Flashy personality launched today's Fourth of Jul-Ivar's

The Smith Tower was being sold in 1985, and its owner Ivar Haglund gathered dozens of reporters to say so. But there was a glaring problem: Some of the California investors buying the building were late, and news crews were getting antsy.

So Haglund told stories to keep the cameras from leaving. When the investors still hadn't arrived after a half-hour, he grabbed his guitar and sang folk songs he'd played with a couple of old buddies -- Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.

Seattle's seafood king had netted another audience.

"That kind of thing just didn't happen," Ivar's Chief Operating Officer Frank Madigan said, recalling how Haglund had hooked reporters until the investors arrived -- more than an hour late. "But because it was Ivar, it did."

For decades Haglund, who died in 1985, was synonymous with clams and fish at his Seattle restaurants. But less known is the colorful story of the man whose moxie not only built a restaurant empire, but also got a federal holiday practically named after him by paying for the city's longest-running fireworks show, affectionately termed the Fourth of Jul-Ivar's.

Seattle historian Paul Dorpat said the city has never had a better self-promoter than Haglund, who consistently sneaked his way into the spotlight with clever gags, clam-eating contests and simple folk songs.

Haglund was the guy who put a fish windsock atop Smith Tower, even when people thought that was crazy to do. And there was the time he filed to run for the Seattle Port commission as a publicity stunt, vowed not to campaign, but still won the primary by more than 30,000 votes.

Such colorful antics and the fireworks show on Elliott Bay -- a Seattle staple since the 1960s -- are why his name lives on in a county where four out of 10 residents weren't even here when he was alive.

"He's way more famous than I'll ever be," said Dick Spady, creator of landmark Dick's Drive-In Restaurants. "He just fit naturally into the theme of Seattle."

Haglund was the only child of a ship-jumping father and a Norwegian mother who died before he had a memory of her. His uncle taught him to play the guitar, and by the time he had a diploma from West Seattle High School and a degree from the University of Washington in 1928, Haglund's tenor voice could recite dozens of songs from memory.

In 1938, he used money inherited from his parents to open Seattle's first aquarium, on Pier 54.

That same year he opened a fish-and-chip stand across from his aquarium. But the stand closed in less than a year when another Pier 54 restaurant complained to landlords that it was taking away business, Dorpat said.

So Haglund crafted gimmicks that would make international headlines.

In 1940, he dressed Pat the Seal, an aquarium favorite, in a pinafore and lace baby cap, and wheeled the seal through Pike Place Market en route to visiting Santa Claus at The Bon Marche.

Six years later, Haglund gathered newsreel cameras and customers for a wrestling exhibition between Two Ton Tony -- a hulking mass of a man -- and Oscar the Octopus, a creature with tentacles and a substantial grip. Some accounts said the octopus was dead before the match, but Haglund covered by saying Oscar drowned himself, chagrined by the defeat.

When a tank car dumped thousands of gallons of corn syrup near his Alaskan Way restaurant, he grabbed a stack of flapjacks and posed with a ladle and bib. Photos of the incident went around the world.

"After a while, the papers got suspicious," he told the Seattle P-I in 1963 about another gag. "They figured I was trying to cash in on this bunco. And I was."

In 1946, Haglund opened his Pier 54 Acres of Clams restaurant, and two more restaurants followed by 1956.

A Red Devil Fireworks vice president told the P-I that he was stuck less than a week before July 4, 1962, when the sponsor Green Lake Chamber of Commerce folded. Driving past Haglund's restaurant, he thought to make a funding pitch to Haglund, who agreed to the show.

This year, the longest-running Seattle fireworks show, which moved to Elliott Bay in 1965, will be nearly a half-hour long, with more than 5,500 shells.

In 1983, his business a towering success, Haglund turned his eye to the port, where he filed for a commission seat after running as a stunt to prevent trains from blocking his restaurant view. He won, but proved to be a better seafood mogul than elected official.

In January 1985, less than two weeks after the Smith Tower news conference, Haglund died from a heart attack. Gov. Booth Gardner called Haglund the soul of Seattle and said all "in the Northwest have lost a loved one."