The Incredible Life of Don the Beachcomber

by Bob Sparrow

When you hear the name, Don the Beachcomber, your mind typically goes to visions of tropical beaches, tiki bars and drinks with umbrellas in them.  And maybe, if you’re really curious you wonder, was there really a Don the Beachcomber or is that just a made-up name?  Well, both!  There really was a Don the Beachcomber and it is a made-up name, but there is so much more to the story.

I had the pleasure of attending the Newport Beach Film Festival last week and saw a full-length documentary called ‘Don the Beachcomber’.  Several of our neighbors were invited by neighbor, Pam Michael, whose daughter, Britney is friends with one of the producers of this documentary.  It is a most fascinating tale, of which I’ll only be able to tell bits and pieces of it here.

To set the record straight, the person known as Don the Beachcomber was born in Texas . . . or Louisiana, no one’s quite sure, so much for setting the record straight!  But his name, which we are sure of, was not Don anything, but rather, Earnest Gantt.  At the age of 20 he decided that he wanted to travel around the world, which he did.  When he returned, he got a job crewing on a yacht traveling to Australia; after that he spent a good deal of time traveling around many South Pacific Islands.  In 1933, when he was 26, and Prohibition had just ended, he returned home and opened a bar in Hollywood and called it Don’s Beachcomber, which was tropically decorated and served a variety of rum drinks – he is generally credited with inventing the entire ‘Tiki’ genre as well as the popular drink, the Zombie.  The food at the restaurant was mostly Cantonese, which he picked up a taste for in his many travels.  He is also credited with creating the first pu pu platter. When he ultimately started calling himself Don the Beachcomber, he legally changed his name to Don Beach.  He was a cigar smoking, story-telling guy, who could bullshit with the best of them in his affected British accent.  He thus wooed to his restaurant many of the top Hollywood stars of the time, like Marlene Dietrich, Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, David Niven and Vivien Leigh.

In the mid-1930s Don got married to Sunny Sund, who became a very good business partner, in fact so good, that she took over the entire operation and opened several restaurants without him.  The most famous one was the Don the Beachcomber in Chicago, where she shared ownership with the Mob.  Don and Sunny divorced in 1940, but Don stayed on as a business consultant.

In 1942 with the U.S. at war, he joined the US Air Force and became a Lieutenant Colonel, and while he did receive a Purple Heart for being injured while on a ship that was hit, he was mostly stationed at places where military people came to rest and relax.  With his creativeness, he invented a number of ‘military drinks’, like the B-52 and the Navy Grog to name a couple, which kept the troops happy and earned him a Bronze Star for his efforts of keeping up the morale of the troops.

After the war, he had signed an agreement with Sunny, who was now his ex-wife, that he couldn’t open a Don the Beachcomber in the U.S., so he moved to Hawaii, which was then a territory, and opened a Don the Beachcomber in Waikiki. While there, he created two Polynesian Villages, the International Market Place and a series of Don the Beachcomber restaurants

Don married again and divorced again, then married again and moved, with his latest wife, to Moorea, in the French Polynesia islands where he lived happily before passing away in 1989 at the age of 82.

The trailer for this documentary is currently available on YouTube, and the full documentary should be available on various streaming services by the end of the year; I’d highly recommend checking it out.

As a salute to the most famous ‘Beachcomber’, Linda and I, along with Jack & JJ Budd, who we were staying with at their Marriott timeshare at Newport Coast for a couple of nights, went for breakfast at the Beachcomber at Crystal Cove – a great restaurant right on the sand, but unfortunately it was a little too early for a Zombie!!  But I’m going to order one next time I get the chance!