mainlander again illuminates coexistence as a logic of variety show performances and further underscores the harmonious interracial interactions that their act espouses. Not only do they sing a song together, but it is also Ho’s suave and romantic charm that can appease this female mainlander. The act ends romantically with a kiss. In the next act, Ho’s son Dwight (who was named after President Dwight D. Eisenhower) is introduced to the audience. Ho explains that Dwight has great knowledge of American history. Ho later appears in front of the camera surrounded by Hawaiian children. They perform the song “Hey, Jude” together. Ho comments, “Hawaiians got rhythm.” Ho and the children’s rendition of “Hey, Jude” claims Hawai‘i’s complicated history as it relates to the British explorer Captain James Cook. The act also hints at the identity struggle that this new generation of Hawaiian children must face by inhabiting a state of racial amplifications and contradictions. After subsequent performances by other entertainers, including Angel Pablo and Bill Dana, the first episode of the program ends with the song “I’ll Remember You” performed by Robbie Wilson. As this episode illustrates, Ho’s television persona constructed him as fond of children. The appearance of children reinforces Naoko Shibusawa’s argument about the cultural imagery of Japan and its shifting relationship with the United States since World

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Fig. 10. Don Ho performs with children on the Kraft Music Hall in 1969. Courtesy of the Donald Tai Loy Ho Trust.

War  II. Shibusawa argues that one of the strategies the United States used to depict Japan as a new ally after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was the dissemination of the figure of a child who portrayed Japan’s dependency on the United States.88 The trope of a child in Don Ho’s programs constructs Hawaiians as allies and showcases their need to depend on the United States to grow and mature into “Americans” as members of the newly recognized state. The use of children in the Kraft Music Hall not only aligns Hawai‘i with innocence and purity but also promulgates it into a U.S. state that is always in need of guidance—­again projecting U.S. military power and hegemonic aspirations under the disguise of internationalism. In the next episode of the Kraft Music Hall, the show opens with a side view of Ho’s face superimposed over a landscape image of Hawai‘i. The juxtaposition of Ho and Hawai‘i not only highlights their intimate cultural connection but again projects Ho as a cultural ambassador. Ho is next seen walking down a creek where 134  Beyond the Black and White TV

he again discovers children playing. His interaction with children makes his character more charming and affable and further constructs Hawai‘i as a land where different racial and ethnic groups and generations can intermingle and coexist in harmony. The next act features Bobby Goldsboro, who is depicted wandering alone on a plantation. Ho appears in an automobile and asks Bobby if he wants a lift; Ho explains how one can tell someone is a tourist. Goldsboro responds, “You are a country boy from Hawai‘i.” Ho replies that because of his engagements in various nightclubs on the mainland, he doesn’t feel like a country boy. The act concludes with Goldsboro and Ho singing “I’m Going to Be a Country Boy Again” together as they drive along. Again, the exchange between a Hawaiian and a white tourist underscores Hawai‘i as a contact zone where cultural understanding can be achieved. In the following act, Ho performs the famous song “What a Wonderful World” with his son Dwight as a sunset glows in the background. The episode concludes with Ho singing “I’ll Remember You,” evoking cherished memories in American tourists and instilling a sense of nostalgia for them to return to the islands in the future. While the first two episodes did not explicitly single out race, the third features a standup comedy act by Tom Cooper, who is introduced as originating from Brooklyn. Cooper jokes about his experience growing up in an integrated community where western, eastern, northern, and southern Italians and Chinese all intermingled. He also jests that about 90  percent of Puerto Ricans live in New York and comments that all Spanish people are trying to entertain American people on television. He concludes the act by impersonating a Latino and speaking in Spanish. Cooper’s remark about Puerto Ricans in New York alludes to the Nuyorican movement and the popularity of the boogaloo, which was a fusion of Afro-­Cuban music with “the vernacular, blues, and gospel-­based African American music.”89 It is interesting that the proceeding act is Angel Pablo’s performance of the song “We Are Hawai‘i.” Apparently, the song aims to differentiate Hawai‘i from New York and asserts its distinctive identity as a racial and ethnic paradise in the absence of blacks. The episode ends with the song “I’ll Narratives of Coexistence  135

Remember You” followed by Ho’s farewell remark, “Aloha, good night.” In the fourth installment of the series, Ho opens the show with the song “Welcome to My World.” Again, children surround him, engaging playfully in beach activities as he performs the song. Ho introduces the next guest, Peter Niro, who plays the piano as the waves of the ocean sweep onto his feet. Niro proposes to play the song “It’s a Rainy Day,” but Ho responds, “Don’t let the Chamber of Commerce in Hawai‘i hear about it.” Ho’s interjections illustrate the show’s use of touristic ideologies to underscore globalism. The final episode opens with Ho on a tiny piece of land drifting in the ocean. Ho explains how he has learned to host a show. He introduces the next guest, the Everly Brothers. As they walk down a road, they perform a song, again using the trope of a tourist and a traveler to construct an image of Hawai‘i as a racial paradise. After performances by Angel Pablo and Robin Wilson, all the guests appear onstage and sing, “Let the Sun Shine.” The concluding act not only affirms the narrative of racial coexistence embedded in the show but also reestablishes the United States as an empire of racial equality and freedom contingent on the exclusion and dispossession of African Americans. However, Hawai‘i as a site of entertainment production has faded from the popular consciousness of Americans because of its inability to produce stars to follow Alfred Apaka and Don Ho. Ho’s daughter Hoku attempted to follow in her father’s footsteps and pursued a career in music, but after tensions with her record label and because of her strong religious convictions, her short career ended abruptly. More importantly, she did not possess the exotic and ambiguous racial traits of her father. After Hoku’s disappearance from the music scene, no other star has been able to reintegrate Hawai‘i into the U.S. national imaginary. In recent years, Hawai‘i has only been used as a locale in films and television programs such as Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), The Descendants (2011), Lost (2004–­2010), and Hawaii Five-­O (2010–­present).

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With the development of new attractive tourist sites around the globe and the mass migration of people across the U.S. border, Hawai‘i no longer occupies a unique place in the hearts of Americans. In a way, the insignificance of Hawai‘i as a crucial U.S. geopolitical site is a further testament to Hawai‘i’s successful integration into the mainland. Further, with the end of the Vietnam War, Hawai‘i no longer needed to be at the center of U.S. attention in order to assuage the fears, instability, and violence engendered by the war. As this chapter has illustrated, Hawai‘i evolved into a significant geopolitical site of U.S. Cold War racial logics and cultural internationalism. It was also envisioned as a transpacific conduit serving the interests of the United States as a gateway to the Asia-­ Pacific. More significantly, Hawaiian music, tourism, and real estate development all converged in the variety show genre, which disseminated narratives of racial coexistence in which Hawai‘i was unified with the mainland yet dependent on the United States.

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Epilogue

On March  28, 1971, the last episode of the Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast after more than two decades of entertaining American families. The cancelation of the long-­enduring program marked the end of the variety show as a distinctive genre in American television history. The variety show, often considered quintessentially American for its emphasis on pluralism, has evolved into diverse forms and formats across the globe. Hence it is not a coincidence that one of the longest-­running programs in the world was the Spanish-­ language variety show Sábado Gigante on Univision. Sábado Gigante was initially broadcast in black and white on a local Chilean station in 1962 under the title Show Dominical. In 2012, the program celebrated its fiftieth anniversary and was eventually canceled in 2015 after fifty-­three years on the air. Despite the program’s longevity, what was more remarkable was the fact that the show had only one host—­its creator, Mario Kreutzberger (known by the stage name of Don Francisco)—­throughout its entire broadcasting history. Sábado Gigante’s transformation from a local Chilean television show into a transnational Spanish-­language program produced in Miami points to the variety show’s lasting impact on the shifting topography of global media production. More significantly, similar to the Ed Sullivan Show, Sábado Gigante was the embodiment of television talent, as it showcased an eclectic number of Latin American artists and celebrities to the Hispanic audience in the United States and the rest of the world. The global reach of the show was more apparent in 2015, when President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama created a video to congratulate Kreutzberger on

138

his remarkable career. In the video, which was played to the audience on Sábado Gigante, the president and first lady state how the show had been an essential part of the cultural life of the United States. That same year, Hillary Clinton also recorded a short video praising Kreutzberger. These messages from U.S. politicians underscore not only the cultural impact of the program but how the variety show as a genre has made important contributions to internationalism and race relations. Despite the demise of the variety show as a vehicle to circulate geopolitical knowledge, there have been other noticeable attempts to showcase ethnic spectacle since 1960. Instead of featuring ethnic entertainers as guests, the U.S. commercial television industry at both the national and local level became more invested in collaborative projects with the global TV industry. For example, Renny Ottolina began his TV career at RCTV in 1955, and under the auspices of McCann-­Erickson, an advertising agency, he visited the United States to observe the work of Dave Garroway, the famous host of Today (National Broadcasting Company [NBC], 1952–­1961). Upon returning to Venezuela in 1958, Ottolina started his own variety program, El Show de Renny, which catapulted him to stardom. El Show de  Renny became one of the most popular and successful TV shows in the history of Venezuelan television. As a result, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) signed Ottolina for $4 million to host his own variety show in the United States for seven years.1 The American program was titled Renny’s Show, and it debuted on ABC on April 11, 1960. The daily variety show aired from 11:30  a.m. to 12:00  p.m. In promoting the new program, ABC publicized that Ottolina had traveled all over the world and that he had mastered English, Spanish, French, and Italian, constructing him as both an internationalist and a cosmopolitan itinerant.2 The premiere episode featured the general counsel of Venezuela, singer Sandy Stewart, and journalist Elaine Shepard. Despite the appearances of prominent guests, the show did not resonate with the American audience. Critics commented on Ottolina’s

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uncharismatic performance, mainly citing his unpolished hosting skills, thick Spanish accent, and the manner in which he introduced the commercials throughout the program.3 On the contrary, La Prensa, the U.S. Spanish-­language newspaper, praised Ottolina for his humor and witty commentaries. La Prensa further commented on his mastery of English: “Renny’s performance is strictly in English, a language he has perfected.”4 Notwithstanding Americans’ strong dislike of Ottolina’s foreignness, ABC rescheduled the program from the morning to the night slot, broadcasting it from 11:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. As a late-­night variety show, it competed against the Tonight Show (NBC, 1957–­1962). After a four-­month stint on the network, Renny’s Show was finally canceled. While the real motivations behind ABC’s decision to bring in a foreign TV personality remain somewhat of a mystery, Ottolina’s example was a testament to American television’s efforts to enter the profitable Latin American TV market. Therefore, when Ottolina returned to his home country, he was appointed as the general manager of a new station that ABC had invested in Venezuela, raising further suspicion of ABC’s hidden political agenda. In the same year at the local level, KTRK-­TV, an ABC affiliate station in Houston, Texas, produced ten two-­hour special episodes of the Howard Finch Show dedicated to Mexico. As an initially produced morning variety program airing on Fridays from 8:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., the episodes filmed in Mexico deployed tourism as their key thematic motif to introduce viewers to the popular attractions of Mexico, such as Chapultepec Castle and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. While there are no extant copies of the program available (except for an edited version submitted in consideration for the Peabody Awards), surviving descriptions tell us that these special episodes of the Howard Finch Show also featured talented performers, including flamenco singers and guitarists, heel-­stomping dancers, and the young Mexican beauty Lucía Moreno. The producers envisioned these episodes as variety shows that could play an instrumental role in forging new diplomatic ties between the state of Texas and its border-­sharing neighbor Mexico. In introducing the program to its Houston 140  Beyond the Black and White TV

viewers, host Howard Finch says, “And here on Channel 13, television can become a vital force in promoting that basic international understanding and amity. What better place to begin then a project which would show Mexico City, one of the great cities of the world to our people in the Houston area?” More significantly, the program was an outcome of a joint partnership between the United States and Mexico, catering to audiences in two nations that spoke different languages. Telesistema Mexicano provided the Houston network with a studio of two mobile units as well as videotape machines and personnel as a sign of cultural diplomacy. And the scripts of the program were written in both English and Spanish. Moreover, in reading the letters exchanged between U.S. and Mexican officials regarding the show’s production, the collaboration was not considered a one-­time television event; instead, it was just the beginning of more foreseeable television projects between the United States and Latin America.5 Coinciding with the growing popularity of the variety show outside of the United States, Latin American nations began forging new partnerships with the U.S. television industry. On September  13, 1969, Mexico premiered a new musical variety show titled Siempre en domingo. It became a popular and commercially successful international variety show, reaching as many as 420 million viewers extending beyond Mexico to Europe, Asia, and the United States. The mastermind behind the show’s success was its iconic host, Raúl Velasco. According to Billboard, “Velasco in his heyday could single-­handedly launch an act, with his influence extending into the United States and through Latin America.” Velasco drew many comparisons to Ed Sullivan for his uncanny ability to attract talent from different continents. The show became a primary destination for “Latin acts with international aspirations and for international acts with Latin American ambitions.”6 Similar to the Ed Sullivan Show, Siempre en domingo was a media event, with twenty million viewers tuning in every Sunday night. Velasco had global aspirations for his Spanish-­language television show. In 1971, he initiated an effort to film a special episode in Epilogue 141

Las Vegas. The premise was that two Mexican emcees (male and female) would travel to Las Vegas, tour the city, and participate in conversations with the American public on famous entertainers while spotlighting famous tourist sites, such as the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. Velasco wanted to shoot in Las Vegas rather than New York or Los Angeles because the city had emerged as the new entertainment mecca of the world. Two years earlier, the Ed Sullivan Show had broadcast its show live and in color from the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino to commemorate the newly built entertainment center in Las Vegas.7 This was publicized as an extravagant spectacle for the city of Las Vegas, but more importantly, it installed the city into the U.S. televisual imaginary. Specifically, the development of Las Vegas in the 1970s coincided with Mexicans’ growing interest and investment in international tourism. A letter exchanged between Al Freeman, director of advertising and promotion for the Sands Hotel, and Rafael Matute, president of Matu-­TV, explained that the decision to film the special episode in Las Vegas was based on studies that concluded that the preferred tourist destination for Mexicans was the United States. Although the ninety-­minute special of Siempre en domingo was originally slated to broadcast on November 20, 1972, the episode never materialized due to financial constraints. The special show would have cost the Mexican TV station approximately $100,000 because of its overambitious plan to feature top-­ notch Las Vegas entertainers like Sammy Davis Jr., the Supremes, Debbie Reynolds, Sonny King, and Edi Domingo.8 Despite the growing significance of Las Vegas as a supplier of ethnic talent to the television industry, the city undertook far more active measures in the 1970s to promote itself as the primary destination for film and television production. In an article published in Now Magazine titled “Las Vegas: The New Mecca for the Moviemakers,” the promotional slogan stated, “Las Vegas is fast becoming a second mecca for Hollywood’s movie makers who find Las Vegas smog-­free climate and glamorous surroundings ideal for filming.”9 Additionally, R.  E. “Bud” Murphy, then vice

