Honolulu Star-Advertiser from Honolulu, Hawaii • F1

FEATURES EDITOR: Christie Wilson cwilsonstaradvertiser.com 529-4778 tanVaduertteer SUNDAY 11214 SPOOKY DOWNLOAD A chicken-skin collection of Halloween Fiction Contest entries is now available as an ebook F4 In the early years of University of Hawaii Wahine volleyball, the fight for women's equality took place on and off the court. From left: former Women's athletic director Donnis Thompson, past Wahine player Beth McLachlin, late Congresswoman Patsy T. Mink and past Wahine player Marilyn Moniz-Kaho'ohanohano. Background, UH players celebrate after winning the 1979 AIAW national championship. Courting equality A new film explores how landmark legislation helped the University of Hawaii Wahine volleyball team and female athletes everywhere overcome obscurity and discrimination BOOKS F6 ART F7 PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID SWANN dates equal financing for women's athletics and academics.

Mink and UH women's athletic director Donnis Thompson used it as leverage to create opportunities for women at the University of Hawaii. In many ways Thompson is the heart of the story. She had a vision few others possessed, Kaneshiro said. Arriving at the university in 1972, the same year Title IX was passed, Thompson oversaw the growth of women's sports at UH during her nine years as athletic HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER RISEOF THE WAHINE' Where: Hawaii Theatre, 1130 Bethel St. When: 7 p.m.

Monday Cost $11415 Info: 447-0577, www.hiff.org By Mike Gordon mgordonstaradvertiser.com A few years ago as he helped a friend make a short documentary on the University of Hawaii Wahine volleyball team, filmmaker Dean Kaneshiro found himself listening to a story that didn't make sense. The Wahine volleyball players were the rock stars of UH athletics he grew up in Hawaii and knew that. They had won national championships. Legions of little girls coveted their au- premiere Monday at a Hawaii International Film Festival screening at the Hawaii Theatre. Kaneshiro found a local narrative that was dramatic, profoundly far-reaching and nearly forgotten.

Hiding in plain sight was the story of how Title enabled the Wahine to rise to athletic prominence and elevate women's sports in Hawaii. The landmark federal legislation, co-sponsored by the late Hawaii Congress-woman Patsy T. Mink, man DSWANNSTARADVERTISER.COM director. The volleyball team was her flagship. "There was no one believing," Kaneshiro said.

"She believed when others did not. She had to make something that did not exist, and she had to risk her reputation. And she had to risk making a blunder at a time when many people said women don't deserve this." Kaneshiro interviewed former players, coaches and commentators. He found Please see TITLE IX, F10 John Wayne posed with Hawaii greeters Angie Miller and Vivian Thronas in this early 1950s photograph. Pacific filled many spots on Wayne's vast resume 1974 was a tale of discrimination.

Of teams that had to fight for equal access to practice courts. And supporters who risked their reputations to create gender equity in Hawaii. Kaneshiro had never heard any of that. When he told his friends, they thought he was joking. "It was so crazy, and it happened in my own backyard," said the 37-year-old Kaneshiro, who decided to turn it into a documentary, "Rise of the Wahine." The 90-minute film will Wayne in 1930 and appeared in low-budget pictures and serials before his breakout role as the Ringo Kid in director John Ford's 1939 classic "Stagecoach." The legendary Ford made 24 movies with the actor, including their last feature film collaboration, the made-in-Hawaii "Donovan's Reef" from 1963.

But that wasn't the first time Wayne starred in a movie that took place in the Pacific islands. He debuted in an Oceania-set flick in "Adventure's End" (1937) as Please see WAYNE, F10 tographs. Fans applauded them at restaurants. But the story told by a tearful Beth McLachlin one of the original players when the team formed in prominently in the actor's private life. Eliot, whose previous best-selling biographies include "Cary Grant," "Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince" and "American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood," documents Wayne's life and motion picture career starting with his childhood in Iowa, where he was born Marion Morrison in 1907, and on to a football scholarship at the University of Southern California and odd jobs in the film industry.

As a young actor he changed his name to John By Ed Rampell Special to the Star-Advertiser Hollywood icon John Wayne is best known for his roles in rollicking Westerns, but a number of the star's 164 movies over a 50-year span were shot or set in Hawaii or on other Pacific islands. Indeed, most of "Duke's" World War II movies were set in the Pacific Theater, not Europe, and as Marc Eliot's sprawling new biography, "American Titan: Searching for John Wayne" (Dey Street Books, details, Hawaii also figured HBHHBI391.