FEATURE:

Sherman has hobnobbed with many celebrities over the years, including (clockwise from top left) Sammy Davis, Jr., Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra (shown here shaking hands with Sherman’s daughter Kerry), Elvis Presley, John Wayne and Burgess Meredith.

Ask anyone who knows him: Eddie Sherman is a one-of- a-kind commentator on life in Hawaii. For decades, his three-dot columns in The Honolulu Advertiser and MidWeek kept readers abreast of the goings-on of both the man in the street and Hollywood’s biggest celebrities.

Sherman’s daily patter ran in the Advertiser from 1955 to 1973; his weekly column for MidWeek appeared from 1985 to 2006. No word-for-word press releases sent from public relations representatives for Sherman. Instead, he amused and informed readers with witty columns sprinkled with names and anecdotes that would later be repeated at water fountains and lunch tables all over town.

When he was roasted some years ago at a Temple Emanu-El fund-raiser at Hawaii Theatre, diva Bette Midler, who was born and raised in Hawaii, said, “I couldn’t start my day without reading Eddie Sherman’s column. I had to see what was happening in Honolulu!”

Now 83, Sherman is “retired,” meaning instead of writing columns he’s devoting his time to Eddie Sherman Enterprises, three businesses he and his wife Patty own at the Pearl Harbor Visitors Center, and to spearheading domestic and international marketing efforts for Deep Sea Health Hawaii, a new company that’s bottling desalinated seawater. Ask what the secret of his energy is and Sherman will respond, “Be active. Be mentally alert. Be curious. Read books, talk to people and catch up on the news. You can surprise yourself—and your doctors—if you do.”

Lately, you’ve probably seen Sherman at signings all around Oahu for his new book, Frank, Sammy, Marlon and Me: Adventures in Paradise with the Celebrity Set (see sidebar). He also has been busy with speaking engagements, sharing tales from the book with groups ranging from the Hawaii Jewish Seniors to residents of the Arcadia and Kahala Nui retirement communities.

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“People had asked me for years to put my stories in a book and I resisted,” Sherman says. “I thought I could only write short items, but then I sent a few sample chapters to George Engebretson at Watermark Publishing and he called me back immediately. He was enthusiastic and said he’d publish the book. That was all the encouragement I needed, and when I finally started to write, it just flowed. I can’t remember yesterday, but those stories from years ago are so fresh in my mind!”

Zulu’s Fatal Mistake One of Steve McGarrett’s police gang in Hawaii Five-O was a big, burly Hawaiian professionally known as Zulu, whose real name was Gilbert Kauhi. Zulu was a popular entertainer and nightclub comedian. He was always in demand. Audiences loved him, and he became one of Five-O’s favorite personalities. The show gave him international exposure and fame. His career was skyrocketing. No doubt, Zulu had a big future. Then, in 1973, he made a fatal mistake. While shooting a street scene in downtown Honolulu, Zulu spied the show’s publicity man, Len Weisman. Len was a Hollywood veteran who once worked for the legendary Howard Hughes. On the Five-O set, Weisman answered only to Jack Lord. Sherman (left) on the set of Hawaii Five-O with star Jack Lord and producer Leonard Freeman. Zulu walked over to Weisman between takes and began needling him about not getting enough publicity. Weisman explained that he only worked for Jack. Zulu increased his vitriol at Weisman for not publicizing him more. The needling inexplicably led to some vicious anti-Semitic remarks. Weisman was stunned at the attack. He didn’t know what to say. Those who witnessed the verbal fireworks were also stunned. Nobody could figure out what caused it all. Weisman, verbally battered, retreated to his office. When Jack Lord returned to Five-O headquarters after finishing his scenes, he saw Weisman with his head resting on his desk. Jack asked what was wrong. “Oh, nothing. I just don’t feel well,” said Weisman. That answer was not good enough. Jack knew better. He wanted to know what the problem was and kept after Weisman to tell him. Finally, Weisman explained what had happened with Zulu. Jack hit the roof. He immediately went to the phone, called (show producer) Lenny Freeman in Los Angeles and said he would not return to the set until Zulu was off the show. Permanently. Zulu quickly got the word. He was through. Fired. A few days later, Zulu came to my office at The Honolulu Advertiser. He was heartbroken. Totally dejected. “I really didn’t mean anything,” he told me. “I like Len. I just got mad about not getting more recognition on the show. That’s all.” He asked for my help. He wanted to explain his side of the story. I told Zulu it was too late. He had really committed show-biz hara-kiri. News of his anti-Semitic attack against Jack Lord’s publicity man was all over Hollywood. Suddenly, Zulu’s future engagements for various personal appearances were cancelled. Professionally, he was treated like he had a contagious disease. Doors slammed in his face. The poor man was devastated. He never worked on another TV show again. Overnight, Zulu went from enjoying a thriving show business career to professional oblivion.—From Frank, Sammy, Marlon and Me: Adventures in Paradise with the Celebrity Set.