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president of programming for Trans-­American Video, publicized that Nevada’s excellent sunny weather would make the city ideal for both television and motion pictures.10 Indeed, Las Vegas enjoyed a vibrant TV production in the 1970s, when the networks began filming episodes of popular shows such as Starsky & Hutch, Switch, the Sammy Davis Show, the Dinah Shore Show, Jerry Vale’s World, and Muriel Stevens’s cooking shows. And the Department of Economic Development further publicized the state of Nevada to Hollywood with a twelve-­page pamphlet titled “We’re Right Next Door.” The pamphlet featured vivid color images with descriptions of diverse location sites available for filming in Nevada—­deserts, mountains, lakes, and props, including livestock, wranglers, stagecoaches, and ghost towns. The booklet included a section on entertainment that highlighted how “Las Vegas has become popular with television producers who have taped numerous ‘specials,’ talk shows and situation comedies in main showrooms of the hotels, and on location in the surrounding desert.”11 By the end of the 1970s, Las Vegas had evolved into a space of racial liberalism as well as an important site of television production. At the same time, U.S. commercial television continued to advertise Hawai‘i as a racial paradise. Instead of featuring Hawaiian performers and hula dancers as guests, the TV industry took a step further when it produced a variety show with Don Ho as the host. In 1976, when Fred Silverman, an executive at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network, moved to ABC, he decided to produce a show named after Don Ho. Michael Brockman, then daytime programming chief at ABC, decided to pursue the project because he wanted to create something new besides serials and game shows. He explained that he wanted to pursue the project because of “its good-­looking host, its ongoing ‘family’ of performers (a la Arthur Godfrey) and its beautiful scenery.”12 The network signed Ho for thirteen weeks and produced the first episode of the Don Ho Show, which was considered the most expensive daytime program ever produced by ABC. The beachfront Ocean

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Terrace Room of the Cinerama Reef Hotel was converted into a television studio. Brad Lachman commented on the aim of the program: “We’ll capture the crazy Don Ho. And the beauty of Hawaii. And the sexy Don Ho. Whatever happens, we’ll capture.”13 It was an extravagant television production for an ethnic performer who did not have a proven track record of success in television except that he was popular among tourists and mainlanders who enjoyed his music. Bob Banner, the producer of the show, also commented on Ho’s appeal: “He’s unique, he’s been growing as a performer, he’s well-­suited for TV, and he knows how to have fun with an audience. Doing it here makes it all more exciting.”14 While Ho is known for popularizing the Hawaiian music culture on the mainland, many local Hawaiians considered his music too commercialized, catering to the tastes of white consumer culture. While acknowledging the positive impact tourism had on the development of Hawaiian music, George Kanahele of the Hawaiian Foundation did not hesitate to label Ho’s music as commercially driven.15 But for Ho, this was not only a job but also an opportunity to change his reputation in the community. “I’ve had a bad reputation,” Ho explained. “Maybe the show will change some things.” He further added, “Sure, TV can make you, but it can also eat you and spit you out. Look at Tom Jones, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell. I don’t want to fall in the category of overexposure.”16 Despite ABC’s firm belief in the show, the premiere episode received a lukewarm reception. Wayne Harada of the Honolulu Advertiser noted that the show was promising but lacked star celebrities as guests. He noted that the program “captured the essence of Ho’s personality—­his easy going [sic] unpredictability, his somewhat unbridled candor—­as well as the proven appeal of the Islands: Its handsome cosmopolitan blend, its scenic splendors.”17 The October  1, 1976, episode of the Don Ho Show opens with Sam Kapu’s voice-­over and the following introduction: “From the beach at Waikiki, the Don Ho Show with Don and his gang—­And now, here’s Don.” Don then makes his entrance to the

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stage and asks a woman in the audience, “First time in Hawai‘i? You ever kiss a Hawaiian before?” He continues, “On second thought, I’d better not. I don’t want to spoil you for all these mainlanders.”18 This act continues to construct Ho’s TV persona as an exotic ethnic figure who uses his charm and sex appeal to entice audiences, particularly women. What stands out about Ho is that his physical looks along with his interactive performance with the audience not only underscore contradictions dwelling in Hawai‘i but also help undermine Hawai‘i’s feminized image. Nevertheless, in contrast to previous representations of Hawai‘i that were firmly grounded in exoticism and Orientalism, Ho’s masculine charm and romanticism made Hawai‘i more appealing to women. Thus American viewers began to identify with Ho and see him as one of their own, which helped them develop a sense of personal connection to Hawai‘i. As Phil Solomon of the Fabulous Las Vegas magazine wrote in 1971, “The feeling of closeness to those he entertained is what made him [Don Ho] the most unique phenomenon in show business today.”19 As a variety show set in Hawai‘i, many viewers would have expected the episodes to feature a wide array of Hawaiian musical genres. For example, in the September 29, 1976, episode featuring Connie Stevens, the star of Hawaiian Eye, Ho asks her, “How has [Hawai‘i] changed? Hawaiian Eye was all over the world, wasn’t it?” After the brief conversation, Stevens and Ho perform “Hawaiian Wedding Song” together. The episode concludes with Don Ho’s rendition of “Hawai‘i’s Calling,” which continues to reinforce Hawai‘i as a paradise, bolstered by words such as dreams, happiness, and smiles.20 While this was the image of Hawai‘i that was most visible and apparent to mainstream U.S. viewers, the specter of the Cold War in the form of Communism, militarism, and a potential nuclear war continued to haunt the islands. For example, a documentary film titled Hawaii at Work (ca. 1960) explored how tourism and militarism continued to operate as dominant industries on the islands. More significantly, even today, Hawai‘i continues to be the location of the world’s largest international maritime exercise, Rim of the Pacific

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Exercise (RIMPAC), which began in 1971.21 The thirty-­seven-­day military training exercise involving twenty-­five nations has received little media attention in the United States, indicating how commercial television continues to operate under the disguise of U.S. political interests. Nonetheless, local Hawaiians have used documentary aesthetics to detail the protests and activist works that have taken place to try to stop RIMPAC. For instance, the video RIMPAC ’82 contains a compilation of footage documenting the Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana’s 1982 campaign, including the bombing of Kaho‘olawe Island as part of the military exercise. Additionally, in 1982, a documentary titled Puhipau produced for Physicians for Social Responsibility addressed the medical and social effects of a possible nuclear attack on the island of Oahu. These films offered a stark and contrasting depiction of Hawai‘i—­presenting images that were very different from those found in variety shows from 1950 to 1970. The examples discussed here not only explain the demise of the variety show as a crucial geopolitical genre for the United States but also illustrate how the United States continues to utilize television to forge international relations through talent exchange and direct investment in foreign productions and markets as a way to exercise its political and cultural power. While the variety show in the Cold War era was strictly about showcasing ethnic talent, in the contemporary landscape, the variety show has evolved into competition programs where ethnic contestants become token participants to highlight diversity as an essential part of the fabric of U.S. society and entertainment. While the programs adhere to the growing rhetoric of colorblindness and postrace, they are still firmly invested in foregrounding different manifestations of whiteness that underscore ethnic excess via accents and typologies. Despite producers’ attempts to conform to political correctness as well as capitalize on the commercial viability of ethnic markets and audiences, U.S. television still operates without deep concern for cultural specificity and nuanced racial and ethnic representations. Hence ethnic performers in variety shows during the Cold War and in contemporary television have to navigate an industry 146  Beyond the Black and White TV

that entraps them as extraordinary but not yet ordinary Americans through racialized talent. Therefore, exploring the role of race and ethnicity in U.S. television history during the cultural Cold War helps us understand how commercial programming is deeply imbedded in racial and gendered ideologies that structure how the world interprets and understands the United States through the lens of ethnic spectacle.

Epilogue 147

Acknowledgments

This book is a culmination of my research and writing from the past decade. It would not have been possible without the support, encouragement, and assistance of many individuals along the way, including archivists, colleagues, mentors, friends, and family. The idea for this project was first conceived when I was a graduate student in the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. I am greatly indebted to my advisor, Anna McCarthy, whose mentorship and encouragement have led me to where I am now. To my committee members—­Robert Stam, Susan Murray, Jack Tchen, and Alexandra Vazquez—­I not only aspire to be like you, but your commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship has shaped my own work in many ways. I am also indebted to Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, who have taught me so much about academic life and what it means to find one’s voice as a writer. I hope they can find traces of their work in this book. I never imagined that I would write a book about the history of U.S. television during the Cold War. This project began out of my simple personal curiosity to research the first Korean American who appeared on American television. The search for this answer led me to discover the Kim Sisters through trips to many archives around the country. I am deeply grateful to have met Sue Kim Bonifazio, a member of the Kim Sisters, and her husband, John Bonifazio, who encouraged Sue to respond to my inquiry letter. Sue not only shared her enthusiasm for the project but also invited me with open arms to her home, family, and life in Las Vegas, sharing with me many memories and anecdotes. 149

Her inspirational story as a Korean American navigating the American media industry since the late 1950s was the reason I never gave up on this project despite moments of strong doubt. Her enduring friendship continues to be a source of inspiration in my life. I want to thank the following archivists, curators, librarians, and personal collectors for their research guidance and assistance: Ruta Abolins, Tisha Aragaki, Jim Carricaburu, Su Kim Chung, Fuller French, Phil Gries, Ron Hashiro, Pamela Ho-­Wong, Myoung-­ja Lee Kwon, Mary Linnemann, Koa Luke, Robert Omura, William Pasternak, Janel Quirante, Louise Storm, Josie Walters-­Johnston, and the late Marvette Pérez. I also want to thank Jinsoo An, Nate Brennan, Sylvia Chong, Keith Corson, William Cumpiano, Theodore Gonzalves, Alex Kupfer, Veena Hariharan, David James, Michelle Kelley, Akira Lippit, Aaron Magnan-­Park, Madhavi Mallapragada, Gilbert Martines, Anne Misawa, Linde Murugan, Horace Newcomb, Konrad Ng, Vaneeta Palecanda, Intan Paramaditha, Sueyoung Park-­ Primiano, John Rosa, Anastasia Saverino, David Schwartz, Ellen Seiter, Theodor Solis, Ricardo Trimillos, Claytee White, John Williams-­Searle, and Mark Wolf. Chera Kee deserves special recognition for reading drafts of the chapters and especially for her generous friendship since our time together as graduate students at USC. I would also like to thank my undergraduate research assistant Susan Fanelli for her help with research on Las Vegas and Hawai‘i. The research for this project was made possible by generous grants and fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the Council for Media and Culture at NYU, the UNLV Center for Gaming Research, the George Foster Peabody Archives at the University of Georgia, and the Center for Citizenship, Race, and Ethnicity Studies (CREST) at the College of Saint Rose. The Carol S. Levin Research Grant and the COR Research Fellowship from Tulane University made it possible for me to do follow-­up research in Hawai‘i and Las Vegas. An abbreviated version of chapter 2 was published as “Transpacific Talent: The Kim Sisters in Cold America” in the summer 2018 issue of Pacific Historical Review. The book came to its final form when I arrived at Tulane University. I have found a home in the Department of Communication. I 150 Acknowledgments

would like to thank my departmental colleagues Mohan Ambikaipaker, Connie Balides, Krystal Clearly, Ana López, Vicki Mayer, Esra Özcan, Mauro Porto, Michele White, Ferruh Yilmaz, and the late Frank Ukadike for fostering the best intellectual atmosphere for interdisciplinary research in media and cultural studies that one can ask for. I am particularly grateful to my junior cohorts—­Laura-­Zoë Humphreys and Eric Herhuth—­for pushing me to understand the broader stakes of this project and for our conversations about academic life that relieved me from the stress of navigating the tenure-­track position. I am also grateful to have worked with Lisa Banning, my editor, at Rutgers University Press. She oversaw this project with enthusiasm from the beginning. But more importantly, she helped me stay on top of deadlines and guided me through the different phases of book publishing as a first-­time author. Thank you also to the two reviewers whose insightful comments and sharp criticisms strengthened the arguments of the book. Finally, I owe deep gratitude to my parents for their love and support during my graduate studies and the difficult period when I was confronted with the harsh realities of the academic job market. My brother Jimmy has read every word of this book, always pushing me to write more clearly and thus making me a better writer. Thank you to my in-­laws for welcoming me into their family as their son. Last but not least, I am blessed to have Jiana as my life partner. Her unwavering and unconditional love and her belief in me has made me a better person and father today. And our son Aaron has taught me that there are more precious moments in life than research, writing, and teaching. He continues to be a source of joy and laughter. This book is dedicated to my family.

Acknowledgments 151

Notes

Introduction 1. For more discussion on the civil rights and the Cold War, see Mary L.

Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).

2. For more discussion on Sakamoto Kyu, see Michael K. Bourdaghs, Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

3. L. D. Mallory to John P. McKnight, September 6, 1960, CDF 60–­63,

box 1054, folder 511.204/9-­660 (1960–­1963), Central Files, RG 59 Records of the Department of State, National Archives, College Park, Md.

4. Ibid.

5. Sasha Torres, Black, White, and in Color: Television and Black Civil Rights (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 13.

6. Ibid., 15.

7. Ibid., 14. 8. Ibid.

9. For more discussion, see Murray Forman, “Employment and Blue

Pencils: NBC, Race, and Representation, 1926–­1955,” in NBC: America’s

Network, ed. Michael Henry and Michele Hilmes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 117–­134.

10. See Robert Pondillo, America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of

NBC’s Stockton Helffrich (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010).

11. Forman, “Employment and Blue Pencils,” 129.

153

12. These numbers are based on my research from David Inman, Television Variety Shows: Histories and Episode Guides to 57 Programs ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006).

13. Murray Forman, “‘One Night on TV Is Worth Weeks at the Para-

mount’: Musicians and Opportunity in Early Television, 1948–­1955,” Popular Music 21, no. 3 (2002): 249–­276.

14. Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-­Smith (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 12.

15. Ibid.

16. Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 26.

17. Mi-­Hea Cho and Soo K. Kang, “Past, Present, and Future of Tourism

Education: The South Korean Case,” in Global Tourism Higher Education: Past, Present, and Future, ed. Cathy H. C. Hsu (New York: Haworth Hospitality Press, 2005), 227.

18. Jodi Kim, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 6.

19. “Actually Invite Two Soviet Agents,” Honolulu Star-­Bulletin, July 6, 1953, quoted in Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1968), 387.

20. Kim, Ends of Empire, 3.

21. Hyunjoon Shin, “The Stage and the Dance Floor: A History of ‘Live

Music’ in Korea,” in Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music, ed. Hyunjoon Shin and Seung-­Ah Lee (New York: Routledge, 2017), 16.

22. Ibid., 1.

23. Yeidy M. Rivero, Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950–­1960 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015), 80.

24. Ibid., 93.

25. Ibid., 136.

26. Clair Jean Kim, “The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans,” Politics and Society 27, no. 1 (March 1999): 106.

