Aggie Grey was born in
Western Samoa in 1897 and died in 1988. She was a well-known hotelier and founder of
Grey Investment Group and
Aggie Grey's Hotel.
[http://www.pacificislandtravel.co]
Hotel in Apia (Upolu)
Biography
Aggie Grey was born Agnes Genevieve Swann,
[travellinglady.tweedies.bi]
The hotel that became a legend
in the South Pacific the daughter of William Swann an English chemist and his Samoan wife Pele.
In 1903 her mother died and she was raised by her father and later by him and her step mother. Aggie Grey is the subject of two biographies by Nelson Eustis
and Fay Alailima, was on several postage stamps of Western Samoa, and was a pioneering figure of the Samoan hotel industry.
Aggie Grey died in 1988.
In her adult life she became popular on the Samoan social scene.
[The Samoans: A Global Family By Frederic Koehler Sutte]
Page 14 Aggie Grey: West Point Hotelier, Legend. Apia, Upolu, Samoa
/ref>
She founded her hotel in 1933,Dorothy Lamour
Dorothy Lamour (born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton; December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the '' Road to...'' movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing ...
, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, quiet screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, ...
, William Holden
William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film ''Stalag 17'' (1953) ...
, Raymond Burr and Robert Morley
Robert Adolph Wilton Morley, CBE (26 May 1908 – 3 June 1992) was an English actor who enjoyed a lengthy career in both Britain and the United States. He was frequently cast as a pompous English gentleman representing the Establishment, of ...
who stayed at her hotel. Her hotel was involved with the production and housing of the crew on the American film production of Return to Paradise (1953) starring Gary Cooper.
She was friends with American writer James Michener
James Albert Michener ( or ; February 3, 1907 – October 16, 1997) was an American writer. He wrote more than 40 books, most of which were long, fictional family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and ...
and she and her sister Mary Croudace (Aunty Mary) were widely believed to be possible models for his character Bloody Mary that he created in ''Tales of the South Pacific
''Tales of the South Pacific'' is a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of sequentially related short stories by James A. Michener about the Pacific campaign in World War II. The stories are based on observations and anecdotes he collected while s ...
'' (1946). The book was adapted into Broadway's musical blockbuster '' South Pacific'' (1949) by Rodgers and Hammerstein
Hammerstein is a municipality on the river Rhine in the district of Neuwied in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous co ...
(collectively known as Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein was a theater-writing team of composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and lyricist-dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960), who together created a series of innovative and influential American musicals. Their popular ...
), and subsequently the 1958 film South Pacific.
Aggie Gray's sister Mary Croudace ran "The Casino" a boarding-house in Apia, and was reputed to have been the lover of a Marine general in the war. Mr Croudace, reputed to have been a New Zealand official, was long gone.
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Grey, Aggie
1897 births
1988 deaths
Samoan businesspeople
Samoan people of English descent
Hoteliers
20th-century businesspeople