Editing Hawaiian Style

I’ve recently seen and contributed to a couple of social media posts about how film and TV editors are well known for their Hawaiian shirts.  I don’t know why this is the case, but there’s no denying it.  I personally have enough Aloha tops to wear one every day of the month without any repeats.  Many of my friends in the editing world have similar collections. 
This got me thinking about how the whole tradition got started.  Beyond the fact that they’re comfortable and colorful, there must be a reason why we were drawn to them. I can’t speak to anyone else’s story, but here is mine.
Very early in my career (about a year out of college), I was hired as a News Editor at KNBC-TV in Burbank.  Within the first few weeks I was on the job, I started seeing flyers on bulletin boards all over the building advertising “Carl LaFong Day.”  They urged people to come to work in Hawaiian shirts on a certain Friday.  The flyers featured a cartoon man with a tropical drink in hand and had the slogan “Long Live Carl LaFong!”. 
At the time, I didn’t own a single Hawaiian shirt, but with Magnum, P.I. being one of the most popular shows on TV back then (albeit on another network), they weren’t hard to find.  I bought myself a shirt and joined in.  The story I got at the time was that Carl LaFong had been a technician working in the dungeons of NBC Tape Operations.  Apparently, one day, he went on a vacation to Hawaii and was never heard from again.  No date was attached to this story, but I was under the impression that it happened sometime in the 1960’s or 70’s.
Now, the Tape Operations area in Burbank was a dark, depressing place during that time.  Located in the basement of the building, it was noisy, crowded, claustrophobic, and reeked of cigarette smoke.  It made the story very easy to believe.  Anyone who managed to escape, especially to a tropical paradise, deserved to be celebrated.
I recently did some research, asking some of the old guard tape people long retired from NBC (thank you Facebook Alumni groups) and learned that the story wasn’t true.  The real story isn’t nearly as good, but here it is…  Carl LaFong was actually a name from a comedy routine by W.C. Fields (you can find the clip on YouTube).  A tape librarian named Michael Hayne was a big movie buff, and was talking about Carl LaFong to some of his buddies in the basement library.  They decided to start “Carl LaFong Day” as a joke.  I don’t know how or why they chose Hawaiian shirts as the required attire, but they did.  It became an annual event among the union editors and tape operators and was eventually updated to “Carl LaFong Hawaiian Friday”.
Fast forward several years, and my collection of Hawaiian shirts was beginning to grow.  I started my own personal tradition of wearing one on the first Friday of every month.  Soon after that, I decided that EVERY Friday should be Hawaiian Friday.  I’ve been doing this for years now.
In the last few years, as my collection grew ever larger, I stopped limiting myself to Fridays, and now wear them whenever the mood strikes (usually 3 to 4 days a week). 
Many of my editor friends are also regular wearers of the bright floral garb.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that we spend countless hours in small dark rooms, seeing almost no light other than the glow of our flat screen monitors.  Anything to brighten up the room is a welcome sight.
It’s now a tradition that my wife and children gift me every birthday and Christmas with at least one new Hawaiian shirt. I have Christmas themed shirts, Dodgers themed shirts, cocktail themed shirts, and many animal themed ones. There are parrots, monkeys, dogs, sharks, dolphins, flamingos, fish, mermaids... you name it, I've probably got it.  The louder, the better.  I imagine that when I die, I’ll be laid to rest in one.
What about you, fellow editors? What is your Hawaiian origin story? How many Hawaiian shirts are in your closets? Post pictures of them.  Be proud of your Aloha Spirit, and LONG LIVE CARL LaFONG!!
 
 

Photo Courtesy of David Crosthwaite