27. Sueyoung Park-­Primiano, “The American Forces Korea Network:

‘Bringing Troops a Touch of Home,’” in American Militarism on the

Small Screen, ed. Anna Froula and Stacy Takacs (New York: Routledge, 2016), 116.

28. Ibid., 117.

154  Notes to Pages 6–11

29. Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in

Twentieth-­Century Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 7.

30. First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences pamphlet, November 4–­­11, 1961, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 1,

folder 2, Ed Sullivan Papers, 1920–­1974, Wisconsin Center for Film and

Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis. (hereafter Ed Sullivan Papers).

31. Kim, “Racial Triangulation,” 106.

32. Here I am borrowing George Lipsitz’s term. See George Lipsitz,

“Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies,” American Quarterly 47, no. 3 (September 1995): 369–­387.

33. Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for Blackness (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004).

34. Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 63.

35. Meghan Sutherland, “Variety, or The Spectacular Aesthetic of American Liberal Democracy” (PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2007).

36. For more discussion on flow, see Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Routledge, 2003).

37. While it was tempting to use multiculturalism as a framework in understanding Cold War racial logics, I purposefully avoided the usage of the

term in the book because multiculturalism as a concept did not enter the U.S. popular discourse until the 1970s. While some of the questions and

issues addressed in the book anticipate debates surrounding the rhetoric

of multiculturalism, the term did not gain traction during the Cold War period.

1.  Narratives of Integration 1. For more discussion on the trope of the desert in the construction of

America, see Catrin Gersdorf, The Poetics and Politics of the Desert Landscape and the Construction of America (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009).

2. Eugene P. Moehring, “Las Vegas and the Second World War,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 29, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 4.

Notes to Pages 12–21  155

3. Angela Moor, “Operation Hospitality: Las Vegas and Civil Defense,

1951–­1959,” Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 51, no. 4 (Winter 2008): 294.

4. Ibid., 295.

5. Ibid., 298.

6. Moehring, “Las Vegas,” 27. 7. Ibid., 9, 10.

8. Robert V. Nickel, “Dollars, Defense, and the Desert: Southern Nevada’s Military Economy and the Second World War,” Psi Sigma Siren 3, no. 1 (2005), http://​digitalscholarship​.unlv​.edu/​psi​_sigma​_siren/​vol3/​iss1/​5.

9. Ibid.

10. Jerome E. Edwards, Pat McCarran: Political Boss of Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1982), 65.

11. Ibid., 66.

12. Larry Gragg, “Protecting a City’s Image: The Death of Las Vegas Beat, 1961,” Studies in Popular Culture 34, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 3.

13. For more discussion of Pat McCarran and anti-­Communism, see

Michael J. Ybarra, Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and

the Great American Communist Hunt (Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Press, 2004).

14. Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, “The Immigration

and Nationality Act of 1952 (the McCarran-­Walter Act),” United States

Department of State, accessed January 22, 2019, https://​history​.state​.gov/​ milestones/​1945​-1952/​immigration​-act.

15. To preempt Communist infiltration, in 1957, Congress approved the

Chinese Confession Program in which those Chinese classified as “paper sons” were urged to confess their illegal entry into the United States.

In return, they would receive a probationary period of appraisal and be granted the right to reapply for citizenship. For more discussion, see

Tina Chen, Double Agency: Acts of Impersonation in Asian American Literature and Culture (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005).

16. “Hank’s Battle Over,” Las Vegas Sun, July 23, 1989, https://​lasvegassun​ .com/​news/​1989/​jul/​23/​hanks​-battle​-over/.

17. “56h A-Blast, Biggest Yet, Last of Series,” Washington Post, February 7, 1951, 1.

156  Notes to Pages 21–24

18. Mark J. Williams, “History in a Flash: Notes on the Myth of TV ‘Live-

ness,’” in Collecting Visible Evidence, ed. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 292–­312.

19. Linda Chase, Picturing Las Vegas (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 2009), 39. 20. Alton Hornsby Jr., Black America: A State-­by-­State Historical Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Greenwood, 2011), 507.

21. It was the first district built for African American residents in Las Vegas in the state of Nevada. It was designed in 1949 by an African American architect named Paul R. Williams.

22. Hornsby, Black America, 507.

23. Jake Freedman to Sands Reservations, April 26, 1955, MS-­00417, box 48, Sands News Bureau scrapbook 4 of 5, 1955–­1957, Sands Hotel Public

Relations Records, 1952–­1977, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev. (hereafter Sands Hotel Public Relations Records).

24. Robert L. Kirkpatrick to Wilbur Clark, Wilbur and Toni Clark Papers, 1944–­1991, MS-­00361, box 1, folder 4, Wilbur Clark Collection, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

25. H. Philip Mettger to Al Freeman, September 26, 1957, MS-00417, box 7, folder 1, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

26. Alice Key, interview by Claytee White, February 17, 1997, interview OH-­ 01015, transcript, Las Vegas Women in Gaming and Entertainment Oral History Project, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

27. Ibid.

28. Jack Cortez, “That’s for Sure,” Fabulous Las Vegas, January 26, 1952, 9.

29. Red Vaughan Tremmel, “Sin City upon a Hill: Play, Urban Conflict and the Rise of Commercial Liberality” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008), 118.

30. Abel Green, “Las Vegas Outstrips Paree: Nitery Capital of the World,” Variety, January 27, 1960, 1, 20.

31. Ibid.

32. Cecil Smith, “The TV Scene: Stars Hibernate in Las Vegas,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1959, A10.

Notes to Pages 24–30  157

33. Sharon Lawrence, United Press International, MS-­00417, box 2,

folder 31, Jack Entratter, 1953–­1965, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

34. John Gunther, “Inside Las Vegas,” American Weekly, August 26, 1956, 13. 35. Las Vegas Review Journal press release draft, MS-­00417, box 2, folder 31, Jack Entratter, 1953–­1965, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

36. “Entratter Marks Sands Tenth Anni with Special Danny Thomas

Shows,” press release, December 10, 1962, MS-00417, box 2, folder 31, 2, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

37. Pat McDermott to Al Freeman, June 19, 1957, MS-­00417, box 5, folder 2, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

38. Joe Liss, “American Rhapsody,” script, MS-00417, box 35, folder 10, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid.

42. Carrie Tirado Bramen, The Uses of Variety: Modern Americanism and the

Quest for National Distinctiveness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 22.

43. John Cahlan, “Network TV Shows from Vegas—­Thousand Problems, but Million Dollar Value,” Las Vegas Review Journal, September 18, 1957, 10.

44. Nat King Cole Show script, 1957, MS-­00417, box 11, folder 16, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

45. “Every Café a Vegas via TV: Big Screen Tint from the Sands,” Variety, June 19, 1957, 1.

46. Correspondence, press releases, 1957–­1965, MS-­00417, box 2, folder 31, Jack Entratter, 1953–­1965, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

47. Fabulous Las Vegas entry form and scrapbook, 1957, ms3000_2a, box 17,

folder 57002ENT, ser. 2, Television Entries, Peabody Awards Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia

Special Collections Libraries, Athens, Ga. (hereafter Peabody Awards Collection).

48. Ibid.

49. Les Devor, “Vegas Vagaries,” Las Vegas Review Journal, January 4, 1957, 13.

158  Notes to Pages 30–35

50. Holiday in Las Vegas papers, 1957, MS-­00417, box 34, folder 8, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

51. Robert Pondillo, America’s First Network TV Censor: The Work of NBC’s

Stockton Helffrich (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 166.

52. James Maguire, Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (New York: Billiard Books, 2006), 211.

53. Name of the Game papers, 1970, MS-­00417, box 35, folder 3, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

54. Julia papers, 1970, MS-­00417, box 34, folder 14, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

55. For more discussion of television and black civil rights, see Aniko

Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

56. Bodroghkozy borrows Herman Gray’s notion of the “civil rights subject.” Gray defines the civil rights subject as “the contemporary black figure to

whom television turns again and again to rewrite and readjust the domi-

nant cultural story of black presence in post–­World War II America” (353). For more discussion on television and the civil rights subject, see Herman Gray, “Remembering Civil Rights: Television, Memory, and the 1960s,”

in The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, ed. Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin (New York: Routledge, 1997), 349–­358.

57. Nude Dancers Controversy, 1958, MS-00417, box 3, folder 7, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

58. L. M. Chandler to Jack Entratter, August 13, 1958, MS-00417, box 4, folder 12, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

59. Nude Dancers Controversy.

60. Promotion Committee meeting minutes, February 16, 1961, MS-­00417, box 32, folder 9, 38, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

61. Gragg, “Protecting a City’s Image,” 12.

62. Red Skelton Show script, 1959, MS-­00417, box 35, folder 7, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

63. Post Grape-­Nuts Cereal commercial script, 1963, MS-­00417, box 35, folder 6, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

64. I Spy scripts, 1966, MS-­00417, box 34, folder 12, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

Notes to Pages 35–38  159

65. Julia scripts, 1970, MS-­00417, box 34, folder 14, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

66. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, October 3, 1953, 17, 22. 67. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, January 3, 1953, 15.

68. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, August 10, 1957, 27–­28. 69. This was the tagline of an advertisement promoting the Caballeros at

Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, June 8, 1957, 34.

70. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, May 11, 1957, 19, 25.

71. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, April 27, 1957, 23, 29. 72. Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, June 8, 1957, 21, 34.

73. “Geisha’rella,” MS-­00180, box 1, folder F, Thunderbird Hotel Records,

1964–­1973, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

74. Jack Cortez, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, October 25, 1969, 22, 24–­25.

75. Jack Cortez and Bill Willard, “Curtain Time,” Fabulous Las Vegas, May 24, 1969, 16, 26.

2.  Narratives of Exchange 1. John Lardner, “A Happy Sullivan Day,” New Yorker, July 5, 1958, 55.

2. Norma J. Coates, “It’s a Man’s, Man’s World: Television and the Mas-

culinization of Rock Discourse and Culture” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2002), 69.

3. James L. Baughman, Same Time, Same Station: Creating American Television, 1948–­1961 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 219.

4. Ibid. In a survey conducted two years prior to the war, 65 percent of

New York’s television set owners wanted an increase in variety programs, while 7 percent wanted news. As this survey illustrates, Americans

mainly conceived of television as a medium of entertainment rather than education.

5. In 1948, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implemented a freeze on the granting of new television licenses because of signal

interference and technical questions concerning color television. The 160  Notes to Pages 39–44

introduction of color television would require additional research, labor, and resources, and the granting of licenses to new stations required a

significant amount of steel for transmission towers and equipment. Jack Gould, “Video and the War: Curtailment of Receiver Output—­Radio Revival,” New York Times, July 30, 1950, X7.

6. “TV Shut-­Off Is Seen If War Needs Grow,” New York Times, July 15, 1950, 26.

7. Sherrie Tucker, Swing Shift: “All-­Girl” Bands of the 1940s (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), 229.

8. Mildred Hall, “‘Have Beat, Will Travel’: USO Need,” Billboard, April 13, 1959, 1.

9. Walter Ames, “Longenecker Tells Plan to Send Video Shows to GIs; Lovelorn Role for Baron,” Los Angeles Times, October 27, 1950, 26.

10. “Ed Sullivan Show,” Variety, August 14, 1957, 40.

11. “Ed Sullivan in Japan: Looking for Talent in the Orient,” Life, July 10, 1956, 28–­32.

12. Dinah Shore Chevy Show, May 8, 1960, Peabody Awards Collection.

13. “USIA Should Expand Emphasis on Music,” Billboard, April 20, 1959, 4, 40. 14. For more discussion of jazz music and Cold War diplomacy, see Penny

Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004); Lisa E. Dav-

enport, Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009).

15. Dinah Shore entry form, 1962, ms3000_2A, box 45, folder 62002PRT, Peabody Awards Collection.

16. Rick Du Brow, “Dinah Shore Show Hits the Target,” Beaver Country Times (Beaver, Pa.), December 10, 1962, 13.

17. Dinah Shore Chevy Show, December 9, 1962, Walter J. Brown Media

Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries Special Collections Library, Athens, Ga.

18. Du Brow, “Dinah Shore Show.”

19. Mildred Hall, “Music Heads on Exchange Program,” Billboard, April 20, 1959, 36.

20. “USIA Should Expand Emphasis,” 4, 40.

21. C. Sharpless Hickman, “Music Held Vital Force in Korea-­U.S. Relations,” Christian Science Monitor, April 19, 1948, 12.

Notes to Pages 45–49  161

22. Ibid.

23. “Korea to Send Music Group on Tour of U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, October 7, 1951, 27.

24. “Alan Handley’s All-­Japanese NBC-­TV Special in Feb. for Chevy Sponsor,” Variety, September 10, 1958, 131.

25. Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation and Hidden Grief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 42.

26. L. S. Kim, “‘Serving’ American Orientalism: Negotiation Identities in

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” Journal of Film and Video 56, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 23.

27. Ibid., 24. 28. Ibid., 28.

29. Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011), 31.

30. Melissa Phruksachart, “The Asian American Next Door: Enfiguring

the Model Minority on the Domestic Melodrama,” Amerasia Journal 42, no. 2 (2016): 104.

31. “Dinah’s All-­Orient Show Live Entry,” Variety, September 9, 1959, 22. 32. “Dinah Shore Chevy Show,” Variety, October 28, 1959, 26.

33. June Bundy, “Language Barrier No Problem as Pop Music Business Goes Global,” Billboard, July 28, 1958, 4.

34. Cecil Smith, “Sullivan Savors Foreign Flavor,” Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1959, A10.

35. “Sullivan TV’er 125G Rap?,” Variety, September 23, 1959, 23.

36. Mari Yoshihara, Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian

Americans in Classical Music (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007), 36.

37. Sue Kim Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, November 7, 2009. 38. In the peak year of 1953, 326,863 U.S. troops were deployed in South

Korea. The number decreased to 68,810 in 1956. See Tim Kane, “Global

US Troops Deployment, 1950–­2003,” Heritage Foundation, October 27,

2004, http://​www​.heritage​.org/​research/​reports/​2004/​10/​global​-us​-troop​ -deployment​-1950​-2003.

39. Seungsook Moon, Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 40.

40. Ibid.

162  Notes to Pages 49–57

41. Ji-­Yeon Yuh, “Moved by War: Migration, Diaspora, and the Korean War,” Journal of Asian American Studies 8, no. 3 (October 2005): 278.

42. Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 36.

43. Trina Robbins, The Golden Age of Chinese Nightclubs: Forbidden City (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 2010).

44. For more information about the Asian American nightclub scene, see

Anthony W. Lee, Picturing Chinatown: Art and Orientalism in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

45. Nick Tosches, Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll: The Birth of Rock in the Wild Years before Elvis (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 89.

46. Keith D. Owens, “The Kims Head East,” Stars and Stripes, January 19, 1959, Kim Sisters Clippings, 1965–­1969, Entertainment Manuscript

Collections, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries,

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev. (hereafter Kim Sisters Clippings).

