Hula Girl is a short documentary by Amy Hill and Chris Riess that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival. Highlighting how the Hula-Hoop wasn’t in fact invented by two male entrepreneurs from California, but Joan Anderson, an Australian maverick who left home for Hollywood in 1946 to take up modelling and brought the first hoop stateside along, with the late Wayne Deforest Anderson
The documentary focuses on a “gentleman’s agreement” the couple made with a Wham-O executive in 1958, who turned out to be the couple’s enemy after deciding to manufacture and profit off of the hoop without giving them any credit for it.
Joan tells her side of the story, and at the grand age of 94, is still hula-hooping.
