From the December 3, 1965 edition of the Vineyard Gazette:

The Hokey Pokey has arrived! The Hokey Pokey is everywhere! The Hokey Pokey sounds like a dance, but it isn’t. The Hokey Pokey sounds like a restaurant, but it isn’t. The Hokey Pokey sounds like a new type of summer dress, but it isn’t.

The Hokey Pokey is an inch-long piece of tube with a diameter of half an inch. Its entire reason for existence is to put out cigarettes.

Trying to find out more about this strange little item, where it had come from and where it got its name, led this reporter straight to the Chappaquansett door of Miss Nancy Hamilton who, it turns out, is the original Hokey Pokey pusher.

Miss Hamilton has not always been a Hokey Pokey pusher, but was a composer of the lyrics of many of the top Broadway musicals. One of her best remembered tunes is How High the Moon. During the war she toured the battlefronts with Miss Katharine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and has always in one capacity or another, been entangled with the theatre. The fact that she has of late become a Hokey Pokey pusher only attests to her vast versatility, vitality and virtuosity.

Miss Hamilton explained that about four years ago she and Miss Cornell had gone to Switzerland to spend a long New Year’s holiday with Noel Coward. In each of Mr. Coward’s ashtrays Miss Hamilton noticed one of these strange little tubes, which she was careful to remove before snubbing out her cigarettes.

Finally Mr. Coward asked why she avoided the tubes and explained, “Those are to assist you.” No sooner said than assisted, and in no time Miss Hamilton was “hooked.” All one does is drop a cigarette, lighted end first, into the tube and shortly it’s out.

Presently Miss Hamilton was off to the local tobacconist where she purchased ten of the tubes, some for herself and some to take home as presents. These unfortunately lasted no time since Miss Hamilton in her enthusiasm told everyone, and everyone had to have one.

She ordered another dozen from the tobacconist, and another, and finally there were no more — anywhere in all of Europe, there were no more.

By now Miss Hamilton had decided to call them Hokey Pokeys, not for any logical reason. She explained that as a child, growing up in Sewickley, Pa., in the days of good, rich, homemade ice cream, a little cart came by at night selling dreadful, cheap, machine-made ice cream. This was what the children loved. It was called Hokey Pokey, and a nostalgic remembrance must have occasion the naming of the present Hokey Pokey.

Because of loss and swipage, her supply was rapidly dwindling when she reached this country. Frantic, she searched high and low but no one had the slightest idea what she was talking about. Things became so desperate that Miss Hamilton was on the verge of making her own Hokey Pokeys from the bathroom plumbing and curtain rods, when a patent search revealed that since there were no moving parts involved, no patent was needed.

Off in a whirl of excitement she went, trying to find someone to manufacture her by-now virtually necessary little tubes. Everyone she showed them to was fascinated. The late Samuel Fuller of West Chop wrote a copper company. Mary Martin and her husband Richard Halliday wrote a glass works. Someone tried a Danish copper company, and someone else contacted a manufacturer of medical glass. Everyone was intrigued and “dying to throw money into the project.”

In the ensuing excitement she ordered 750,000 Hokey Pokeys from Hong Kong (boxed).

A year ago October, the Hokey Pokeys began to arrive. Disposal of 750,000 Hokey Pokeys (boxed) was not going easy, and Miss Hamilton, who has had no business experience and who had had no intention of going into business, found herself anxiously asking advice on the doorstoop of an advertising agency. She was told that her best bet was to get them into department stores.

A bit of “pull” landed her an appointment at a Philadelphia store, with an interviewer who had just given up smoking. Naturally this turned out to be a flop. Next she went on to the R. H. Macy Co. in New York. Here they showed great interest and wanted to create Hokey Pokeys in silver for the Christmas trade, but October was too late for Christmas. Department stores plan for Christmas during the previous February.

Miss Hamilton gained a foothold in the door, or rather a Hokey Pokey in Marshall Field’s, when an excited friend called to say she was having the president of the store for dinner, which entailed a mad rush to deliver four Hokey Pokeys to the scene of the party at the last possible moment.

In order to trademark the name Hokey Pokey and her slogan, “When It’s In It’s Out,” Miss Hamilton needed interstate sales, so she descended on the Flea Market in Vineyard Haven. The Fleas were delighted, and since then the Hokey Pokey has been on its way to fame, if not fortune.

Compiled by Hilary Wall
library@mvgazette.com