Hawaiian Fairy Tale

"Perhaps the biggest deal of its kind in Hawaii history," marveled the Honolulu Advertiser, and all across the island state, where land is scarce and precious, businessmen echoed the Advertiser's wonder.

Popping up out of nowhere, a mysterious "global combine" proposed to buy five Sheraton Corp. hotels on Waikiki Beach and 5,400 acres of choice land on Oahu owned by shrewd Chinn Ho, 58, most meteoric of Hawaii's new millionaires (TIME, May 5, 1961). Total price on the package deal (including a few odd lots from other landholders): $62 million.

Inevitably, there was endless speculation as to who was behind the combine. Sheraton executives suggested it might be oil-rich Saudi Arabians--perhaps even King Saud himself. Others were certain that it was a group of Swiss financiers. Last week Hawaii discovered with some shock and much irreverent merriment that there was nobody behind the combine at all.

Nothing to Lose. From the start, both Chinn Ho and the cautious Yankee management of the Boston-based Sheraton chain were a bit put off by the elusiveness of the would-be purchasers. Publicly, the combine was represented by tough-talking Honolulu Real Estate Woman Ann Felzer.

In the shadows--presumably acting as intermediaries between Mrs. Felzer and the actual buyers--stood one D. Franklin Carson, who called himself a "pro-regent,"* and "Prince" Samuel Crowningburg Amalu, 42, who claims descent from the family of Hawaii's famed King Kamehameha the Great.

Odd as all this was, the combine's offer was just too good to reject. For its five Waikiki hotels, Sheraton was to get $34.5 million--$10.5 million more than they had cost the chain--and a contract to keep on operating them. Chinn Ho stood to do almost as well: besides $10.2 million in cash, he was promised contracts to develop the land he was selling. Said Ho: "We had no alternative but to accept--and nothing to lose." The Good of the Service. Deadline date for the big deal was set for May 15.

While Ho prepared for his closing in Honolulu, Sheraton's President Ernest Henderson flew from Boston to New York and reserved five suites at Manhattan's posh Sheraton-East for the "principals" in his part of the closing. In both Honolulu and New York, representatives of the combine failed to show. Next day came word that Mrs. Felzer and Amalu were in Seattle--where Amalu had been hustled off to jail almost as soon as his plane landed.

The charge: giving a San Francisco attorney a worthless $30,000 check last December as binder on a Hawaiian ranch.

At that, policemen all the way from Manila to Washington began weighing in with reminiscences of Amalu. His claim to Hawaiian noble blood was vague, but he had attended Punahou, Honolulu's exclusive private school. Though he said he went on from there to the Sorbonne and Oxford (and cultivated a British accent to prove it), he actually had his only known brush with higher education at the University of Hawaii, was obliged to resign from the army in 1943 "for the good of the service." His most notable accomplishments since: a two-year stretch in the Philippines' New Bilibid Prison and a four-year sentence to Leavenworth--both for passing bad checks. In between, he had acted as genealogy columnist for the Honolulu Advertiser under the byline of High Chief Kapiikauinamoku.

A master of masquerade who was once entertained by San Francisco society as an Indian maharajah, Amalu, in his latest escapade, had duped all hands by the simple device of promising them big rewards. "In a way," said one Hawaiian, "Sammy's the only innocent guy in the whole deal. All he wanted was publicity." All Too Fantastic. Most of Sammy's erstwhile business associates found it hard to be so forgiving. While Pro-Regent Carson (who turned out to be a 19-year-old Van Nuys, Calif., printer) lamented the $2,000-a-month salary he had been promised, Mrs. Felzer fretted over the $10,000 she had paid Chinn Ho as a binder on the big deal. Said Wheeler-Dealer Ho wonderingly: "It's like a fairy story." Echoed Sheraton's Henderson: "An Arabian Nights tale. I have thought of 20 different explanations for all this, but they are all too fantastic for belief." The only unfazed veteran of the episode was Sammy Amalu, who confidently announced that he planned to 1) raise his $6,500 bail; 2) beat the bad check rap; and 3) fly on to Switzerland. Said Sammy, smiling: "Getting money anywhere is the easiest thing in the world."

* A deputy for a monarch.

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