Photoplay March 1974

By Nancy Anderson

The eyes are kind, sometimes sad. But his jaw is like a rock. Both the strength and the sensitivity of Jack Lord are in his face, that face so familiar to and beloved by Hawaii Five-0 fans.

A man of contrasts, Jack Lord! When he swings into action, he bristles with energy drawn from a seemingly inexhaustible supply. Yet, when the pressure’s off, he’s contemplative, soft-spoken, meeting the world with an old-fashioned courtliness. Because his intelligence goes deep, he’s not unaware of life’s hazards. But, because his faith is also deep, he’s not intimidated by them.

Sitting in a canvas chair in borrowed space on a Honolulu hillside, the star talked about his reconciliation with the hard facts of living. A short distance away, under the blue Hawaiian sky, Lord’s cop colleagues were playing a scene for Hawaii Five-0 questioning a suspect that Steve McGarrett would shortly confront and convince that crime does not pay. Meanwhile, the show’s star, free from duties for awhile, rested in the garage borrowed from a neighborhood householder who seemed more puzzled than awed by the proximity of so much glamour.

The garage was an island shade in an ocean of sunshine. The Honolulu morning light was so clear and bright it seemed to pulsate like the sea, washing flowers and fronds in waves of warmth.

"I don’t know how long I’ll do the series," Jack said, "because that will be determined by circumstances beyond my control."

During the first season of Hawaii Five-0, when its prospects were in question (at least so far as most of the world was concerned), Lord said his goal was to keep it on the air for at least five years. But now he wasn’t thinking in terms of goals or deadlines. "If it’s right for something to happen - in this case for me to continue with a television series - things seem to fall into place," he said. "And everything rolls along harmoniously. There are signs along the way which show us what we should do if only we recognize them. Although the signs come in various ways, they are there. The course we should follow is always indicated. And, in the same way, if something’s wrong for us, we’re protected."

Jack’s conversation was low-key, his voice soft-pitched, but he was speaking with the sincerity of an evangelist. For he’s proved his precepts through personal experience, and they are as much a part of him as his physical features.

"If you look for the signs, if you listen to the inner voice, you’ll be guided in the right direction," he said. "Oh, yes, it’s very easy to think selfishly, to think in terms of ‘me’ but I try not to do that. I try to think in terms of good for the greatest number."

New York Irish, Jack is the true Celt, both vigorous and visionary. He could play football at NYU so well that such sports scribes as Bob Considine called him one of the best tackles in the school’s history. He can also write, paint, dream dreams and catch the gleam of true realities, through the experiences of day-to-day living.

But as for that inner voice...When he listens to it, how does he know that he’s turned into Verity and not merely his own ego? Certainly, no easy problem.

"I know there’s a danger of simply hearing what you want to hear," Jack conceded, "but I believe there’s a way to make a distinction between the true inner voice and the false. The path seems so clear, so pointed, when you’re going in the right direction.

"I could spend hours telling you how I arrived at this conviction, but I’ll give you just one example: My wife, Marie, and I had been living in an apartment for four years when we decided to look for a home in Los Angeles. So, Sunday after Sunday, week after week, we went out with real estate people, looking. We searched and searched, my poor wife and I, until we were desperate - and we still didn’t find the home we wanted.

"Finally, Marie said, ‘since we can’t find the house we want, perhaps we should build one.’ That seemed a good idea, so we went up to Trousdale Estates one day with a broker, who showed us a beautiful lot with the exact number of feet we needed, and at a price we could afford. It seemed to be ideal. In fact, Marie and I were so pleased, we made an offer on the lot, gave the realtor a check, and then began to plan our home.

"The next morning, after we’d made the offer, we naturally expected to get a call from the real estate agent, saying it had been accepted and that the lot was as good as ours. But nothing happened. So by that afternoon we were rather anxious and called him.

"He told us, that just before he’d brought our check in, another agent had come in with an offer that had been accepted. My reaction was, "my God, we’ve been protected! And then only two months later, this show came along and took us to Hawaii."

The show took Jack to Hawaii, all right, but for a time it seemed likely that he wouldn’t stay, because today’s hit series was anything but a hit, ratings-wise, during the first semester on the air. "Yes, indeed," Jack confirmed. "The first season was very rocky. But - possibly because of my natural optimism - I can honestly say that there was never a point when I thought the show would go under.

