HONOLULU (AP) — A stolen totem pole that went from the garden decor of two golden-age Hollywood actors to the basement of a Hawaii museum was returned Thursday to Alaska tribal members.
HONOLULU (AP) — A stolen totem pole that went from the garden decor of two golden-age Hollywood actors to the basement of a Hawaii museum was returned Thursday to Alaska tribal members.
Screen legend John Barrymore was traveling along the Alaska coast by yacht and directed crew members to take the totem pole from an unoccupied village in 1931, said University of Alaska Anchorage professor Steve Langdon, who has long researched the object. They sawed it in three pieces.
Barrymore, star of “Grand Hotel” and grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore, displayed the pole in the garden of his California estate.
After Barrymore’s death, actor Vincent Price, known for horror flicks such as “House of Wax,” and his wife bought the item and also used it as a yard decoration. The couple donated it to the Honolulu Museum of Art in 1981.
Museum officials returned the cedar pole to seven Tlingit tribal members who traveled to Honolulu from the southeast Alaska village of Klawock for an intimate ceremony Thursday.
The tribal members wore leis as they sang songs and handed out gifts, thanking Hawaii for taking good care of the totem pole. The object was packed in a crate to be shipped to Alaska.
Langdon learned the pole was used for burials, and he said there were remains of a man inside before Barrymore had it erected at his home. Langdon does not know what happened to the remains after they were removed from the pole.
It was among more than 100 totem poles that once stood in the old village of Tuxecan on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska, which was inhabited by the Tlingit people, the museum said in a news release.
Of the original Tuxecan poles, only two remain, both in Klawock, the village of 800 people where the tribe moved, according to the museum.