Grace Buscher Guslander and her husband Lyle launched the Coco Palm Resort in 1953 and under Grace’s management turned it into a world-famous destination where Hollywood royalty came to play, according to The Courier-Journal and “The Old Queen and The King.” The resort’s site was once the home of Kauai’s last queen, Deborah Kapule, who died in 1853. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Coco Palm was the epitome of Polynesian-style hotels. In 1969, the Los Angeles Times called the Coco Palm “Hawaii done up in a corsage” and gushed about the resort’s cottages “shaded by hundreds of palms, the entire tropical scene reflected in a tranquil lagoon.”
Another hotel, the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu, also lays claim as a filming location for “Blue Hawaii,” according to “100 Things Elvis Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.” Elvis stayed at the hotel during the spring of 1961 while filming the movie. But the film’s final third — including the well-known wedding scene during the finale — was all set at the Coco Palms Resort. For years after the devastation wrought by Hurricane Iniki the resort slowly decayed, a shell of its former glory, its interiors gutted, its windows broken, and graffiti covering its walls, per SFGate.