47. Lloyd Shearer, “The Kim Sisters: GI Chocolate Bars to $13,000 a Week,” Parade, March 20, 1966, Kim Sisters Clippings.

48. Audrey Down, “Separation No Joke to Cute Korean Trio,” Vancouver Sun, June 4, 1966, Kim Sisters Clippings.

49. The Lake Front reported on this story: “Difficult for them to leave Korea and come to the U.S. With the stubborn President Rhee then bossman of Korea, it was to be an extremely difficult thing to accomplish.” Lake Front, October 1960, Kim Sisters Clippings.

50. Shearer, “Kim Sisters,” 7.

51. Esther Kim Lee, A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 20.

52. Advertisement promoting the China Doll Revue of 1959 at the Hotel Thunderbird, Kim Sisters Clippings.

53. Bernard Ilson, “The Ed Sullivan Show as a Vehicle for Cultural Diffu-

sion: A Study of the Popular Television Series as to Its Contribution as a Cultural and Artistic Force” (PhD diss., New York University, 1998), 18.

54. Donald F. Conway to Robert B. Lindsey, October 23, 1957, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 3, folder 2, Ed Sullivan Papers.

55. “Ed Sullivan in Japan,” 28–­32.

56. Ed Sullivan to Roger Bernheim, February 4, 1958, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 3, folder 3, Ed Sullivan Papers.

Notes to Pages 58–62  163

57. “Sullivan’s Travels” also went to Moscow for a ninety-­minute special in

1959. Variety reported that it played a contributing role to the relaxation

of the Cold War tensions. The review further noted, “Sullivan’s commentary, except from one crack about the ‘land of the commissars’ was warm towards the Russians. If nothing else, the language of show biz should be universal.” For a full review of the program, see Herm Schoenfeld,

“Sullivan’s Travels: Invitation to Moscow,” Variety, September 30, 1959, 27.

58. James Maguire, Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan (New York: Billiard Books, 2006), 236.

59. Andrew Solt, dir., “Sullivan’s Travels,” bonus feature in The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show, vol. 2 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sofa Entertainment, 2004).

60. The special episode of The Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast on January 24, 1960.

61. Hal Humphrey, “Ready for Global TV?,” Blade (Toledo, Ohio), May 1, 1961.

62. Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–­1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 104.

63. “U.S. TV Breaks for Foreign Disk Artists,” Billboard, April 11, 1960, 13. 64. Lisa Parks, “As the Earth Spins: NBC’s Wide Wide World and Live

Global Television in the 1950s,” Screen 42, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 339.

65. Ed Sullivan’s speech at the National Association of Broadcasters in

Washington, May 10, 1961, transcript, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 1, folder 2, Ed Sullivan Papers.

66. Ibid., 3.

67. Ibid., 2. 68. Ibid., 5.

69. Ron Simon, “The Ed Sullivan Show,” in Museum of Broadcast Commu-

nications Encyclopedia of Television, ed. Horace Newcomb, 2nd ed., vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 2013), 785–787.

70. Kim, “‘Serving’ American Orientalism,” 22. 71. Ibid.

72. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/ American Women on Screen and Scene (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007), 16.

73. “Swinging Kim Sisters to Give Single Concert,” Waikiki Beach Press, September 9–­­11, 1966, Kim Sisters Clippings.

164  Notes to Pages 62–66

74. “When We Become Big,” Newsweek, August 31, 1959, Kim Sisters Clippings.

75. B. B., “Kim Sisters: Korean Firecrackers,” Houston Now, 33, Kim Sisters Clippings.

76. Sue Kim Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, November 6, 2009. 77. Sue Kim Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, May 22, 2019.

78. Sue Kim Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, November 7, 2009. 79. Kim, “‘Serving’ American Orientalism,” 22.

80. Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999), 146.

81. Thomas Griffin, “Lagniappe,” New Orleans States-Item, September 15, 1965, 23, Kim Sisters Clippings.

82. Donna Lange, “Kim Sisters Present Finale at Twin Coaches,” Valley Independent, June 23, 1965, Kim Sisters Clippings.

83. Chicago’s American Pictorial Living, January 11, 1966, Kim Sisters Clippings.

84. Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, November 6, 2009. 85. “When We Become Big.”

86. Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, November 6, 2009. 87. Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, May 22, 2019. 88. Ibid.

89. “East Discovers West Mode,” Kim Sisters Clippings.

90. I am grateful to Sueyoung Park-­Primiano for finding this article and

giving it to me. Kyong-­Sun Chu, “Top Entertainers to Appear in America Come from Korea,” Cine Fan, no. 1 (1961): 60–­67 (translation mine).

91. Ibid. 92. Ibid.

93. Audrey Down, “Separation No Joke to Cute Korean Trio,” Vancouver Sun, June 4, 1966, Kim Sisters Clippings.

94. Bob Carr, “A Pretty Three-­Ring Circus,” Kim Sisters Clippings.

95. Jim Taylor, “Kims: We’ll Be in Boston,” Boston Sunday Herald, August 1, 1965, Kim Sisters Clippings.

96. Ellen D. Wu expands beyond the white-­black racial paradigm to explore how the State Department sent prominent Chinese Americans like Jade Snow Wong and Dong Kingman to Asia to inhibit the spread of Communism. See Ellen D. Wu, “‘America’s Chinese’: Anti-­Communism,

Notes to Pages 66–72  165

Citizenship, and Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War,” Pacific Historical Review 77, no. 3 (2008): 391–­422.

97. Sue Kim Bonifazio, in discussion with the author, May 26, 2015. 98. Ibid.

99. Aija Kim passed away in 1987 due to lung cancer.

100. Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution: Reconsidered (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 8.

3.  Narratives of Partnership 1. Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution: Reconsidered (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 104.

2. Yeidy M. Rivero, Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950–­1960 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015), 99.

3. Howard Finch Show scrapbook, 1960, ms3000, box 103, item 60019PRT, Peabody Awards Collection. An edited version of the Howard Finch

Show submitted to the George Foster Peabody Awards is available in the same collection.

4. Mexican scholar Alonso Aguilar argues that Pan-­Americanism is

another form of U.S. imperialism. For more discussion, see Alonso Aguilar, Pan-­Americanism from Monroe to the Present: A View from the Other Side, trans. Asa Zatz (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1968).

5. Ana M. López, “Are All Latins from Manhattan? Hollywood, Ethnography, and Cultural Colonialism,” in Film and Nationalism, ed. Alan

Williams (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 199.

6. John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 111.

7. Ibid.

8. Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–­1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 104.

9. Ibid., 117.

10. Ibid., 116.

11. The band’s name invoked not only the famous Mexican revolutionary

figure Pancho Villa but also Panchito Pistoles, who was featured in Walt

Disney’s film The Three Caballeros. And pancho was also a term used specifically to refer to a Mexican. For more discussion, see Celina Fernández, Los 166  Notes to Pages 72–77

Panchos: La historia de los embajadores de la canción romántica contada por su voz Rafael Basurto Lara (Madrid: Ediciones Martínez Roca, 2005), 29.

12. Eventually one of the band members joined the army and was granted U.S. citizenship.

13. Fernández, Los Panchos, 84.

14. Ernest Schier, “CBS to Launch New Program for West Hemisphere Listeners,” Washington Post, May 17, 1942, L4.

15. “People and Shows on the Late April Air,” New York Times, April 23, 1944, X5.

16. Schier, “CBS to Launch New Program.”

17. “Cuba’s Highest Honor Won by Heads of CBS,” New York Times, June 10, 1943, 12.

18. Pan American Union, The Music of Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States, 1953), 44.

19. Ibid., 45.

20. Eduardo Herrera, “The Rockefeller Foundation and Latin American Music in the 1960s: The Creation of Indiana University’s LAMC

and DiTella Institute’s CLAEM,” American Music 35, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 61.

21. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 126.

22. John Sinclair and Joseph Straubhaar, Latin American Television Industries (London: British Film Institute, 2013), 13.

23. John F. Royal to Sylvester L. Weaver, June 28, 1951, U.S. MSS 17AF, box 120, folder 43, National Broadcasting Company Records, 1921–­1976,

Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis. (hereafter NBC Records).

24. John F. Royal to Goar Mestre, February 21, 1951, U.S. MSS 17AF, box 120, folder 43, NBC Records.

25. “Mestre-­Azcarraga in Latino Sway on Telepix, Live Talent,” Variety, July 8, 1958, 71.

26. “Televisión en Cuba desde los Estados Unidos,” La Prensa, September 19, 1957, 5.

27. “Okay Sale of Mex Pic for US TV,” Variety, March 4, 1959, 22.

28. “More USIA Use of Commercial Clicks in Tele: Agency Servicing 18 Stations via Kines and Films,” Billboard, April 17, 1956, 4.

29. “U.S. Plans a Rise in Overseas Video,” New York Times, March 29, 1954, 14. Notes to Pages 77–82  167

30. Ibid.

31. Michael Curtin, Redeeming the Wasteland: Television Documentary and Cold War Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 72.

32. Ibid., 74. 33. Ibid., 73.

34. “The Kitchen Debate Transcript,” Teaching American History, accessed November 5, 2010, http://​teachingamericanhistory​.org/​library/​index​.asp​ ?document​=​176.

35. Victor Rosenberg, Soviet-­American Relations, 1953–­1960: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange during the Eisenhower Presidency ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005), 155.

36. Barbara Wolfe, “Guerra fría contra el cha-­cha-­cha,” La Prensa, May 29, 1960, 13.

37. “Ed Sullivan,” McCall’s, November 1959, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 18, folder 4, Ed Sullivan Papers.

38. Tex McCrary was a public relations and political strategist who had

his own weekly television show in the 1950s. He was also a journalist who wrote syndicated columns for the New York Herald Tribune. See

Tex McCrary, “Outline of Proposed Remarks for Presentation to the

National Association of Broadcasters,” May 10, 1961, 9, U.S. MSS 111AN, box 1, folder 2, Ed Sullivan Papers.

39. “Negro Actors Guild, January 1956–­February 1957,” U.S. MSS 111AN, box 1, folder 7, Ed Sullivan Papers.

40. Hawai‘i Sugar Planters’ Association, Communism in Hawai‘i, 1944–­1963, April 1956, MS-­H00069, box 8, folder 3, Hawai‘i Archive Collections, University of Hawai‘i at Mãnoa Library, Honolulu, Hawai‘i.

41. Ibid.

42. Xavier Cugat Show script, February 27, 1957, National Broadcasting

Company Master Books, Motion Picture and Television Reading Room, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NBC Master Books).

43. Xavier Cugat Show script, March 13, 1957, NBC Master Books. 44. Luis Gasca, Cugat (Madrid: Ediciones del Imán, 1995), 99. 45. Ibid., 120.

46. Harvey Sheldon, The History of Afro Cuban Latin American Music (Lexington, Ky.: CreateSpace, 2010), 253.

168  Notes to Pages 82–87

47. Gustavo Pérez Firmat, “Latunes: An Introduction,” Latin American Research Review 43, no. 2 (2008): 180–­203.

48. Xavier Cugat Show script, March 1, 1957, NBC Master Books. 49. Roberts, Latin Tinge, 22.

50. According to Victoria Johnson, the Lawrence Welk Show featured a Mexican singer named Anacani who was asked to sing Spanish songs. See

Victoria E. Johnson, Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity (New York: New York University Press, 2008), 84.

51. “Pan-­Americanism,” New York Times, April 13, 1953, 26.

52. Yeidy M. Rivero, Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of

Puerto Rican Television (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005), 14.

53. Xavier Cugat Show script, March 13, 1957, NBC Master Books.

54. Seth Fein, “Hollywood and United States–­Mexico Relations in the

Golden Age of Mexican Cinema” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1996), 654.

55. “Dulles y Carrillo: Hablan relaciones E.U.-­Mexico,” La Prensa, January 27, 1959, 1.

56. “Xavier Cugat and His Wife, Abbe Lane, Sign to Replace Eddie Fisher on N.B.C.,” New York Times, January 25, 1957, 45.

57. Dennis Merrill, Negotiating Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in

Twentieth-­Century Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 112.

58. Ibid., 106.

59. De Castro Sisters, “A Love Story,” unpublished manuscript, typescript,

29. The manuscript is a memoir written in memory of their parents. Jim Carricaburu, a nephew of the De Castro Sisters, had possession of the

memoir and gave it to me when I visited him for research in California on October 29, 2010.

60. Ibid., 30. The memoir claims that Fidel Castro was a regular patron of the club and romantically interested in Peggy.

61. Ibid., 31.

62. Rivero, Tuning Out Blackness, 120.

63. In 1955, the De Castro Sisters appeared on Frank Fontaine’s Showtime, where they performed the song “Sun Sun Babae.”

64. The episode of The Ed Sullivan Show was broadcast on December 29, 1957. 65. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 87–95  169

66. Hal Brands, Latin America’s Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 28.

67. H. Reyes Quiroja Hijo, “Al correr de la pluma: Latinoamérica y el comunismo,” La Prensa, February 7, 1960, 10.

68. Fein, “Hollywood,” 680.

69. “NBC’s Move-­In on Mexico TV Stations; Scorecard on Latin American Progress,” Variety, September 23, 1959, 26.

70. Ibid.

71. “Ford’s Bigtime Latino Special,” Variety, November 25, 1959, 42.

72. Manuel Laverde, “Desfile de estrellas en fiesta mexicana,” La Prensa, March 27, 1960, 19.

73. Chevy Show script, March 27, 1960, NBC Master Books.

74. “El Ministro R. Aveleyra analiza el progreso cultural de México,” La Prensa, December 30, 1957, 5–6.

75. “The Chevy Show,” Variety, March 30, 1960, 39. 76. “Dinah Shore Show,” Variety, April 13, 1960, 31. 77. Merrill, Negotiating Paradise, 160.

4.  Narratives of Coexistence 1. Christine Skwiot, The Purposes of Paradise: Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai‘i (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 6.

2. Ibid., 188.

3. Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–­1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 244.

4. Ibid., 248.

5. Shurei Hirozawa, “Advances in Air Transportation: Technology Gives Tourism a Big Boost,” Honolulu Star-­Bulletin, February 20, 1979, 21.

6. Dan Gingold, dir., Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians (Los Angeles: Kinescope Video, 1957).

7. William Pasternak, email message to author, March 3, 2012. 8. Ron Hashiro, email message to author, March 1, 2012.

9. Adria L. Imada, “Hawaiians on Tour: Hula Circuits through the American Empire,” American Quarterly 56, no. 1 (March 2004): 114.

10. Jonathan Okamura, “The Illusion of Paradise: Privileging Multiculturalism in Hawai‘i,” in Making Majorities: Constituting the Nation in Japan,

170  Notes to Pages 96–109

Korea, China, Malaysia, Fiji, Turkey, and the United States, ed. Dru C. Gladney (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 275.

