FILMING PINEAPPLES

Scenes from “Blue Hawaii,” Hal Wallis Production for Paramount on location in Hawaii, called for Elvis Presley to take co-star Nancy Walters and a group on a tour of the pineapple field, stop at a road-side stand so that they could all eat fresh pineapple.

Due to the vagaries of Hawaiian weather, and the shooting schedule, they could not be sure where they would find fields of ripe pineapples when they were ready to film the sequence.

So, Art Director Walter Tyler designed and built a thatched, portable road-side stand ready to be trucked wherever and whenever needed. They finally shot the sequence some 40 miles north-east of Honolulu. While sound and camera equipment were being set up, and Director Norman Taurog was rehearsing the cast, the fourteen sections of the portable stand were assembled in 15 minutes without any loss of production time.

Elvis Monthly, July 1961