The life of the late Wally Amos, the creator of the Famous Amos cookie brand, will be celebrated on Oʻahu this weekend. Amos lived in Hawaiʻi from 1977 to 2018 and died at his Honolulu home in August.
Filmmaker Jeff MacIntyre documented Amos' success, failure, and attempts to recapture that success in "The Great Cookie Comeback: Rebaking Wally Amos."
Well before Amos started selling cookies, he was a talent agent in California.
"I’d go to meetings and I would take cookies to meetings with me, so I used cookies as my calling card literally — and developed a nice reputation in Hollywood for making chocolate chip cookies that really tasted great," Amos says in the film. "Chocolate chip cookies was my calling. There is a shelf somewhere in this cosmic world that has what each of you, each of us, meant to do, be, and the shelf of chocolate chip cookies had my name on it."
MacIntyre shared that Amos didn't actually taste his first chocolate chip cookie until he was 12 years old when he was sent to live with his Aunt Della in New York City after his parents divorced.
"She loved to bake chocolate chip cookies, and the moment he sunk his teeth into that chocolate chip cookie in her little kitchen in New York — I don't know if he realized it at the time, but that would set him off on his trajectory to become the cookie king," MacIntyre said.
Amos later dropped out of high school to join the Air Force and was stationed in Hawaiʻi before working as a mailroom clerk at the William Morris Agency, where he became a talent agent and made vital connections with cookie lovers.
"He was one of the first Black talent agents at William Morris, the largest talent agency in the world at the time in Hollywood, California. He's credited with discovering Simon & Garfunkel, he's worked with Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, Diana Ross — it's just nuts. When I embarked on the documentary project, I had no idea of Wally's pre-cookie life, so this is just jaw-dropping to learn of his influence in just the music and entertainment world," MacIntyre said.
With investments from people like Helen Reddy and Gaye, Amos opened his first Famous Amos cookie store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975. Ten years later, the business started to struggle, and Amos walked away from the operation in 1989.
"He signs away all his rights to use his God-given name and likeness on any future cookie product. And I really believe that was a serious roadblock to him ever scoring another big cookie hit," MacIntyre told HPR.
After he lost the rights to his cookie empire, Amos tried to gain it all back by starting up various cookie companies, including some in Hawaiʻi.
Amos also dedicated himself to advancing childhood literacy and helped many keiki learn how to read.
"I think he felt when you give the gift of literacy to a child, you really give them the keys to the world. You unlock a future that they may not have thought they had. I really think he cherished those moments, and that kind of became a cornerstone of his life," MacIntyre said.
A celebration of life will be held at the Hawaiʻi Theatre at 2 p.m. this Sunday. MacIntyre's film will be shown at the event. It is free, but you will need a ticket. For more information, click here.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Oct. 16, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