11. Imada, “Hawaiians on Tour,” 136.

12. William F. Quinn, “A Salute to Hawaiian Airlines,” Jet Age Airlanes 24, no. 8 (August 1959): 5.

13. Arthur Dee Lewis, “Hawaiian’s Future Plans,” Jet Age Airlanes 24, no. 8 (August 1959): 9.

14. James A. Michener, “Hawaii’s Statehood Urged: Population Is Declared Politically Mature, Loyal to United States,” New York Times, January 1,

1959, 30. The letter was written in Honolulu, Hawai‘i, on December 14, 1958.

15. Giles Scott-­Smith, “From Symbol of Division to Cold War Asset:

Lyndon Johnson and the Achievement of Hawaiian Statehood in 1959,” History 89, no. 294 (April 2004): 257.

16. Ibid., 258.

17. “Marsden’s Magazine Says Hawaii Is ‘Infected’ with Red Spies,” Honolulu Star-­Bulletin, February 3, 1949, MS H00069, box 2, folder 1, Communism Newspaper Clippings Scrapbook, 1949–­1950, Hawai‘i Archive

Collections, University of Hawai‘i at Mãnoa Library, Honolulu, Hawai‘i (hereafter Communism Newspaper Clippings Scrapbook).

18. “Tenney, on Coast, Reveals Communism Findings Here,” Honolulu Star-­ Bulletin, February 28, 1949, MS H00069, box 2, folder 1, Communism Newspaper Clippings Scrapbook.

19. “Hawaii Reds Can Be Curbed, Experts Say,” Honolulu Advertiser,

June 25, 1949, MS H00069, box 2, folder 2, Communism Newspaper Clippings Scrapbook.

20. Ibid.

21. “Is This Tomorrow? America under Communism,” MS H00068, box 2, pamphlet 18, Pamphlets on Communism, 1938–­1955, Hawai‘i Archive

Collections, University of Hawai‘i at Mãnoa Library, Honolulu, Hawai‘i (hereafter Pamphlets on Communism).

22. Ibid.

23. Skwiot, Purposes of Paradise, 187.

24. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Address Delivered before a Joint Session of the Parliament of India, December 10, 1959,” in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 1 to December 31, 1959 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1959), 831.

Notes to Pages 109–112  171

25. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, “Lyndon B. Johnson: Remarks

at the East-­West Center in Honolulu,” American Presidency Project,

October 18, 1966, http://​www​.presidency​.ucsb​.edu/​ws/​index​.php​?pid​=​ 27941.

26. “Senator Eastland vs. the People of Hawaii,” International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union, MS H00069, box 9, folder 3, Pamphlets on Communism.

27. T. Michael Holmes, The Specter of Communism in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), 44.

28. Ibid., 53.

29. Ibid., 73.

30. Ibid., 153.

31. With the establishment of the House Un-­American Activities Com-

mittee (HUAC) in 1947, the Mundt-­Nixon Bill required the registration of all members of the Communist Party with the attorney general,

prevented federal employees from participating in the Communist Party, and denied the granting of passports to party members. This was an

indication of the increasing role that the government assumed in the surveillance of Communist activities.

32. “Impressed Islanders Watch First Television Broadcast,” Honolulu Star-­ Bulletin, December 2, 1952, 1.

33. Robert Schmitt, Firsts and Almost Firsts in Hawai‘i, ed. Ronn Ronck (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995), 48.

34. “Joe Rock Returns to Begin TV Production Here,” Honolulu Star-­ Bulletin, June 2, 1951, 22.

35. “Hawaii to Be Subject of TV Films Produced in Islands,” Honolulu Star-­ Bulletin, November 26, 1951, 1–­2.

36. “Waikiki Visitor Finds Honolulu Better for TV Than San Francisco,” Honolulu Star-­Bulletin, January 2, 1951.

37. “Webley Edwards, Pitchman of the Song,” Hawaiian Holiday, February 26, 1956, 10.

38. Ibid.

39. “Webley Edwards Named to Post with KONA-­TV,” Honolulu Star-­ Bulletin, December 10, 1952, C4.

40. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, The Rich Neighbor Policy: Rockefeller and

Kaiser in Brazil (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992), 251.

172  Notes to Pages 112–116

41. Mark S. Foster, Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 249.

42. Ibid., 254.

43. Noel J. Kent, Hawaii Islands under the Influence (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 69–­70.

44. Ibid., 78.

45. Ibid., 107.

46. Foster, Henry J. Kaiser, 267.

47. “Deal Subject to Approval by F.C.C.,” Honolulu Star-­Bulletin, May 8, 1958, 1-­A.

48. Foster, Henry J. Kaiser, 267.

49. “San Francisco Office News Bulletin,” April 29, 1960, M2004-­090,

box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers, 1922–­1989, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis. (hereafter Pat Weaver Papers).

50. Hawai‘i-Kai Development Team to Henry J. Kaiser, December 4, 1959, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

51. Harry A. Berk to the Hawai‘i-Kai development team, January 15, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 7, Pat Weaver Papers.

52. “Big Response to ‘Tiser Story on Kaiser Homes,’” Honolulu Advertiser, April 6, 1961, 6.

53. Ibid.

54. Correspondence, 1959–­1961, undated, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

55. Eugene Trefethen to Henry J. Kaiser, December 4, 1959, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

56. Hawai‘i Kai Business Partners to Henry J. Kaiser, December 4, 1959, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

57. Vance Kepley Jr., “Weaver, Sylvester (Pat) (1908–2002),” in Museum of Broadcast Communications Encyclopedia of Television, ed. Horace Newcomb, 2nd ed., vol. 4 (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), 2508–2509.

58. John M. Bridgman to Pat Weaver, April 22, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

59. Pat Weaver to Phipps Rasmussen and Jack Bridgman, July 18, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 7, Pat Weaver Papers.

60. Foster, Henry J. Kaiser, 268.

Notes to Pages 116–119  173

61. John Whitehead, “Hawai‘i: The First and Last Far West?,” Western Historical Quarterly 23, no. 2 (May 1992): 156.

62. Ibid.

63. Pat Weaver to John Bridgman, April 25, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

64. John Magnuson to Pat Weaver, October 6, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 6, Pat Weaver Papers.

65. Steve Allen Show script, October 13, 1957, NBC Master Books.

66. Dinah Shore Chevy Show script, April 12, 1959, NBC Master Books.

67. Memo on Hawai‘i Kai, July 18, 1960, M2004-­090, box 14, folder 7, Pat Weaver Papers.

68. Dinah Shore Chevy Show script, December 6, 1959, NBC Master Books. 69. Francesco Adinolfi, Mondo Exotica, ed. and trans. Karen Pinkus with Jason Vivrette (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), 62.

70. He was originally known as Juan García Esquivel, a popular Mexican

space-­age music artist who produced a number of hit albums, combining elements of jazz, lounge, and Latin music.

71. For more discussion of postwar recording culture, see Tim Anderson,

Making Easy Listening: Material Culture and Postwar American Recording (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

72. Adinolfi, Mondo Exotica, 146.

73. “Dinah Shore Chevy Show,” Variety, April 15, 1959, 121. 74. Ibid., 42.

75. The Hawaiian Room in the Lexington Hotel was well known in Hawai‘i and San Francisco for featuring Hawaiian acts. Many television programs used the room as a background during the 1950s.

76. Tony Todaro, “Island Personality: Haleloke,” Paradise of the Pacific, July 1954, 20.

77. Ibid., 28.

78. Adria L. Imada, Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire

(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012), 185. Imada discusses how the Hawaiian hula dancers were promoted as wholly Hawaiian, erasing markers of the Asian race because it was believed to be a foreseeable threat to the United States in the 1930s.

79. James Schwoch argues that many questions were directed toward

popular music, especially jazz music, at the Moscow Exhibition in 1959

174  Notes to Pages 120–130

in celebration of a new computerized system called RAMAC. For more

discussion, see James Schwoch, Global TV: New Media and the Cold War, 1946–­1969 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 105.

80. Tony Todaro, The Golden Years of Hawaiian Entertainment, 1874–­1974 (Honolulu: T. Todaro, 1974), 103.

81. Wayne Harada, “Don Ho Will Increase Television Work Next Week,” Honolulu Advertiser, October 24, 1976, B-7.

82. Nate Chinen, “Don Ho, 76, Entertainer Who Defined the Hawaiian Image,” New York Times, April 16, 2007, B6.

83. Harada, “Don Ho.” 84. Ibid.

85. Don Ho Remembered, documentary broadcast on January 22, 2008 (Honolulu: KGMB-­9), DVD.

86. For more discussion of how Hawai‘i functioned as staging area for the

U.S. military during the Vietnam War, see Simeon Man, “Aloha, Viet-

nam: Race and Empire in Hawai‘i’s Vietnam War,” American Quarterly 67, no. 4 (December 2015): 1085–­1108.

87. Verdanette Vicuña Gonzalez, Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai‘i and the Philippines (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012), 7.

88. For more details on the shifting image of Japan after World War II, see

Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006).

89. Juan Flores, From Bomba to Hip-­Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 89.

Epilogue 1. Carlos Alarico Gómez, Vida y tiempo de Renny Ottolina (1928–­1978):

Aportes para la historia de la communicación social en Venezuela (Caracas: Armitano Editores, 2005), 70.

2. “Renny Ottolina debutó el lunes en televisión,” La Prensa, January 3, 1960, 19.

3. Gómez, Vida y tiempo, 70.

4. “Renny Ottolina debutó el lunes.” Notes to Pages 130–140  175

5. Howard Finch Show scrapbook, 1960, ms3000_2a, box 103, item

60019PRT, ser. 2: Television Entries, Peabody Awards Collection.

6. Leila Cobo, “Raúl Velasco, 73,” Billboard, December 16, 2006, 64.

7. “Sullivan Seen Live from Vegas,” Las Vegas Sun, January 12, 1969, 17.

8. Al Freeman to Rafael Matute and Miguel S. Berges, April 11, 1972, MS-­ 00417, box 34, folder 21, Sands Hotel Public Relations Records.

9. Now magazines from various hotels, 1968, MS-­00268, box 2, Maury

Stevens Papers, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

10. Alan Jarlson, “TV Production in Las Vegas Gets Big Boost,” Las Vegas Sun, December 13, 1971, 1.

11. Las Vegas Nevada Chamber of Commerce, MS-­00380, box 68, How-

ard Hughes Public Relations Reference Files, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nev.

12. Lee Margulies, “Hawaii Calls, Ho Answers,” Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1976, F14.

13. Wayne Harada, “Ho Readying New TV Vehicle,” Honolulu Advertiser, September 15, 1976, B6.

14. Ibid.

15. George H. Lewis, “Beyond the Reef: Role Conflict and the Professional Musician in Hawaii,” Popular Music, no. 5 (1985): 189–­198.

16. Harada, “Ho Readying New TV Vehicle.”

17. Wayne Harada, “The Don Ho Show: It’s a History-­Making but a Ho-­ Hum Affair . . . with Lots of Promise,” Honolulu Advertiser, October 1, 1976, G5.

18. Don Ho Show script, October 1, 1976, American Radio and Television

Script Library, Fort Worth, Tex. (hereafter American Radio and Television Script Library).

19. Phil Solomon, “Lights of Las Vegas,” Fabulous Las Vegas Magazine, May 15, 1971, 13.

20. Don How Show script, September 29, 1976, American Radio and Television Script Library.

21. Jon Letman, “RIMPAC Makes Its Mark in Hawaii,” Diplomat, July 25, 2018, https://​thediplomat​.com/​2018/​07/​rimpac​-makes​-its​-mark​-in​ -hawaii/.

176  Notes to Pages 141–146

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. ABC (American Broadcasting Company), 37, 82, 114, 139, 143 Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 84 AFM. See American Federation of Musicians African Americans: district built for, 157n21; on Ed Sullivan Show, 43; exclusion of, 136; in Las Vegas, 25; performers in Las Vegas, 29; representation on television of, 5, 33, 36–­37, 40; rock ’n’ roll music and, 49 Afro-­Cuban culture, 10, 96, 135 AFRTS-­LA. See Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Los Angeles Aguilar, Alonso, 166n4 AIR. See Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión akkŭk (musical drama) genre, 10 Allen, Steve, 88, 121–­122 American Broadcasting Company. See ABC American Federation of Musicians (AFM), 76 American GIs: Asian performers and, 45–­46, 56–­61; entertainment in South Korea for, 10, 45–­46, 69; Korean War and, 56–­61; music and, 47, 68; transnational romance trend, 57–­58; “Variety

International Goodwill Tour,” 32; variety show genre and, 46 Americanism: anti-­Americanism in Latin America, 96; Cold War politics and, 8; Eastland and, 112–­113; Pan-­ Americanism, 76, 77–­79, 88, 97, 166n4; variety show genre and, 32 American National Theater and Academy, 48 American Orientalism, 18, 52–­53, 65–­70 American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), 96 American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP), 76, 87 Andy Williams Show (TV program), 132 anti-­Communism, 22–­23, 111, 113 Antonini, Alfredo, 78 Apaka, Alfred, 2, 6, 19, 114, 117, 121, 126–­128, 130, 136 APRA. See American Popular Revolutionary Alliance Armed Forces Radio and Television Service in Los Angeles (AFRTS-­LA), 11, 46, 61 Armstrong, Louis, 2, 27, 47, 61, 130 Arnaz, Desi, 85, 87 Asaoka, Yukiji, 6, 54–­55 ASCAP. See American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers

191

Asia: American TV programs in, 63–­64; Asian culture, 5; feminized image of, 58 Asian Americans, 14, 60, 70 Asian music, 2, 49–­50 Asianness: code-­switching and, 53; exoticism of, 14, 45, 50, 52, 53, 55, 58, 60, 65–­66; racial discourses and, 15; representation on television of, 52; traditional dress and, 53, 55, 66; traditional model of womanhood and, 52. See also Orientalism Asian performers, 43–­73; American GIs and, 56–­61; CARE goodwill tours, 49; China Doll Revue, 58–­61, 59; Ed Sullivan Show, 61–­73; Ed Sullivan Show and, 61–­65; exchange narratives and, 50–­56; exploitation of exoticism of, 60; increase in, 5–­6; Kim Sisters, 44–­46, 56–­61; Korean War and, 50–­56; in Las Vegas, 29, 39, 40–­41; music and, 46–­50; national imaginary and, 19; as nonthreatening figures, 5, 15; overview, 18, 43–­44; racial liberalism myth and, 16; transpacific migration, 44; TV diplomacy and, 44–­46; Umeki, 50–­53; within U.S. racial hierarchy, 14–­15; valorized over blacks, 15; in variety shows, 50–­56. See also Kim Sisters Asians: integration without identification policy and, 5; representations of, 4, 70. See also Asianness; Asian performers Asociación Interamericana de Radiodifusión (AIR), 80 assimilation: illusion of, 13; Kim Sisters and, 70–­71; representations of blackness, 15 atomic bomb testing, 24, 25, 42 Azcarraga, Emilio, Sr., 75, 80–­81

