Newport Beach Tiki
Americans sought adventure in tiki culture after WWII. Newport Beach, with its sunny coastline and growing leisure scene, became a mecca for this midcentury trend. The SoCal region had Polynesian-inspired design with California's own identity. Disneyland open their doors in July 1955 with unique experiences like the Jungle Cruise that propelled this fascination.
Tiki restaurants with bars flourished in the starting in the 1950s with restaurants like Christian’s Hut and Don the Beachcomber. The venues had thatched roofs, flaming torches, carved wooden idols, and tropical cocktails like the Mai Tai and Zombie. Hollywood films like South Pacific and the TV show Gilligan’s Island, the harbor opening scene was filmed in the Newport Beach Harbor in the 1960s, popularized tiki style.
Newport Beach Tiki was more than décor—it was a lifestyle. The culture offered a playful blend of adventure and island music. Newport is know for the surf rock concerts, aloha shirts at beach parties, and backyard luau parties. This exhibit explores Newport Beach’s role in the rise of Tiki and reflects on the culture’s enduring legacy. The exhibit contains artifacts on loan from Ken Carpenter (NBHS Board Member), Barry Haun (Curator of Surfing Heritage), Surfing Heritage & Cultural Center, and Jennifer Keil (Founder of 70 Degrees).
When Walt Disney was designing Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise in the early 1950s, he wanted to create an immersive “adventure through exotic rivers of the world.” But Disneyland was built in the middle of Anaheim orange groves — there was no jungle, no waterway, no lush tropical feel.
So Walt and his Imagineers had to design and landscape the jungle themselves and find the right boats. The Jungle Cruise’s original fleet of boats were built by the William Garden Boat Works in Newport Beach, a well-known boatyard at the time, which specialized in small pleasure craft and yachts.
Disney contracted with Newport Beach builders to design and construct the shallow-draft, steel-hulled riverboats that could navigate the artificial rivers in the Adventureland attraction. They were styled to resemble British colonial river launches of the 1930s, with canopies, small smokestacks, and “steam” whistles (though they were electric). The boats were delivered to Anaheim and installed in the new attraction’s winding river system.
The Newport Beach boatbuilders’ skill in working with lightweight yet sturdy hulls, and their experience with harbor launches and small craft that had to operate in tight, shallow spaces (like Newport Harbor itself), made them a natural fit for Disney’s needs.
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According to "Dr. Skipper", author of The Jungle Cruise: The Wild History of Walt's Favorite Ride, "Here he is showing off a Jungle Cruise boat. The Jungle was his favorite attraction at Disneyland. He would even stand out by the hippo pool at night and watch boats go by while he smoked. Skippers knew he was out there when they’d see the subtle glow of his cigarette."
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Gilligan’s Island, the classic American sitcom that aired from 1964 to 1967, is remembered for its quirky characters stranded on a desert island after a “three-hour tour” gone wrong. While the show was set on a remote, fictional island, much of it was filmed in California. The lagoon scenes were shot at CBS Studio Center in Studio City. The opening credits also incorporate shots of the entrance to Newport Bay with the rock jetties featured in the "three-hour tour" sequence of the S.S. Minnow.
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Newport Beach embodies the kind of coastal lifestyle that Gilligan’s Island gently parodied — with its yacht clubs, boat harbors, and island communities such as Balboa Island and Lido Isle. Newport’s real-life boating culture, coupled with its status as a playground for Hollywood stars during the mid-20th century, creates a rich backdrop for understanding the cultural moment in which Gilligan’s Island was conceived. Locals included Desi and Lucy Arnaz on the Desilu, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart on the Santana, and John Wayne on the Wild Goose.
