Exhibit tells the many tales of Ivar Haglund

Who was Ivar Haglund?

He was a tenor Glee Club member at the UW, a folk singer, a bohemian with a beard, a radio and TV personality, a prankster, a comedian, the guy who ran Seattle’s first aquarium and welcomed the seagulls, the businessman who paid for Seattle’s July 4 fireworks for many years, a man who championed Coast Salish, Asian and Northwest regional art, and the Seattleite who battled City Hall over the fish-shaped windsock he flew from the top of the Smith Tower.

His story — “Keep Clam and Carry On: The Ivar Haglund Story” — is displayed through Nov. 8 at the Nordic Heritage Museum. The extensive exhibit reveals much about Haglund, the son of a Swedish father and a Norwegian mother. It’s a perfect fit for the Nordic Heritage because Haglund was a true Scandinavian treasure, said Eric Nelson, the museum’s top officer.

Haglund, who died in 1985, was a cultural icon, a famous restaurateur and a shameless promoter of these restaurants that still bear his name.

The “King of the Waterfront,” who performed many publicity stunts, was a hands-on entrepreneur who opened his first “Acres of Clams” restaurant in Seattle in 1946. Today, Ivar’s employs more than 1,000 people in nearly 30 restaurants and seafood bars around the state, including seven in Snohomish County.

But, clam gun in hand, let’s dig a little deeper into Ivar’s story.

The Nordic Heritage exhibit jumps right in to tell the tale.

Haglund was born in March 1905 to immigrant Swede Johan Haglund and Daisy Hanson, whose Norwegian parents bought Alki Point in 1868 from pioneer Doc Maynard. Daisy, who was the patient of a doctor who prescribed excessive fasting, died before Ivar turned 3.

That loss played a part throughout his life, though Haglund’s father and many other relatives obviously did their best to love him, tell him stories, teach him music and make sure he appreciated local history.

He sang in high school and college and later wrote folk songs and developed a comedy routine that caught the eye of his first wife, Margaret, a free thinker who deeply influenced Haglund even after their divorce.

Inspired by relatives who owned an aquarium on the Oregon coast, Haglund in 1938 opened his own tourist attraction at Pier 54 on the Seattle waterfront. He ran the aquarium for about 18 years. In the beginning he wrote and sang songs (seated on a stool on the sidewalk) about the creatures that lived there, including Barney Barnacle, Herman the Hermit Crab, Oscar the Octopus and Pat the Seal, who he dressed up one December and pushed in a baby buggy over to visit Santa at the Fredrick &Nelson department store.

During World War II, Haglund also worked the graveyard shift for Boeing as a clerk on the B-17 bomber department. And though he worked on this war machine, he was friends with nationally known left-wing singers Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives.

After awhile, his aquarium also included a little fish and chips counter. The next phase of Haglund’s life had begun.

In 1946, he opened Acres of Clams at Pier 54. The flagship restaurant is still there, packed with memorabilia from the early days. On the menu were clams, of course, along with halibut, salmon, crab, prawns, sole, red snapper, smelt and haddock all served in a dining room festooned with flotsam and jetsam.

Cocktails on the menu included the Kalakala Kollins, the Duwamish (a Manhattan) and the Stillaguamish Stinger “with a secret formula obtained by arrangement with the Hanford Project.” (If you are too young to understand this, please look it up.)

Puns were part of the Haglund shtick. His motto “Keep Clam” — a play on the British government’s World War II admonishment to its people to “Keep Calm and Carry On” — is perhaps his most famous pun.

He had a way with Seattle news reporters and could get them to “cover” his events with enthusiasm.

For example, railway tanker car hose busted and dripped hundreds of gallons of syrup on the tracks across the street from Haglund’s Acres of Clams. Figuring he had a photo op (even before the phrase existed) Haglund asked one of his cooks to make stack of pancakes. He called some reporters and ran over to the tracks to pose ladling syrup onto his plate of flapjacks.

Another “event” involves a story portrayed in a photograph that hangs in the Ivar’s at 41st and Colby in Everett.

In the famous black-and-white picture from 1960, Everett favorite son (and later a Democratic presidential candidate) Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson shows off Ivar’s sample postal stamps honoring America’s seafood industry. The stamps feature a clam from the waters of Washington state. Jackson’s Democratic colleague from the state, Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, is opening a bag of clams sent to Washington, D.C., by Haglund. With them is Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, who earlier lobbied to have the Maine sardine printed on the seafood industry postal stamp. When Haglund heard about the sardine, he wired his senators to say that a clam stamp would bring in funds for a “guided mussel” program. The Clam Stamp prank was in another round of news stories when U.S. Postal authorities confiscated the stamps Haglund was selling in his gift shop.

His fame grew when he played the First Mate to Don McCune’s Captain Puget in a kids program from the 1950s on KOMO TV.

By 1965, when Haglund began shooting fireworks off over Elliott Bay every “Fourth of Jul-Ivar,” he was a legend. Even after Ivar’s death the company continued until 2008 to pay for the fireworks show.

In the 1970s when Ivar bought the 1914 Smith Tower, he got in trouble from the city for flying a large rainbow-colored, salmon-shaped windsock from the top of his Ivar-y tower. No banners were allowed in downtown Seattle. Of course, the city eventually gave in.

Photos and the corresponding newspaper clippings are among the many pieces in the museum’s exhibit, which also includes family photos, company pictures, personal artifacts, memorabilia, sound recordings, TV clips, customer remembrances, diver mask kids menus, clam guns and so much more.

In the exhibit we also learn that Haglund, who some have called one of the greatest showmen of all time, was a very private man. He grew up without siblings, he married twice but not for long, he never had children.

The most touching part of the exhibit is at its end, embodied in a photographic portrait of Haglund taken in 1984 by Rex Rystedt.

This, perhaps, is the true Haglund. Alone. Quiet. No trappings. No show.

Haglund died on Feb. 3, 1985, just shy of his 80th birthday. Ivar’s restaurants closed the next day in memory of the Greatest Clam of All.

After visiting the Nordic Heritage Museum exhibit on Haglund, many visitors have told museum officials that they were headed out to eat at Ivar’s.

No doubt he would have liked that.

Keep Clam and Carry On

The Ivar Haglund Story is displayed through Nov. 8 at the Nordic Heritage Museum, 3014 NW 67th St., Seattle. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. More information is at www.nordicmuseum.org. Admission is $8 general, $7 seniors and college students, $6 ages 5-18 and free for preschoolers. Members get in free, and free admission is offered to all on the first Thursday of each month.

Food writer Daytona Strong and Ivar’s company president Bob Donegan will offer a cooking class on an Ivar-inspired dinner at 5:30 to 8 p.m. Sept. 19 at the Nordic Heritage Museum. Cost is $65 for museum members or $75 general admission, which includes the completed meal and wine. No deep-frying involved. To make a reservation, call Jeremy Ehrick at 206-789-5707, ext. 37. The recipes for the meal are from the “Ivar’s Seafood Cookbook: The O-fish-al Guide to Cooking the Northwest Catch,” which is available for sale in the museum gift shop.

Seattle’s pop historian Paul Dorpat, an expert on Ivar Haglund who surely had a hand in putting together the exhibit, will talk about the man and the legend at 7 p.m. Sept. 24 at the Nordic Heritage Museum. To reserve a seat, call 206-789-5707, ext. 24.

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @galefiege.