Henry Ford received a call 52 years ago from filmmaker Bruce Brown. Ford was the Jacobs surf team manager and a featured surfer in Brown’s first surf film “Slippery When Wet,” released in 1958. Ford had also appeared in several of Brown’s subsequent films, including “Barefoot Adventure” (1960) and “Surfing Hollow Days” (1961).
Brown wanted Ford to join his fellow Jacobs Surfboards team rider Robert August in a film about surfing around the world in pursuit of the perfect wave. Ford would need to pay his $1,400 airfare.
Ford declined the offer because he didn’t have the airfare and he had been offered a job as a permanent Los Angeles County Lifeguard. So Brown invited Mike Hynson, who lived in his garage apartment, to take Ford’s place in the movie he would call “The Endless Summer.”
Following its 1966 worldwide release, the timeless classic grossed $20 million and made August and Hynson the most famous surfers since Duke Kahanamoku won the first of his five Olympic medals in Stockholm in 1912.
Ford talked about the decision that made him the “Fifth Beatle of surfing” during an onstage discussion with Brown at the Hermosa Beach Community Center, followed by a screening of the film.
The film last screened in the theater 50 years ago. Mary Sue Freese, who was in Saturday night’s sold out audience, said she paid $1 to attend that first screening with her husband Gary and her boss at the time, Hermosa surfboard builder and famed big wave rider Greg Noll. Saturday night’s tickets were $40.
Ford, a 2008 Hermosa Beach Surfer Walk of Fame inductee, told the audience he has only one regret over turning down Brown’s offer to travel the world in search of the perfect wave.
“I was a lifeguard for 23 years and that gave me the ability to go on surf trips to this day,” Ford said, adding that he had returned from Costa Rica just the night before.
“But I do regret missing the opportunity to have spent a year traveling with Bruce,” he said.
Brown cautioned the audience that some of the film, including comments about porpoises in Durban, South Africa, and women in bikinis might be politically incorrect by today’s standards.
“But give me a break,” the 78-year-old director said. “The film is 50 years old.”
Last August, Brown was feted at the Smithsonian when the national museum added “The Endless Summer” to its collection.
“The museum apologized to Bruce and more generally to surfing for not having recognized their influence on American culture sooner,” Ford said. Snowboarding and even skateboarding were previously recognized by the museum.
Bruce donated to the museum an original 16 mm print of “The Endless Summer” and the Bolex he used to film the movie. Hap Jacobs and his partner Dale Velzy had given Brown the camera to make “Slippery When Wet” after seeing the 8mm films Brown had made of his fellow San Clemente lifeguards.
“Bruce was a visionary. ‘Slippery When Wet’ was the first surf film with personality and humor. Previous surf films were just spliced together clips of surfing,” Ford said.
Bruce downplayed the popular belief that his film was responsible for surfing’s explosive growth during the mid 1960s.
“Every 10 years, I get a call from a reporter who asks what made surfing so popular. They think I’m going to say it was my film. But I always answer, ‘Have you ever surfed. Try it and you’ll know.’”
Ford recalled that on his first film trip to Hawaii with Brown, their gear was stolen.
“Bruce called Velzy and Velzy called Rabbit (Kekai) and the next day Rabbit and the boys showed up with our gear and apologized. Rabbit assured us there’d be no more trouble,” Ford said.
Velzy was a pioneer North Shore surfer, after whom Brown named a now famous North Shore surf break.
“I gave the spot the name Velzyland and it’s the only haole name that has ever stuck. That tells you how much the Hawaiians loved Velzy,” Brown said.
Kekai was a Waikiki beach boy and professional surfer well known in the South Bay surf community because of the aloha spirit he extended to visiting surfers when other Hawaiians were not always welcoming. Kekai died last month at age 95.
Brown’s talk and his film highlighted the four day Hermosa Beach Film and Music Festival. Festival director Jon Fitzgerald honored Brown with an award that in future years is to be known as the Bruce Brown Award.
The festival included arguable the most significant collection of surf art ever exhibited in the South Bay. “Sea to See” was organized by surf art curator Charles Adler. It included work by “The Endless Summer” poster artist John Van Hamersveld, Manhattan Beach painter Alex Weinstein, former Surfing and Surfer photographer Art Brewer, local photographers Ken Pagliaro, John Smart and Hermosa’s pioneer surf photographer LeRoy Grannis.
Over 50 films were screened at the Community Center and the South Coast Botanic Garden in Palos Verdes and nearly two dozen bands performed in Hermosa Beach at the Lighthouse, Saint Rocke and Standing Room. The festival also offered a lecture series, which included “Music and Memory,” “Surgical Navigation in Virtual Reality,” and Minecraft and Math” at the Clark Community Building.
The festival ended Sunday evening with an awards ceremony in the Community Center Theater.
“12 Miles North: The Story of Nick Gabaldon,” directed by Richard Yelland and produced by Redondo Beach resident Jason Cohn, received the Best Surf Film Award. The film recounts the story of the first black to surf Malibu.
“Fare,” a thriller filmed entirely inside a ride-sharing car, earned the Best Narrative Film Award for first time director Thomas Torrey.
“Learning To See” received the Cause Spotlight Award. It tells the story of director Jake Oelman’s father, whose photography focused attention on the environmental importance of insects in the Amazon.
“Roubado,” by director Erica Watson, earned Best Short Film honors for its story about a photographer’s response to his parents’ break-up.
“Sidemen,” by director Scitt Rosenbaum, won the Best Documentary Award. It tells the story of Muddy Waters sidemen Pinetop Perkins, Willie ‘Big Eyes” Smith and Hubert Sumlin.
In closing the festival, Fitzgerald promised the festival will return to Hermosa next year.
Festival sponsors included Northrop Grumman, the Hermosa Arts Foundation, the cities of Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, the Hermosa Chamber, Paul’s Photo, Barefoot Wine, Gum Tree and Uncorked. ER
