“Ben Wood, who sold the Star-Bulletin in the streets
of downtown Honolulu during World War II, writes of people,
places and things every Saturday.”
That was the familiar tagline of entertainment columnist Wood, 94, who died Friday (June 19), at a Kaneohe senior care facility, following a long illness.
According to friends, he vacated his downtown condominium years ago and spent a year at a Kaneohe care facility before moving to St. Francis Medical Center for faith-based senior care.
Wood, whose last column was on Oct. 14, 2017 in the merged Honolulu Star-Advertiser, was a legendary reporter-columnist who wrote about island culture, people, and the performing arts. He covered the Golden Years of Waikiki at the height of the visitor industry’s growth..
He hawked the Star-Bulletin in the streets of downtown Honolulu during WWII, which symbolically was when he started working for the then-evening paper. That was his claim to fame.
He attended Roosevelt High School, graduating in 1949.
He joined the Army in 1955, serving in the infantry for a year and was assigned to the European edition of the Stars & Stripe, serving for eight years as a civilian journalist following his military discharge
He adored wine and fine dining, commonly winding up at hot spots like Michel’s and Ruth’s Chris Steak House for celebratory events, like his fabled, annual all-wahine birthday luncheons.
Wood got married in 1974 to his wife, Brita (nicknamed “the Frau,” to his friends and readers) but she preceded him in death in 1996 .
Services are pending.
Cravalho is banking on color green
Auliʻi Cravalho, who voiced Moana in the 2016 animated film of the same name, has joined the cast of “My Adventures with Superman.” Cravalho will voice Jessica Cruz in teenage mode, who eventually will become DC Comics’ first human female Green Lantern.
In “Superman,” Cruz will be a teenager.
Jake Wyatt, showrunner on “My Adventures with Superman” and the upcoming “My Adventures with Green Lantern,” stated the following regarding Cravalho’s casting:
“Casting brought us a lot of fantastic reads for Jessica. But when I heard Auli’i, there was this complexity of emotion to her read — a natural, almost oblivious charm that she brought to Jess — and I knew she was the one.
“But I hadn’t even looked at the name, I just ran out of my office like, ‘Have ya’ll heard this take??’ Then Stephanie [Gonzaga] and Karen [Graci] told me that it was Auli’i, that she was already a princess, how she’d done brilliant work with Karen on a previous show, and that was that.”
Cravalho rose to prominence with her vocal performance as Moana in the hit Disney film. She reprised her role for the sequel, “Moana 2,” as well as a cameo in “Ralph Breaks the Internet.” She previously played Janis in 2024’s “Mean Girls.”.Known for her strong singing voice, Cravalho has also embraced an impress theater resume, having starred in “Sunset Boulevard,” “Evita,” “Children of Eden,” and “Cabaret.”
“We’d already planned for the second episode to showcase how Supergirl [Kiana Madeira], in particular, was changing their world. We wanted to look at how different people had very different reactions to the same Kryptonian. So when word came down from the brass that Green Lantern was greenlit, we wanted our pre-Lantern Jessica Cruz to give us the girl-on-the-street view of Supergirl. How would a shy, relatively powerless teenager see this powerful, young super-woman out there changing the world? And what would it be like for Supergirl to see herself through Jess’s eyes?”.
.And that’s Show Biz…
