Real Estate: Hawaiian Fairy Tale

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"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.