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Al Harrington – Waikiki showroom headliner, television actor, teacher and businessman – died Tuesday afternoon after suffering a stroke last week, his family confirmed. He was 85.
Born Tausau Ta’a in American Samoa, Harrington was raised by his maternal grandmother until he was 3 years old and his mother, Lela Suapaia, brought him to live with her in Honolulu. She eventually married mainland-born Roy Harrington, who had come to Hawaii during his military service. Al got on so well with his stepfather that he officially changed his last name to Harrington.
Harrington attended Punahou (class of 1954), played on the school’s football championship team, and took part in the theater program. He continued his education at Menlo College and then Stanford, where he played soccer and got his degree in history.
Harrington’s stats on the field earned him an offer from the Baltimore Colts, but instead chose to spend two years on a Mormon mission in Samoa, where he was again fluent in the language of his ancestors. He then returned to Hawaii, where he taught history and coached soccer in Punahou while on a tourist show in Waikiki. Undeclared work
In 1972 Harrington joined the cast of “Hawaii Five-0” as Detective Ben Kokua, replacing Gilbert “Zulu” Kauhi (Kono) as a Polynesian member of the Five-0 team. Harrington’s three years on the show earned him an international following.
By the time Harrington left the show, he turned his attention to entertainment, becoming a headliner and recording artist in Waikiki.
Harrington brought a businessman’s approach to the business.
He attended the school’s early morning “tourist briefings” where visitors were given “sales pitches” for various shows and other attractions; he worked with a driver so he wouldn’t have to look for a parking space. At his dinner shows in the Polynesian Palace showroom on Lewers Street, Harrington went out during dinner and went from table to table, introducing himself and learning where each group was from. During the show he dedicated songs to “My friends from …”.
He also used his stage platform to inform the visitors who were visiting him. Along with all the traditional components of the “tourist show” and a bit of pidgin, Harrington mentioned that the people of Hawaii wanted the same things that Americans wanted everywhere else – and that no one in Hawaii really wanted to live in a life of “grass hut” again.
On the way he made a feather headband a personal trademark. He said his mother told him he would be fine as long as his head didn’t get too big for the headband, but as “the guy with the headband” visitors could easily remember him too.
Harrington retired as Waikiki headliner in 1992. For the next 13 years he lived on the mainland and did film work in Utah and California. In 1996 he returned for a visit to star alongside Laura Bach (Desdemona) and Richard MacPherson (Iago) in the title role of Kumu Kahua’s radical reworking of “Othello”.
Harrington returned to Hawaii for good in 2005. A few years later he returned to network television as a surf shop owner / bus driver Mamo Kahike in the “restart” of “Hawaii Five-O”.
In 2018 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hawai’i Academy of Recording Arts.
Harrington leaves behind his wife Rosa Harrington, sons Alema and Tau, daughters Summer Harrington and Cassi Harrington Palmer, and several grandchildren.
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