Samoa is home for Movie Star

It may have been more than sixty years since her first visit to Samoa but Hollywood star, Roberta Haynes, can still perform the siva and remember a few of the Samoan words.

In fact, after the press conference yesterday, the main actress of the Return to Paradise movie performed a siva, together with the very person who had taught her all those years ago, Su’aFreida Paul.

Since the movie, the 86-year-old who lives in Florida, U.S.A., has returned to Samoa four times.

The last trip being for the movie’s 50th Anniversary.

She has returned with her son and friends this time since her last visit which was with a company interested in tourism.

“It’s always wonderful to be back in Samoa,” she says.“There are so many changes now but it’s still beautiful.”

Ms. Haynes was 25-years-old when she first visited our shores. It was her first time to travel overseas.

For her, travelling to Samoa was a dream come true. She had always known about Samoa as Ms. Haynes loved reading books by Robert Louis Stevenson.

At the time, it took her ten hours to fly from Los Angeles to Hawaii and then onto Fiji, where she stayed for three days.

“And then to come to Samoa and land on a grass field! It was so beautiful ...”

Originally, Ms. Haynes was scheduled to stay for only a few weeks. But as the equipment got stuck on a ship in the Los Angeles Harbour, she ended up being here for three months.

During this time, she got to know the people here such as Sala Mata’afa.

“I got to know Samoa and for me it was wonderful because then it helped me in my role of Maeva to know what it was like to be Polynesian.”

Samoa was really untouched in those days.

Although the New Zealand High Commission had set up office here, there were also Australian boats that would come in.

Ms. Haynes also remembers a German shipwreck in the harbour.

Those days, for her, were a very, very important part in her life and always have been.

Unfortunately,many of the people she had met in those days, have passed away.

Sala Mataafa, she said, was a good friend. Before leaving home on this trip, Ms. Haynes found a letter that Sala had written her in 1953.

“When I knew Sala, she also taught me to dance.

She would pick me up with some of her relatives and we would have a picnic and go off to sliding rocks and spend the day.

“At one point, I was invited out to Lepea to spend the night and have dinner and they made a very special dinner of fish on banana leaves, but we had to wait while Mata’afa ate first. They sang me to sleep.” She remembers swimming with Hans Kruse and being invited by Mata’afa to go out. There were no restaurants at the time. He picked her up in a taxi and took her to Moera’s Ice-cream Parlour, known at the time as the coolest spot in town. “He asked me if I wanted to go back to his village of Lepea and listen to the shortwave radio. Well I did and it was really a very lovely evening.”

So fond are her memories of Samoa, that the welcome she received at Faleolo Airport on Tuesday, reduced her to tears. Ms. Haynes had arrived at her second home.

After Return to Paradise, Ms. Haynes eventually stopped acting and became a writer.

She worked as an executive in Hollywood and ended up working at Twentieth Century Fox as vice president, where she was in charge of movies and mini movies. She also produced a movie for CBS Television.

At the moment, Ms. Haynes is trying to get some people in Hollywood or the television and cable industry, interested in doing a mini-series about the life of Robert Louis Stevenson.

“And that’s what I want to do. He came here, he lived here and he died here and he’s buried at the top of the mountain. And I have been to Vailima many times.”

Should she succeed in her mission, Ms. Haynes will live in Samoa for a year during production.

One of the main problems with the Return to Paradise film on her return to Hollywood was a lot of people in the South of the United States refused to show it. At the time, there was still racial segregation. Ms. Haynes says that if the film had been produced today, it would have received a lot better response. And for it to succeed then, would also have needed more money. She was even sent on tours of radio and TV shows, but it was not enough. Also, a lot of the critics who watched the movie, did not realize that she was the actress and thought it was a Polynesian. “And that for me was wonderful because that’s what I wanted.”

And during the press conference, although her Samoan was limited to “talofa...talofa lava”, Ms. Haynes says she still keeps a book on learning the Samoan language.

Over the years, the beauty of her memories in Samoa will never fade. For Ms. Haynes, they were beautiful, with friendships and a culture, in a country she had only read and dreamed about.

In her own words during yesterday’s press conference, “I had fun! I had such fun here. As long as I can, I will keep coming back.”

Ms. Haynes was flown to Samoa by Fiji Airways which connects directly to Hawaii and Los Angeles via Nadi. “We are happy to fly over Roberta Haynes to celebrate ‘Return to Paradise’. A statement said that “this is a symbolic event for Samoa, not just because the movie was based here, but also because of a new resort, which means more room inventory for Samoa.”

The fundraiser held at the Return to Paradise Resort at Lefaga this weekend is sponsored by Pure Sama. The movie marked a change in the history of Hollywood wherein local actors were given the opportunity to have speaking roles.

“This means a lot to the Samoa Beverage Company, as our corporate philosophy is to provide employment to locals and support the economy,” said a company statement.