Banner, Bob, 144 Barclay, Don, 46 Bartlett, Harry, 93 Batista, Fulgencio, 1, 74, 91, 93 Batista regime, 9, 81, 92 Bell, Freddie, 32 Benny, Jack, 35 Berk, Harry A., 118 Berle, Milton, 29, 32 Bernheim, Roger, 62 Big Five, 116 Bish, Paul R., 111 blackface performance, 15 blackness: dominance of whiteness and, 109; exclusion of, 88–­89; representations of, 15 black performers: black musicians, 2; closed-­circuit transmissions and, 34; discrimination and, 27; in Las Vegas, 25, 27, 29; in sitcoms, 36–­37 blacks: black audiences, 5, 36; exclusion of, 19, 105 black-­white racial paradigm, 11, 14, 109, 165n96 Blair, Janet, 98–­100 blanqueamiento (whitening), 89, 95–­96 BMI. See Broadcast Music Inc. Bodroghkozy, Aniko, 36, 159n55 bolero music, 77–­7 8, 166n11 Bramen, Carrie Tirado, 32 Brands, Hal, 96 Brazil: Dinah Shore Chevy Show, 100–­101; Good Neighbor Policy and, 79; Miranda, 39; pro-­Cuban demonstrations in, 96; U.S. relations with, 116 Bridgman, John M., 119 Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), 76 Brockman, Michael, 143 Bruner, Andy, 27 Buttons, Red, 50

baby-­sans image, 58 Bailey, William “Bob,” 27 Baker, Joseph V., 5 Ball, Tom, 58–­61

Caballeros, The, 39, 68n68, 160n68 Cahlan, John, 33 California Un-­American Activities Committee (CUAC), 111

192 Index

Campo, Pupi, 6 capitalism: Las Vegas and, 20; modernization of Hawai‘i and, 105; national image and, 1, 77; popular music and, 47, 77; spectacle and, 6–­7, 16; subservient status and, 52; USIA and, 80 CARE. See Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe Carroll, Diahann, 36–­37, 38 casinos: Cold War efforts, 25–­26; in Cuba, 10; interracial, 26–­27; in Las Vegas, 22; television and, 18 Castro, Fidel, 1, 10, 81, 91, 94, 96, 169n60 CATVN. See Central American Television Network CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Company), 27, 32, 34, 35, 62, 78, 80, 108, 114, 143 censorship: codes of, 28; Entratter and, 37; NBC and, 5, 35; Sullivan and, 35 Central American Television Network (CATVN), 82 cha-­cha: introduction and popularity during Cold War, 2–­3; Soviet disdain for, 83, 84 Chandler, L. M., 37 Chang, Grace, 6, 54–­55 Chayres, Nestor, 78 Cheng, Anne Anlin, 52 cheongsams (Chinese dresses), 54, 55, 66–­67, 67 Chester, Edmund, 78 Chevy Show (TV program), 6, 98–­103 Chile: Chevy Show and, 101; Good Neighbor Policy and, 79; Moura, 102; political unrest in, 96; Sábado Gigante, 138 China: Chinese Confession Program, 156n15; cultural influence from, 119, 124; immigration to Hawai‘i from, 107; U.S. concerns over, 23 China Doll Revue, 40, 58–­60, 59 Chinen, Nate, 131 Chinese Americans, 52, 128, 131, 165n96 Chinese Confession Program, 156n15

Chinese dresses. See cheongsams Chinese performers: Chang, Grace, 54–­55; China Doll Revue, 40, 58–­60, 59; Chu Fu and May, 62; in nightclubs, 58 civil rights movement: coverage of, 36, 159n55; Key, as a leader of, 27; new programming genre and, 3–­4; representations of blackness and, 15; the South and, 2 Clark, Wilbur, 35, 160n68 Clinton, Hillary, 139 Clooney, Rosemary, 88 CMBF-­TV (Cuban TV station), 81 Cobbs, Elizabeth Anne, 116 code-­switching: Asian performers, 50, 53, 55; full assimilation illusion and, 13; Latin American performers, 86, 95; in nonblack performers, 41; Pacific Islander performers, 127; on television, 15 coexistence narratives, 105–­137; Communism and, 109–­113; Don Ho, 130–­136; Hawai‘i and, 106; mixed-­race performers and, 19; overview, 105, 137; racial politics and, 109–­113; real estate development and, 114–­122; television and, 107–­108; variety show genre and, 122–­130 Cold War: characterizations of, 8–­9; civil defense, 21; containment/integration narratives of, 20, 69; cultural diplomacy of, 9; diplomacy of, 18, 91; ethnic performers in Las Vegas during, 39; ethnic spectacle and, 7; gendered racial formation and, 9; geo-­political knowledge during, 1; global television race and, 82–­85; Hawai‘i and, 107, 113, 145; Las Vegas and, 21–­23, 24–­25; national imaginary and, 13, 20; overview, 10, 17; shifting relations during, 103; variety show genre and, 15, 146. See also Cuban Revolution; Hawai‘i statehood; Korean War; Orientalism

Index 193

Cold War politics: Americanism and, 8; commercial television and, 8; Communism and, 9; Cuba and, 9; globalism and, 8; Hawai‘i and, 9, 19, 117; internationalism and, 8; Latin American performers and, 18; liberalism and, 8; music and understanding of, 7; Orientalism and, 8; popular music and, 8, 48–­49; race relation debates, 2; racial integration to sell, 7; racism and, 8; sexism and, 8; South Korea and, 9; triangulation of, 19, 84; variety show genre and, 19 Cole, Nat King, 32, 33 Columbia Broadcasting Company. See CBS Communism: Americanization of Asian performers and, 69; anti-­ Communism, 22–­23, 111, 113; battle against, 2, 7; Castro and, 1; Chinese American and, 165n96; Chinese Confession Program and, 156n15; coexistence narratives and, 109–­113; Cold War politics and, 9; Communist Party registration, 172n31; Cuba and, 9; Haesong Kim, 56–­57, 72; Hawaiian labor strikes and, 9, 113; Hawai‘i statehood and, 109–­113; Las Vegas and, 18, 20, 22–­23; Latin America and, 18, 88, 96; Pacific Islander performers and, 109–­113; Pan-­Americanism and, 97; race relations and, 85; South Korea and, 9, 60; television and, 64–­65; U.S. military occupation and, 15; U.S. politics to curtail in Latin America, 74–­75; variety show genre and, 19 Como, Perry, 88, 94–­95 Conover, Willis, 77 consumer culture, 16, 41, 144 containment narratives: Americanization of Asian performers and, 69; Las Vegas and, 20, 23 Conway, Donald F., 61 Cooper, Tom, 135

194 Index

Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE), 49 Copa Girls, 32, 37 Cortez, Jack, 27, 39 Cosby, Bill, 38 Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The (TV program), 51, 52 Coyle, Donald, 84 criminal organizations, in Las Vegas, 22, 23, 37 CUAC. See California Un-­American Activities Committee Cuba: Afro-­Cuban culture, 10, 96, 135; anti-­Americanism of, 96; Arnaz, 85; Batista regime, 9, 81, 92; casinos in, 10, 74; CMBF-­TV (TV station), 81; Cold War politics and, 9; Communism and, 9; denouncing of U.S., 2; economic development, 9; exiles from, 9; Mercedes (singer), 78; Mestre, 80–­81; overview, 17, 74; shifting relations with, 103, 105; sugar industry in, 73; television in, 74; tourism and, 74–­75, 92, 99–­100, 103; U.S. political alliance, 91; variety show genre in, 10. See also Castro, Fidel; Cuban Revolution; Cugat, Xavier; De Castro Sisters Cuban Revolution, 74–­104; anti-­ Americanism and, 96; anti-­ imperialism and, 96; Cuban migration, 9; Cugats and, 85–­92; cultural internationalism and, 79–­82; De Castro Sisters and, 92–­96; emerging television medium and, 79–­82; global television race and, 82–­85; “Good Partners” rhetoric, 75–­7 7; Hawai‘i after, 19; overview, 1, 9, 74; Pan-­Americanism, 77–­79; popular music and, 77–­79; radio, 77–­79; U.S. political alliance before, 91; variety show genre after, 10–­11, 96–­104 Cugat, Enric, 87 Cugat, Xavier: Arnaz and, 85–­86, 87; ASCAP and, 87; code-­switching, 86, 90; as cultural interlocutor, 90–­92; good partners rhetoric, 88–­90; in

Korea, 12; in Las Vegas, 39; orchestra band, 86; overview, 18; radio, TV, and film productions, 87; Romay and, 86–­87; Shore and, 87. See also Xavier Cugat Show cultural ambassadors: black musicians as, 2; Don Ho as, 134–­135; Pacific Islander performers as, 129–­130; “Variety International Goodwill Tour,” 32 cultural appropriations, 49, 55 cultural diplomacy: ethnic spectacle and, 41; popular music and, 47; television and, 9 cultural exchange programs, CARE, 49 cultural imagery: desert metaphor, 20; of Hawai‘i, 114; of Las Vegas, 24, 33 cultural influence, of U.S. military base shows, 10 cultural interactions: cultural interventions and, 8; imperial power and, 7–­8 cultural internationalism, 79–­82 Dana, Bill, 133 Davis, Charles K. L., 6, 122, 125, 128–­130, 129 Davis, Sammy, Jr., 27 Debord, Guy, 6–­7 De Castro Sisters, 6, 12, 18, 39, 92–­96, 95, 169n59, 169n60, 169n63 del Río, Dolores, 98, 99–­100 democracy: image of, 17–­18, 38, 76; popular music and, 47; spectacular aesthetics of variety entertainment and, 16; variety show genre and, 19 Denny, Martin, 122, 124–­125, 126 desert metaphor, 20, 21, 24, 31–­32, 38–­39 Dinah Shore Chevy Show (TV program), 11, 47–­48, 54–­55, 63, 122–­124 discrimination, in Las Vegas, 27, 33 diversity: diversity debates, 8; of Hawai‘i, 111; segmented formatting and, 16; vaudeville and, 15–­16 domestic audience, 11, 145 Don Ho Show (TV program), 143–­145. See also Ho, Don

Donna Reed Show (TV program), 51, 53 Du Brow, Rick, 48 Dulles, John Foster, 92 Dumm, Wesley Innes, 115 Eastland, James O., 112–­113 Ebtehaj, Abol Hassan, 26 Ed Sullivan Show (TV program): AFRTS and, 11; American GIs and, 46; Apaka, 126–­128; Asian performers, 61–­73; Asian performers and, 61–­65; cancelation of, 138; Castro interview, 1; Charles K. L. Davis, 128–­129, 129; De Castro Sisters, 95, 95–­96; ethnic performers on, 6; exchange narratives, 61–­73; Haleloke Kahauolopua, 128; internationalism of, 43, 63; Kim Sisters, 63, 65–­73, 68; Korean War, 61–­73; in Las Vegas, 35; Las Vegas and, 32; Lewis, 27; race portrayal on, 62; Siempre en domingo comparison, 141–­142; Takarazuka Dance Theater troupe, 55–­56, 63 Edwards, Webley, 115 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 112, 133 El Show de Renny (TV program), 139–­140 Entratter, Jack, 30, 33, 35–­37 Esquivel, Juan García, 174n70 ethnic performances: growing display of, 8; music, popular and, 11; as objects of spectacle, 4; variety show genre and, 11 ethnic performers: as cheap fill-­ins, 6; comparative analysis of, 11; English language acquisition of, 7; Las Vegas as destination for, 39; marginal status of, 6; navigation of geographical spaces by, 12; as novel entertainment, 6; racialization of, 4, 147; racial triangulation and, 14–­15, 49–­50; segmented formatting and, 11, 15; subsuming of racial oddity of, 16; transnational migration of, 12–­13 ethnic pluralism: in Las Vegas, 25; vaudeville and, 16

Index 195

ethnic spectacle, 20–­42; Americanization of Asian performers and, 40–­41, 69; Cold War and, 18, 21–­23; defined, 6–­7; interpretation/understanding of U.S. and, 147; in Las Vegas, 29; Las Vegas as destination site, 39–­42; national imaginary and, 19; nightclubs and, 18, 27–­28; overview, 20; popular music and, 8; Sullivan and, 65; television in Las Vegas, 24–­39; variety show genre and, 8, 11, 13, 15; vaudeville and, 16 Everly Brothers, 136 exchange narratives, 43–­73; American GIs and, 56–­61; Asian performers and, 50–­56; Cugats and, 85–­92; cultural internationalism, 79–­82; De Castro Sisters and, 92–­96; Ed Sullivan Show, 61–­73; emerging television medium and, 79–­82; global television race and, 82–­85; “Good Partners” rhetoric, 75–­77; Kim Sisters, 44–­46, 56–­61, 65–­73; music and, 46–­50; overview, 43–­44, 74; Pan-­Americanism, 77–­79; popular music and, 77–­79; radio, 77–­79; TV diplomacy and, 44–­46; variety show genre and, 96–­104 exoticism: of Asian performers, 14, 45, 50, 52, 53, 55, 58, 60, 65–­66; of Don Ho, 136, 145; of Hawai‘i, 124; of Hawaiian performers, 122, 124–­126, 128–­129; of Latin American performers, 94; lens of, 14. See also Orientalism Fabulous Las Vegas (TV program), 34–­35 FCC. See Federal Communication Commission Federal Civil Defense Administration, 21 Federal Communication Commission (FCC), 160n5 Fein, Seth, 91, 97 female performers: during Korean War, 45–­46; racialization of Asian, 18; racial liberalism myth and, 16; sexualization of Asian, 18, 51–­52, 57. See also De

196 Index

Castro Sisters; Kim Sisters; Umeki, Miyoshi feminization: of Asia, 58; of Hawai‘i, 133, 145 Fernández, Roberto, 79 Finch, Howard, 140–­141 First International Assembly of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 13, 14, 84 Fitzgerald, Ella, 33 Flores, Carillo, 92 Flower Drum Song (1961 film), 51–­52 Forman, Murray, 6 Fossum, E. G., 45 Foster, Mark S., 116 Francisco, Don (Mario Kreutzberger), 138–­139 Frank Fontaine’s Showtime (TV program), 169n60 Franklin, John Jay, 114 Freedman, Jake, 25–­26 freedom: African American exclusion and, 136; Hawai‘i and, 112; logic of, 16; of modern woman, 52; national image and, 1, 76; national image of, 108, 131; Voice of Freedom, 115 Freeman, Al, 26, 30, 36, 38, 142 frontier myth, 19, 20, 32, 120, 125, 132 gambling, in Las Vegas, 22, 23, 37 Garroway, Dave, 31, 32, 63, 139 Garza, Eva, 78 Gatica, Lucho, 97, 100, 101 gendered racial formation: Cold War and, 9, 147; Cuban variety show genre and, 10; vaudeville and, 15–­16 geopolitics: Hawai‘i and, 137; Latin America and, 96–­98, 103; overview, 8; racial democracy and, 43; triangulation of, 19, 84; variety show genre and, 8, 11, 12, 19 Gersdorf, Catrin, 20 “Getting to Know You” (Rodgers & Hammerstein), 54 Gibbons, Edward, 111