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Sherman’s life is as colorful as the tales he shares in his book. The son of Russian immigrants who divorced when he was a young child, he spent his earliest years in Boston. Bessie, his loving mother, was forced to give him up when economic success didn’t come in her new homeland, so Sherman spent his formative years in a Jewish orphanage where his most nurturing influence was Marjorie Ellis, his sixth-grade teacher and a lifelong friend.

By the time he was a teenager, Sherman was fighting in Golden Gloves bouts and looking forward to a career in boxing. A dislocated shoulder squelched those plans, and before he graduated from high school, Sherman found himself on a ship bound for a job in the middle of the Pacific. Seventeen years old with a medical discharge from the Coast Guard, he arrived at Pearl Harbor and began working as a sheet metal worker. It was February 1942, just six weeks after the bombing by Japanese warplanes, and the base was still smoldering.

Throughout the 1940s and the early 1950s, Sherman “grew up” in Hawaii. His interest turned to broadcasting, and after becoming the first graduate of the Pasadena Institute for Radio in California, he was hired as an announcer for Honolulu radio stations KGMB and KGU. He emceed numerous events and soon branched out into comedy, including stints at Mainland nightclubs.

One snowy night while he was driving through New England, Sherman realized that “Hawaii was my mistress,” and he returned to Honolulu in 1954.

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“It was a small town at that time,” he recalls. “I would go out every night and soon became friends with Buck Buchwach, who was the city editor at the Advertiser. We’d visit clubs and meet people. Buck suggested that I write a column about what was going on and the celebrities who were coming in on the Matson ships. I told him I didn’t know anything about writing for a newspaper, but why should that stop me?”

And it didn’t. Unlike many of his colleagues who had journalism degrees and who had cut their teeth writing for the Stars & Stripes military newspaper during World War II, Sherman didn’t even have a high school diploma. That, however, contributed to his epigrammatic views on local life. Who else could have come up with phrases like “Sashimiland,” “Haolewood,” “Mynah Matters” or “Hulapaloozes” in a column that was the number-one read in its day?

“My show biz background helped me write my column,” Sherman says. “I was always looking for humor in everything and I made sure I was accurate. I’d find the facts, like a lump of clay, and then carve my items from them. I had my sources—had to—and always had my notebook and pen ready. I did one-liners, not paragraphs like the other columnists, so it took me all day and night to do a column.”

Sherman always kept a humorous outlook and always saw the good in people. “Don’t write anything negative and hurt anyone was my credo,” he says. His columns were notorious, fun and revealing reports about Hawaii’s social scene.

“Celebrities would do an interview on the Mainland and that would be it for the journalist,” Sherman says. “But they’d come to Honolulu and spend awhile. If they liked you, that meant we’d go out or they’d come over to my house for parties. I’d get to really know people in a way not possible anywhere else.”

Clowning around with Red Skelton (left).

He hosted a get-together at his Maunalani Heights home with Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme, comedian Totie Fields and her manager/husband Georgie Johnson, and noted chef Titus Chan, who prepared the meal. He sunned at the Kahala Hilton, his “headquarters for 15 years,” with Michael Landon and Cher. He attended a dinner in the private room at Canlis as a guest of Frank Sinatra. He treated Marlon Brandon to a home-cooked dinner of Irish stew.

“Being a columnist, I could ask anybody just about anything,” Sherman says. “I had journalistic license to get to know people, and if anyone objected, I’d say I was only doing my job! I got to meet all kinds of people; I had the opportunity to sit on the 50-yard line of life and watch the passing parade.”

Writing his columns, Sherman says, was a constant education that opened his eyes to the power of journalism. “I’ll never forget when I was invited to Los Angeles for the world premiere of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World by director Stanley Kramer. I’d interviewed him when he was on vacation here, and we’d become friends. Someone told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd that I was coming, and he must have run something because when I checked into my hotel, the front desk clerk said he had some messages for me.

“He proceeded to read them one at a time, slowly: ‘Joan Crawford, Red Skelton,’ plus a dozen or so other big names. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked. I loved telling him I was just a newspaper guy from Honolulu!”

Just a newspaper guy from Honolulu? With an exciting 50-year career behind him and no signs of slowing down, Sherman remains an icon in the continuing history of Hawaii.

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