Donn Blog

A deep dive into the history of Donn Beach, Don the Beachcomber restaurants, and all things related to that story. Never-before-seen items from Donn’s personal archives.

A Letter to Bob Van Dorpe – Aug 1974

A Letter to Bob Van Dorpe – Aug 1974

When I found this letter in Bob Van Dorpe's archive, it just made me happy. It still makes me happy. It is signed from "Huge" which I thought for a bit was "Hugh" Donn's brother. No return address, but the address mentioned in the letter lead me, by way of help from a...

Singapore Manila War Tokens

Singapore Manila War Tokens

On July 22nd of 1942, Donn, on active military service, announced the opening of a Singapore and Manila Don the Beachcomber, and then on the 26th issued 1,000 tokens for a free Barrel of Rum at these locations. Note the lines in the top left where there were cuts and...

Donn’s Notes on the 1930s

Donn’s Notes on the 1930s

Here is another sample of Donn's handwriting. I'm getting better at interpreting it mainly by virtue of knowing a lot of the subjects already and being able to piece it together. I decided to actually type up my interpretation of this page. Maybe I know something the...

Donn’s Notes on the War Years

There are various pages, some hand written, some typed, of notes by Donn on his life. The hand written ones are very slap-dash stuff that was only meant to jog his memory. Being notes written for himself, they are often completely unreadable. His writing his barely...

Hawaii Tomorrow 1966 by Bob Van Dorpe and Herb Kane

This is one example from 1966 of the vision of Bob Van Dorpe and Herb Kane for the islands, in particular for Kona. This is an example of their attitude of "Cultural Tourism," which Donn Beach also embraced, in which the character, culture, and people of an area are...

The Archive is (mostly) digitized

The Archive is (mostly) digitized

150 pounds of documents. It may not look like much, but it took me four and a half months to go through it to digitize it. Approximately 3800 items. About 1200 scanned images, which I mostly also Photoshopped. It was a lot of work and was literally painful. I bought a...

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