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Joan Anderson
The Observer
|August 03, 2025
The model appeared in beauty contests with Marilyn Monroe, named the Hula Hoop and missed out on a fortune
As befitted a former model, when she finally stepped into the limelight, Joan Anderson did so in style, leaving her retirement home in California to jet into New York for the premiere of a film about her life.
It was 2018. At the Tribeca film festival, Anderson was at last given credit for her vision which sparked the Hula Hoop craze of the late 1950s. Thanks to her, millions of American children and adults started swivelling bamboo rings around their waists in a whirl of healthy activity. By November 1958, the waist-swinging wonder was so popular it spawned a hit song: The Hula Hoop Song made it to No 38 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year.
In the short documentary film, Hula Girl, Anderson emerged as a smart, kindly woman whose lifelong commitment to physical fitness enabled her to grasp the potential of the hoop when she first saw its popularity in Australia. She brought one to the US, coined its famous name and with her husband, Wayne, set out to make the most of its obvious appeal.
This story is from the August 03, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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