Clues to Kaua’i’s first movie ‘White Heat’ uncovered

Thanks to careful research work, new details are emerging about the making of “White Heat,” the first Hollywood feature movie filmed on location on Kaua’i.

No print of the black & white “talkie” film has been found, though there are records that show it played on TV in Honolulu in the early 1960s, which means there could be a print of “White Heat” stored in Los Angeles.

A dialogue script and Mainland reviews of the film have recently been discovered, uncovering new information about the film.

The shooting title of “White Heat” was “Cane Fire” and the movie was mostly filmed in and around Waimea Sugar’s mill in Waimea town in 1933.

Thanks to the careful preservation of photographs taken by Kaua’i photographer W.J. Senda, the well-known owner of Senda Studios in Lihu’e and the official still photographer for the film, some images from the movie still exist.

Besides being the first Kaua’i movie, the film also holds historical value for its backdrops would serve as a historical picture of a Westside Kaua’i sugar cane plantation in action in the mid-1930s.

The new material about the film was located by Bob “Lopaka” Stevens, a retired dean of graduate library and information studies at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa who moved to Lihu’e with his wife Helen in 1997. Stevens also served in administrative positions at the Library of Congress. He is now finishing up a stint as the volunteer librarian at the Kaua’i Historical Society.

Stevens is familiar with the setting of “White Heat,” as he spent time on r&r in Waimea in 1944 when he served as an officer in the Navy and shipboard Japanese translator. “We rented horses from a family near Waimea, and one of boy acted as guide for a three-day ride,” Stevens recalls.

In his search for “White Heat” information Stevens contacted Rosemary Hanes, the Reference Librarian in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room at the Library of Congress.

“She deserves credit for finding a location of the script for Cane Fire (White Heat) and providing the instructions for ordering a copy,” Stevens said.

“Unfortunately, we do not have copy of the film nor do we have a script,” Hanes told Stevens after her first search for information about “White Heat.” Subsequently, Hanes found a number of reviews of the film in contemporary newspapers and film trade publications. One of the reviews mentioned songs sung in the film, and that the cane fire scene that climaxes the movie was tinted red to add a special effect.

Hanes’ major find was the dialogue script from the film, which she located at the Motion Picture Division of the New York State Archives.

The script provides lines said by the actors and appears to have been taken from the film, rather than used while the movie was being made on Kaua’i. Jimmy Bodrero, who is credited with writing the lines along with director Lois Weber, threw in some pidgin to the melodramatic lines.

The script was ordered from New York by Christine Fay. Fay is the main collector of information and photographs about “White Heat” for her family owned the Waimea Sugar plantation set and her grandfather Lindsay Fay was involved in the filming.

Interest in the movie grew in 1996 during the writing of the book “The Kaua’i Movie Book,” which offered the first comprehensive look at “White Heat” ever published. Fay then began gathering stills from her family’s photographic collection and from the family of W.J. Senda.

Fay scoured microfilm copies of The Garden Island from the mid-1930s for more information about the filming of “White Heat,” and found connections to other kama’aina Westside families.

Fay said: “There was an article about the actors being feted at someone’s house. Since I was going through the microfilm at the Waimea Library I showed them to Susan Remoaldo (Waimea librarian) and she got all excited because it was her grandfather that threw the party. She always wondered why this picture of Hardy Albright and her grandfather was in a family album.”

Fay said the dialogue recalls the 1930s writing of Armine Von Tempski of Maui, a woman author who grew up on a ranch on the slopes of Haleakala.

A brief review of the dialogue script by Fay points out how “White Heat” reflects filmmaking in the 1930s.

“It is definitely of a particular time period and reflects mainstream white culture in the United States in the 30’s. Some of it can be shocking, after all it is 70 years ago. But then the director Lois Weber made a very good career for herself using shocking subjects and images in her films. It is racist in its language and the plot line is very melodramatic. Although the reviews are a mixed bag, it is hard to really get a clear picture of what the movie was really about. The script pulled it all together. It also really shows how much ad-libbing went on in these early movies which were shot quickly and as cheaply as possible.”

Fay also described her family’s role in making the film.

“My family seemed to be involved in setting up the shots for the movie as it was entirely filmed on location at both Waimea and Kekaha Plantations using the workers as ‘extras.’ They had to time the filming with the actual harvesting to capture the dramatic cane fire. The writer Jimmy Bodrero was a contemporary of my grandfather Lindsay Fay and Alan Fay who were at both plantations. Brodrero was the grandson of Colonel Spalding of Makee Plantation. There are pictures of my grandfather in the Senda photographs. They had to organize everything with the film crew. The actors seemed to be dressed very authentically as well. It would have been nice to see the film just from the historical standpoint as it captures plantation work at those places in 1933. My grandfather’s house at Poki’i (above Kekaha) was used in the film as well and can be seen in the movie stills.”

Finding a print of the film still remains elusive. “Hopefully the movie will be found in some dusty closet somewhere,” Fay said.