Celebrities

         Nephi Hannemann is an actor and singer of Samoan , German and English descent who has appeared numerous times on Hawaii Five-O and One West Waikiki.

Professional Career:

In his acting career, Hannemann played several characters in various episodes of Hawaii Five-O from 1969 to 1979.

        Hannemann recorded and released his solo LP “The Polynesian Man” in 1972, where his voice was compared to Don Ho and Tom Jones in popularity and versatility as a singing star. He had also been working on a second album with Lani Kai, but unfortunately, Kai died before its completion.

Hannemann was one of a group of singers in Don Ho’s “Hana Ho Review” at the former Forbidden City nightclub on Kapiolani Boulevard.

In 1974, played the character of “Lt. Kelani” in the American television police drama McCloud, and also in that same year he played a witch doctor character “Malakoma” in the Disney television movie – The Castaway Cowboy.

Hannemann has been involved in a number of business ventures, such as the Maui Quarterly that he and two partners established in 1983, which was a business and travel magazine, and as an advertising director where he was the main writer for seven years.

Hannemann also wrote scripts, screenplays and songs throughout the years. As of 2002, Hannemann was the spokesman for health care products made in Hawaii and Polynesia, under the name of “The Polynesian Man.” 

        Albert Wendt is a Samoan poet and writer who also lives in New Zealand. Among his works is Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979).

           Albert Wendt was born in Apia, Samoa. Wendt is of German heritage through his great-grandfather from his patrilineal ancestry, which he reflected it in some of his poetry works. He studied at Ardmore Teacher's College and at the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an M.A. in History. His Masters' thesis was about the Mau, Sāmoa's independence movement from colonialism during the early 1900s (decade). His thesis was titled Guardians and Wards: A study of the origins, causes and the first two years of the Mau in Western Sāmoa.

He returned in 1965 to Western Samoa, becoming headmaster of Samoa College. In 1974 he moved to Fiji, where he taught at the University of the South Pacific.

In 1977 Wendt returned home to set up the University of the South Pacific Center in Sāmoa. He worked closely with the literary journal Mana, and edited in 1975 collections of poems from Fiji, Western Samoa, the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), and the Solomon Islands.

Wendt's epic Leaves of the Banyan Tree (1979) won the 1980 New Zealand Book Awards. He was appointed to the first chair in Pacific literature at the University of the South Pacific in Suva. In 1988 he took up a professorship of Pacific studies at the University of Auckland. In 1999 Wendt was visiting Professor of Asian and Pacific Studies at the University of Hawaii. In 2001 he was made Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to literature. In the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours he was appointed a member of the Order of New Zealand.