Gillespie, Dizzy, 2, 47 Gisele MacKenzie Show (TV program), 50–­51, 53 globalism: Cold War politics and, 8; Hawai‘i and, 107; illusion of global audiences, 11–­12, 63; international travel and, 63; music and, 12; popular music and, 8; racialized images and, 12; triangulation of, 19; variety show genre and, 19 global television: defining features of, 63; development of, 11–­12, 13; global television race, 82–­85; mobility and, 63, 64; purpose of, 13; Sullivan and, 62–­64 Godbout, Oscar, 30 Godfrey, Arthur, 63, 91, 106, 121, 143 Goldsboro, Bobby, 135 Gonzalez, Verdanette Vicuña, 132 Good Neighbor Policy, 18, 75, 78, 79, 84, 87, 97 “Good Partners” rhetoric, 18, 75–­7 7, 84 Goodson-­Todman, 37 Gould, Jack, 44 Governmental Affairs Institute, 26 Gragg, Larry, 38 Grant, Larry, 114 Gray, Herman, 15, 159n55 Greenspun, Hank, 23, 27 Griffin, Thomas, 69 Guatemala, 96 Guízar, Tito and Lilia, 40, 98, 99 Gunther, John, 30 Haimowitz, Ely, 49 hanbok (traditional Korean dresses), 14, 67, 70 Hancock, Lambreth, 117 Handley, Alan, 50 Harada, Wayne, 144 Harry Owens and His Royal Hawaiians (TV program), 107–­108 Hashiro, Ron, 108 Hawai‘i: agricultural production, 116; coexistence narratives and, 106; Cold War politics and, 9, 145; Communism

and, 9; economic development, 9; feminized image of, 133, 145; geopolitics and, 137; Hawaiian culture, 5; Hawaiian Room, 122, 174n75; Hawai‘i Kai project, 117–­121; hula dancers, 174n78; Japanese American population of, 110; labor strikes, 9, 113; as locale for films/ TV programs, 136; local programming in, 117; military personnel and, 106; overview, 17, 19; Pearl Harbor, 134; popular imagery of, 106; popularity of culture of, 107, 109; promotional films, 121; racial exceptionalism narrative, 107; racial liberalism of, 109; racial makeup of, 110–­112; racial politics in, 109; real estate development in, 19, 107, 114–­122; shifting relations with, 104, 105; tourism in, 19, 103–­104, 107, 109–­110, 117, 121, 132, 137. See also Hawai‘i statehood Hawaiian Eye (TV program), 145 Hawaiian Incident, The (TV program), 117 Hawaiian music, 2, 106, 144 Hawaiian Paradise (TV program), 114 Hawaiian performers. See Pacific Islander performers Hawaii at Work (1960 documentary film), 145 Hawaii Calls (TV program), 115 Hawaii Ho! (TV program), 132 Hawai‘i Kai project, 117–­121 Hawai‘i statehood, 105–­137; Communism and, 109–­113; debate on, 110; Don Ho, 130–­136; multiracial population and, 110–­111; overview, 9, 105, 137; political tensions and, 9; racial politics and, 109–­113; real estate development and, 114–­122; television and, 107–­108; tourism and, 9; U.S. cultural imagination and, 106; variety show genre and, 122–­130 Hayes, Peter Lind, 34 Hebenstreit, Carl, 114 Helffrich, Stockton, 5, 35

Index 197

Hermanos Castro, 6 highbrow music, 84, 130 Hixson, Walter L., 77, 79 Ho, Don: Don Ho Show, 143–­145; in Las Vegas, 40; overview, 19; as performer, 130–­136, 134; popularity of, 2 Ho, Dwight, 133, 135 Ho, Hoku, 136 Holiday in Las Vegas (TV program), 35 Hollywood: Las Vegas and, 29; misrepresentations by, 64; star system, 30 Hope, Bob, 46 Howard Finch Show (TV program), 140–­141, 166n3 I Love Lucy (TV program), 85, 87 ILWU. See International Longshore and Warehouse Union Imada, Adrian, 108, 174n78 immigration: Asian immigrant restrictions, 23; Hawai‘i’s history of, 107; Immigration and Naturalization Service, 61; McCarran-­Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 23 “Inside Las Vegas” (Gunther), 30 integration narratives, 20–­42; African Americans in Las Vegas, 25; Americanization of Asian performers and, 69; Cold War and, 21–­23; Hawai‘i and, 137; Las Vegas as destination site, 39–­42; overview, 20; television in Las Vegas, 24–­39 integration without identification policy, 5, 33, 40 International Assembly of the Academy of Television and Sciences, 64 International Cultural Exchange and Trade Fair Participation Act of 1956, 48 internationalism: Cold War politics and, 8, 21; gestures of, 3; goodwill gestures of, 2; Las Vegas and, 25–­26, 32, 33, 41; music to promote, 101, 125; Pan-­ Americanism and, 76; popular music promotion of, 7; race card and, 10, 43; South Korea and, 71–­72; television

198 Index

and, 63–­64, 79–­82; U.S. government and, 76–­77 International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), 112, 113 Irwin, Stan, 34 I Spy (TV program), 38 Is This Tomorrow? (pamphlet), 111 Izuka, Ichiro, 113 Japan: during Cold War, 58; cultural imagery of, 133–­134; immigration to Hawai‘i from, 107; musicians from, 56; Umeki, 50–­53 Japonisme boom, 67 jazz music, 2, 47–­49, 124, 126, 130, 174n70, 174n79 Jenkins, Henry, 15–­16 Johnson, Lyndon B., 112 Johnson, Victoria, 169n50 Jolson, Al, 46 Julia (TV program), 36–­37, 38–­39 Kaiser, Henry J., 115–­119, 121, 127 Kaiser Aluminum Hour (TV program), 119 Kanahele, George, 144 Kapu, Sam, 144 Kefauver Committee, 22 Key, Alice, 27 KGMB-­TV (TV station), 114, 115 Khairy, Khaireya, 26 Khrushchev, Nikita, 83 KHVH-­TV (TV station), 117 Kim, Claire Jean, 11, 15 Kim, Haesong, 56–­57, 72 Kim, Jodi, 10 Kim, L. S., 52, 65 Kim, Sue, 66–­67, 68–­69, 70, 72 Kim Sisters, 6, 14; Americanization of, 69–­70; Asian performers, 56–­61; assimilationist narratives and, 71; China Doll Revue and, 59, 59–­60; cultural identity of, 70–­7 1, 73; death of Aija Kim, 166n99; on Ed Sullivan Show, 43, 56, 61, 63, 65–­73, 68; exchange narratives, 56–­61, 65–­73; exoticism

and, 66; hypersexualization of, 66; in Italy, 12; Korean War, 45, 56–­61, 65–­73; Las Vegas and, 39, 42; overview, 18; as racialized subjects, 66; Shore on, 47; in South Korea, 72–­73, 73; South Korean government, 71, 163n49 King and I, The (1961 film; Lang), 54 Kingman, Dong, 165n96 Kinney, Ray, 114 Kirkpatrick, Robert L., 26 Kitchen Debate, 83 KLAS-­TV (TV station), 27 Klein, Christina, 18, 106 KNXT (TV station), 34, 108 KONA-­TV (TV station), 115 Korea: Cugat in, 12; economic development, 9; overview, 17; tourism in, 9; transpacific talent exchange with U.S., 18. See also Kim Sisters; Korean War; North Korea; South Korean government Korean dresses, traditional. See hanbok Korean War, 43–­73; American GIs and, 56–­61; Asian performers in variety shows and, 50–­56; atomic bomb testing and, 41–­42; Cuba and, 73; Ed Sullivan Show, 61–­73; estimated impacts on television industry, 45; Kim Sisters, 44–­46, 56–­61, 65–­73; lack of media coverage, 44; Las Vegas and, 21–­22; music and, 46–­50; overview, 9, 18, 43–­44; Tourism Bureau after, 9; TV diplomacy and, 44–­46; USO shows, 69 Kraft Music Hall (TV program), 132, 133, 134 Kreutzberger, Mario, 138–­139 KTLA (TV station), 24 KTRK-­TV (TV station), 75, 140–­141 KTTV (TV station), 24 Kuhn, Josh, 8 KULA-­TV (TV station), 117 labor strikes, in Hawai‘i, 9, 113 La Cadena de las Américas (Network of the Americas), 78

Lachman, Brad, 144 La Hora Estelar (TV program), 97 Lane, Abbe, 18, 86, 87–­92 Lange, Donna, 69 Lansky, Meyer, 74 Lardner, James, 43 Las Vegas, 20–­42; Asian performers in, 29; atomic bomb testing, 24; casinos, 18; China Doll Revue, 58–­60; Cold War and, 21–­23; desert metaphor, 31–­32; as destination site, 39–­42; ethnic spectacle and, 25; ethnic talents in nightclubs in, 7; Hollywood and, 29, 30; “Las Vegas: The New Mecca for the Moviemakers,” 142–­143; nightclub acts, 6; nightclubs and, 27–­28; overview, 17–­18, 20; television in, 24–­39; tourism, 20; TV production in, 143; U.S. defense and, 21–­22, 24; Velasco and, 141–­142; Wide Wide World (TV program), 30–­31 Las Vegas Army Air Field (LVAAF), 21 Las Vegas Beat (TV program), 37–­38 Las Vegas File (TV program), 37–­38 Latin America: anti-­Americanism of, 96; Communism and, 96; Latin American culture, 5; negative impacts on U.S. diplomacy with, 3; Panama Canal, 116; political unrest in, 96; television in, 74 Latin American music: African rhythms and, 96; Good Neighbor era, 79; influx of, 2; introduction and popularity during Cold War, 2–­3; latunes, 87–­88; popularization of, 76; Soviet disdain for, 83–­84; Viva América (radio program), 78. See also Cugat, Xavier Latin American performers, 74–­104; Cold War politics and, 84; Cugats and, 85–­92; cultural internationalism and, 79–­82; De Castro Sisters, 92–­96; emerging television medium and, 79–­82; ethnic ambiguity of, 40; full assimilation illusion of, 13; global television race and, 82–­85; “Good Partners” rhetoric, 75–­7 7; increase in, 5–­6;

Index 199

Latin American performers (continued) in Las Vegas, 29, 39; national imaginary and, 19; as nonthreatening figures, 5, 15; overview, 18–­19, 74; Pan-­ Americanism, 77–­79; popular music and, 77–­79; racialization of, 94; racial liberalism myth and, 16; radio, 77–­79; radio programming and, 77; within U.S. racial hierarchy, 14–­15; valorized over blacks, 15; variety show genre and, 96–­104 Latin Americans: integration without identification policy and, 5; liveness to claim representation of, 4 Latinidad: racial discourses and, 15, 40, 88–­89; stereotypical conventions of, 96 latunes, 87–­88 Lawrence, Carol, 133 Lawrence Welk Show (TV program), 88, 169n50 Lee, Esther Kim, 60 Lee, Nanyoung, 56–­57, 68 Lewis, Joe E., 27 liberalism: Cold War politics and, 8; racial liberalism, 85, 109, 143; racial liberalism myth, 16, 19; racial liberalism rhetoric, 7 Lobato, Eber and Nélida, 100, 102 Longenecker, Robert, 46 López, Ana, 76 Los Panchos, 77–­78, 166n11 lowbrow entertainment, 4, 13, 43 LVAAF. See Las Vegas Army Air Field maboletas, 10 MacKenzie, Gisele, 7, 50–­51 Magnuson, John, 121 Maguire, James, 62 Mallory, L. D., 3 Marinho Sisters, 100, 101 Marlanc, Olivia, 102 Martin, Dean, 88 Maverick (TV program), 119 McCann-­Erickson agency, 119, 121, 139 McCarran, Pat, 22–­23

200 Index

McCarran-­Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 23 McCarthy, Joseph, 23 McCary, Tex, 84–­85, 168n38 McDermott, Pat, 30 McDonnell, Tommy, 60 McKnight, John P., 3 McMackin, Bob, 59 McMicking, Joseph, 118 melting-­pot mythology, 16, 43, 64, 131 Mercedes (singer), 78 Merrill, Dennis, 12, 92 Merv Griffin Show (TV program), 73 Mestre, Goar, 80–­81 methodology, 16–­17 Mettger, H. Philip, 26 Mexico: Azcarraga, Emilio, Sr., 75, 80–­81; Chayres, 78; Dinah Shore Chevy Show in, 63; Garza, 78; Good Neighbor Policy and, 79; Howard Finch Show and, 140–­141; Los Panchos, 77–­7 8, 166n11; Mexican culture, 99; Mexican performers, 98, 169n50; Siempre en domingo, 141–­142; Televicentro, 81; television networks shift to, 96; tourism and, 92; U.S. relations with, 92, 96–­98, 103 Michener, James, 110 middlebrow culture, 13, 18 Mike Douglas Show (TV program), 132 Miller, Bill, 29 minstrelsy, 15 Miranda, Carmen, 39 mixed-­race performers, 19, 105, 124, 127–­128, 131 mobile privatization concept, 12 mobility, global television and, 63, 64 modernization narrative: Hawai‘i and, 108, 120; Las Vegas and, 38; mixed-­race performers and, 19 Moehring, Eugene P., 21 Momi Kai, 128–­129, 129 Montalbán, Ricardo, 98–­100 Moon, Sengsook, 57 Moreno, Lucha, 98–­99

Moreno, Lucía, 140 Moura, Jonas, 102 mulatto musicians, 10 multiculturalism, 8, 155n37 multicultural practices, 15 Mundt-­Nixon Bill, 113, 172n31 Muñoz, José, 4 Murphy, R. E. “Bud,” 142–­143 music, popular: capitalism and, 77; Cold War politics and, 8, 48–­49, 78; contested space and, 8; Cuban Revolution and, 77–­79; cultural diplomacy and, 47; as cultural lens, 7; cultural power of, 101; cultural spaces and, 8; early television programming and, 6; ethnic performances and, 11; ethnic spectacle and, 8; exchange narratives and, 77–­79; export of, 2; folk music at military bases, 10; global cultural exchange, 8; as goodwill gestures of internationalism, 2; influx of, 2; internationalism and, 7; Latin American performers and, 77–­79; as Moscow Exhibition of 1959, 174n79; race and, 8; soul music, 10; U.S. hegemony and, 49; U.S. military and, 10, 47; variety show genre and, 8 music: Asian performers and, 46–­50; ethnic music, 2, 76; exchange narratives and, 46–­50; international music, 2, 55; jazz music, 2, 47–­49, 124, 126, 130, 174n70, 174n79; Korean War and, 46–­50; Oriental pop, 2. See also Latin American music Music U.S.A. (TV program), 77 Mutual Broadcasting System, 81 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Name of the Game (TV program), 36 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 113 National Association of Broadcasters, 84 National Broadcasting Company. See NBC

national imaginary: desert metaphor, 20; ethnic spectacle and, 19; Hawai‘i and, 115, 136; Hawai‘i statehood and, 106; Las Vegas and, 24, 32–­33; racial images in, 15, 16; racial liberalism and, 85; racial liberalism myth and, 19 nation discourses: ethnic talent migration and, 10; transnational entertainment industry and, 15 nation-­state, significance of, 12–­13 Nat King Cole Show (TV program), 5, 32, 33 NBC (National Broadcasting Company), 5, 30–­31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 44, 80, 114, 118–­119 Negro Actors Guild, 85 Nellis Air Force Base, 21 Network of the Americas. See La Cadena de las Américas news programming, 3, 160n4 nightclubs: Asian American performers in, 58–­61; closed-­circuit transmissions from, 33–­34; commercial television and, 6, 27; ethnic performers at, 6; growth of ethnic performance in, 8; in Korea, 57, 58; star system in, 30 Niro, Peter, 136 Nixon, Richard, 83, 131 North Korea: culture industry in, 56–­57; Kim Sisters and, 72; North Korean army, 9, 56 OAS. See Organization of American States Obama, Barack and Michelle, 138–­139 Office of Inter-­American Affairs, 3, 77 off-­whiteness, 15, 107 Okamura, John, 109 “Operational Frontal Lobes” policy, 119 Organization of American States (OAS), 76 Orientalism: American Orientalism, 18, 53–­54, 65–­70; Cold War politics and, 8; on Ed Sullivan Show, 65; Klein on, 18; in Las Vegas, 29; lens of, 14; racialization and, 52–­53; representation of Hawai‘i and, 145

Index 201

Ottolina, Renny, 139–­140 Owens, Harry, 107 Ozawa, Seiji, 56 Paar, Jack, 63, 103 Pablo, Angel, 40, 133, 135, 136 Pacific Islander performers, 105–­137; Communism and, 109–­113; as cultural ambassadors, 129–­130; Don Ho, 130–­136; full assimilation illusion of, 13; in Las Vegas, 40; overview, 105, 137; racial politics and, 109–­113; real estate development and, 114–­122; television and, 107–­108; U.S. cultural imagination and, 106; variety show genre and, 122–­130 Paley, William, 78–­79 Pan-­Americanism, 76, 77–­79, 88, 97, 166n4 Pan-­American Orchestra, 78 Park-­Primiano, Sueyoung, 11 Parks, Lisa, 64 partnership narratives, 19, 74–­104 Pérez, Gustavo, 87 Perry Como Show (TV program), 95. See also Como, Perry Peru, 96 Pillion, John R., 9, 106 pluralism, 16, 25, 41, 138 Polynesian culture, 107, 109, 124, 129 popular music. See music, popular positive/negative image binary, 13 Precht, Bill, 61 Prinz, LeRoy, 121 Prkusarchart, Melissa, 53 propaganda programs: Radio Free Europe, 11, 131; Voice of America (VOA), 11, 77 prostitution: during Korean War, 57; Las Vegas and, 22, 24 Protect Kaho‘olawe ‘Ohana’s 1982 campaign, 146 public relations: black audiences and, 5; Hawai‘i Kai project, 117–­118, 119; Las Vegas and, 26, 30, 37; Royal on, 80 Puhipau (1982 documentary film), 146

202 Index

Quinn, William F., 109 race: Cold War politics and, 8; internationalism and, 10, 43; popular music and, 8; racial segregation, 2; racial triangulation, 14–­15, 49–­50; representations of, 13; segregation, 3; triangulation of raced bodies, 11, 49–­50 race relations: in 1960s, 2; Communism and, 85; ethnic spectacle and, 7; expansion into television, 3; Hawai‘i and, 113; TV’s contribution to betterment of, 5; variety show genre and, 15 racial ambiguity: Hawaiian mixed-­race performers and, 19, 125–­128; off-­ whiteness and, 15 racial discourses: ethnic talent migration and, 10; Latinidad and, 15, 40; racial coexistence narrative, 136; racial exceptionalism narrative, 107; racial harmony mythical narratives, 21, 24, 33; television and, 13, 15; transnational entertainment industry and, 15; vaudeville and, 15–­16 racial diversity, Communism and, 111–­112 racial equality: national image and, 1, 17–­18, 38; national image of, 136; popular music and, 47 racial formation, 9 racial ideologies: blanqueamiento (whitening), 89; as mediated and negotiated, 10; racial mixing (mestizaje), 89 racial integration: Americanized Latinidad and, 96; Cold War diplomacy and, 18; to sell Cold War policy, 7 racialization: of Asian female subjects, 18, 66; of ethnic entertainers, 4 racial liberalism: Asian performers and, 16; female Asian and Latin American performers and, 16; of Hawai‘i, 109; Las Vegas and, 143; national imaginary and, 19, 85; U.S. foreign diplomacy and, 7 racial logics: triangulation of, 19; understanding of, 155n37; variety show genre and, 19

racial mixing, 89, 107 racial politics, Hawai‘i statehood and, 109–­113 radio: ASCAP and, 87; during Korean War, 44–­45; Latin American performers, 77–­79 Radio Free Europe, 11, 131 RAMAC system, 175n79 Randall, Tony, 35, 122–­124 RCTV, 139 real estate development, in Hawai‘i, 19, 107, 114–­122 Red Skelton Show (TV program), 32, 38 Rhee, Syngman, 60, 71 Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), 145–­146 Rio Pact, 76 Rivero, Yeidy M., 10, 89, 94 Robbins, Trina, 58 Roberts, John Storm, 87 Robeson, Paul, 113 Rock, Joe, 114 Rockefeller Foundation, 79, 116 rock ’n’ roll music, 12, 49, 68–­69 Rodríguez Brothers, 6 Roland, Gilbert, 98–­100 Romay, Maria Elena “Lina,” 87 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 75, 87 Roosevelt administration, 75–­76, 84, 116 Royal, John F., 80–­81 rumba, 2–­3 rumberasvedettes, 10 Sábado Gigante (TV program), 138 Sakamoto Kyu, 2 sameness, politics of, 14, 70 Sánchez, Cuco, 40, 98, 99 Sandy, Randy, 81 Sarnoff, David, 63 Sawyer, Dan, 58–­59 Sayonara (1957 film; Logan), 50, 121 Schier, Eric, 78 Schlatter, George, 53–­54 Schwoch, James, 130, 174n79 Scott-­Smith, Giles, 110

segmented formatting, 15, 16, 46 self-­Orientalism, 66, 68, 69 Sennes, Frank, 29, 61 sexualization, of Asian female subjects, 18, 66 Shepard, Elaine, 139 Sherwood, Roberta, 37 Shibusawa, Naoko, 58, 133–­134 Shimizu, Celine Parreñas, 66 Sholokhov, Mikhail, 83 Shore, Dinah, 7, 47, 54–­55, 63, 98, 100–­103, 122–­125. See also Dinah Shore Chevy Show Siempre en domingo (TV program), 141–­142 Silverman, Fred, 143 Sinatra, Frank, 29, 32, 47, 48, 54, 96 sitcoms (situation comedies): Asian performers in, 53; comparison to, 16; representations of blackness in, 15 Skelton, Red, 29, 32 Skwiot, Christine, 105, 112 Sloan, Larry, 34 Smith, Cecil, 29 Smith, Kate, 37 Solomon, Phil, 145 soul music, 10 South America, 96, 100–­103 South Korea: akkŭk (musical drama) genre, 10; Cold War politics and, 9; Communism and, 9; Kim Hŭitŏk, 54; U.S. military in, 162n38; variety show genre, 10; variety show genre in, 10. See also Kim Sisters South Korean government: Kim Sisters and, 60, 71; Tourism Bureau, 9 Soviet Union: Castro and, 1; cultural battles with, 10, 49, 79–­80, 130; denouncing of U.S., 2, 47; global television race and, 82–­85; Moscow Exhibition of 1959, 174n79; U.S. political power over, 13 Spigel, Lynn, 53 Steve Allen Show (TV program), 88, 121 Stevens, Connie, 145

Index 203

Stevens, Muriel, 143 Steves, Rise, 129 Stewart, Sandy, 139 Streibert, Theodore C., 81–­82 Sullivan, Ed: AFRTS and, 46–­47; Castro interview, 1; ethnic spectacle and, 65; global television and, 62–­64, 84–­85; on international music, 55; in Japan, 61, 62; Kim Sisters and, 61; Lardner on, 43; Las Vegas and, 29, 35; travelogues of, 62, 129, 164n57; understanding of racial climate, 62; Velasco comparison, 141. See also Ed Sullivan Show “Sullivan’s Travels” (TV program), 1, 62, 164n57 Sutherland, Meghan, 16 Szuzina, Frank, 81 Tahara, George, 121 Takarazuka Dance Theater, 55–­56, 63 Talk of the Town (TV program), 27–­28 talk show genre, 27–­28 Telesistema Mexicano, 75, 141 television: coexistence narratives and, 107–­108; Cold War politics and, 8; color television, 160–­161n5; in Cuba, 74; cultural diplomacy and, 9, 46–­50; as entertainment not education, 160n4; genres, 6; government collaboration with, 3; growth of ethnic performance in, 8; in Hawai‘i, 114, 115, 117; Hawai‘i statehood and, 107–­ 108; internationalism and, 63–­64, 79–­82; during Korean War, 44–­45; in Las Vegas, 24–­39; licenses, 160–­161n5; as mass commercial medium, 3; as national medium, 11; nightclubs and, 6; Pacific Islander performers and, 107–­108; race card as political asset, 10; racial discourses and, 13, 15; real estate development and, 114–­122; representations of Hawaiians on, 107; tourism and, 19, 143; TV diplomacy,

204 Index

44–­46; Venezuelan television, 139; as weapon against Communism, 13 Television Program Export Association, 82 television stations: CMBF-­TV, 81; KGMB-­TV, 114, 115; KHVH-­TV, 117; KNXT, 34, 108; KONA-­TV, 115; KULA-­TV, 117 Tenney, Jack B., 111 Titus, Dina, 24 Tiu, Ginny, 6, 56 Today (TV program), 31, 63, 139 Tokyo Happy Coats, 45, 59 Torres, Sasha, 4 tourism: commercial television and, 19; in Cuba, 9, 74–­75, 92, 99–­100, 103; Cuba and, 92; in Hawai‘i, 9, 19, 103–­104, 107, 109–­110, 117, 121, 132, 137; jazz tours, 2; in Korea, 9; Las Vegas, 22; Las Vegas and, 20; Mexico and, 92; U.S. foreign relations shift and, 12; U.S. military presence and, 9 transnational entertainment industry, 15 transnational migration, 12 transnational network of broadcasters, 13 transnational romance trend, 58 transpacific cable, 116 transpacific talent exchange, 18 Trio Felix, 100, 101 Truman, Harry S., 21–­22, 42, 44, 72 Turman, Earl, 27 Umeki, Miyoshi, 50–­53 United Nations (U.N.) troops, 46 United Service Organization (USO), 21, 69 United States: national image of, 1; negative imaging of, 2; political power over Asia-­Pacific, 117; relations with Latin America, 74–­75, 116; relations with Mexico, 92, 96–­98; shifting relations with Cuba, 92–­93 United States Information Agency (USIA), 3, 47, 48, 79–­80, 81, 85

U.S. Advisory Commission on Information, 48 U.S. cultural imagination, 106 U.S. defense, Las Vegas and, 21–­22, 24, 25–­26 U.S. Department of State: Foreign Exchange Program, 26; international music tours sponsorship, 2 U.S. government: concerns over China, 23; Federal Civil Defense Administration, 21; Hawai‘i as geopolitical site for, 106, 107; internationalism and, 76–­7 7; jazz tours sponsorship by, 2; Los Panchos and, 77–­7 8, 166n11; military interventions, 72; use of television, 13 U.S. hegemony: expansion of, 9; music, popular and, 49 USIA. See United States Information Agency U.S. military: atomic bomb testing, 24; base shows, 10; Las Vegas and, 21; military television networks, 11; Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), 146; television production delays and, 44–­45; United Service Organization (USO), 21. See also American GIs U.S. military occupation: of Asia-­ Pacific, 15; Kim Sisters during, 56; Latin American, 15; overview, 18; prostitution during Korea War, 57; sexualization of Asian female figure during, 57; in South Korea, 10, 18, 44, 45–­46, 49, 162n38; television programming for, 46 USO. See United Service Organization “Variety International Goodwill Tour,” 32 variety show genre: Afro-­Cuban culture and, 10; Asian performers on, 18, 50–­56; black-­white racial paradigm and, 11; coexistence narratives and, 122–­130; in Cuba, 10–­11; after Cuban Revolution, 96–­104; cultural

internationalism and, 44; demise of, 6; distribution, 11; Donna Reed Show, 51, 53; ethnic spectacle and, 7, 8, 11, 13, 15; exchange narratives and, 96–­ 104; geo-­political knowledge during Cold War and, 1; geopolitical roots of, 10; geopolitics and, 8, 11, 13; Gisele MacKenzie Show, 50–­5 1, 53; globalism and, 19; Hawai‘i statehood and, 122–­ 130; in Houston, Texas, 140–­141; idea of openness in, 16; Las Vegas and, 32; Latin American performers and, 75–­7 7, 96–­104; Merv Griffin Show, 32; Milton Berle Show, 32; Nat King Cole Show, 5, 32, 33; overview, 3–­4; Pacific Islander performers and, 122–­130; pluralism and, 138; popular music and, 8; race relations and, 15; racialized manifestations of, 10; Red Skelton Show, 32, 38; segmented format of, 11, 15, 16, 46; in South Korea, 10; television owners want increase in, 160n4. See also Dinah Shore Chevy Show; Ed Sullivan Show vaudeville, 15–­16 Velasco, Raúl, 141 Vietnam War, 44, 106, 132, 137 Viva América (radio program), 78 Voice of America (VOA), 11, 77, 78, 81 Walbridge, Willard E., 75 Walter, Francis, 23 Warner Bros., 37 Weaver, Sylvester “Pat,” 80, 118–­121 Weintraub, William H., 120 Welk, Lawrence, 37, 88 white-­black racial paradigm, 3, 11, 14, 109, 165n96 Whitehead, John, 120 whiteness: blanqueamiento (whitening), 89, 95–­96; cultural interactions and, 7–­8; Hawaiians and, 107; latunes and, 87–­88; racial hierarchy, 88–­89; television’s investment in, 15; white audiences, 36; white power, 14, 49–­50

Index 205

Wide Wide World (TV program), 30–­31, 32 William F. Brody Productions Inc., 114 Williams, Paul R., 157n21 Williams, Raymond, 12 Wilson, Robbie, 133 Wilson, Robin, 40, 133, 136 Wolfe, Barbara, 83 Wong, Jade Snow, 165n96

206 Index

Wu, Ellen D., 165n96 Xavier Cugat Show (TV program), 86–­87, 90–­92. See also Cugat, Xavier; Lane, Abbe Ybarra, Michael J., 23 Yen, Bach, 6 Zavala, Hermanos, 99

About the Author

Benjamin  M. Han is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University in New Orleans.