"We not only bought our home here, our condominium, before the series was actually sold, but I had that motor home, which I call my office-dressing room, built even before that. Because I realized I needed four months to get it done and, if I’d waited until the last minute, I wouldn’t have had it when I needed it."

Jack and Marie still don’t own a dream house. However, they are happily (and permanently, they say) owner residents of a spacious apartment overlooking the ocean in the fashionable Kahala section of Honolulu. Their huge living room captures the cool green of an occasional sea, but Marie’s suite is pink like the sunrises they can watch from their balcony lanai. However, the decor wasn’t drawn from the sunrise. Marie decorated her suite around a flower painting Jack did, which is the focal point in their bedroom.

"I realized very early that things are ordered for our good," Jack said. "Very early. In our family, we were brought up on that philosophy. Both my father and mother instilled it into us: The place you seek is seeking you; the place you need, needs you. Let it unfold rather than try to make it happen.

"Don’t try to force events, for forcing things never seems to work out. I never try to fight against the signs that are there to guide me or against the inner voice. When I’m in a terrible quandary, I go alone and say, ‘Not my will but Thine,’ and then it’s very clear. Very clear.

"I read a statement by Harold Russell, the man whose hands were blown off during World War II and who won an Oscar in The Best Years of Our Lives, in which he said that his terrible handicap had forced him to become a better human being, kinder to everyone he’s come into contact with. Everyone, he said, has a problem of some kind. Everyone. Russell also said his handicap had forced him to pick himself up by his bootstraps and make something out of himself. ‘I’m grateful for the experience,’ he said. When a man with two hands missing can have that philosophy and be grateful...That takes a lot of guts, or a lot of faith, or a combination of the two."

Although Jack has never faced such adversity as Harold Russell, he’s known his own tribulation. As a young shipwrecked merchant mariner, he almost died. As a young would-be actor, he almost starved. But, in the first instance, he held onto life, and in the second, he held onto hope - so he survived both experiences a better man than he might have been without them.

Hardship hones the character; heartbreak, the spirit. And Jack has known both, which helps to explain how he endures with such equanimity meanness and misrepresentation directed at himself. He’s been target for printed attacks, especially in one publication, deadly enough to have sent a sensitive man into fits of screaming rage or into broken-spirited retirement. But Jack, though keenly sensitive, has weathered the abuse without visible scars.

"Visible," however is the critical word here. The verbal arrows haven’t just pricked - they’ve wounded, and he confesses as much. Still, he’s not looking for sympathy.

"I really feel," he said, "that when a person goes about hurting another with venom and vindictiveness, with malice aforethought, he’s the one to be pities. I know what’s in my heart, and I know what my relations are with my fellow human beings. I try to keep them on a very positive level. So, if somebody tries to hurt me, I remember the story about Constantine, how he was told, ‘A mob has just broken the head of your statue with stones.’ And how, he, putting his hands to his head, said, ‘That’s strange. I don’t feel a thing.’

"Of course, when you’re brutally attacked, you suffer a first shock, you know? It’s like being kicked in the gut. You think, ‘Why? What’s the motivation? Is it jealousy? Why did he deliberately put a shiv between my second and third ribs?’ And there’s self-examination, too, because, if you’ve done or thought something to warrant this kind of treatment, you’d want to know what it is and try to avoid doing it again.

"But I honestly think that the one who’s done the hurting is the one to be pitied most. For he’s the one who’ll have to make restitution. Not I. Emerson said, ‘The dice of the gods are loaded, so beware.’ There are laws besides those on the statute books to take care of balancing the account. You don’t have to take care of it personally.

"I’m sure that during my life I’ve hurt others. Of course I have. I don’t think you can get through life without inadvertently hurting someone. I have never deliberately injured anyone in my life. However, I’m sure that in moments of anger or thoughtlessness I’ve hurt somebody - and I’m sorry."

Where work’s concerned, Jack has a reputation for running a tight ship, but, by doing so, he’s brought his series into snug harbor - a niche among the top five shows as rated by Nielsen.

"I’m proud to run a tight ship," Jack said. "When we came here, we had many problems. I love Hawaii, but it’s a land of manana. More so than in Mexico.

"When we got here, we were fighting to survive, so I used to say to the guys on the crew, ‘Look. You’re not working for CBS, You’re not working for a production company. You’re working for yourself! And, unless you realize that, we are all going to be out of work. When you run to get a lamp, you are doing yourself a favor, because, if we can’t make budget, if we can’t do these shows on time, we might as well fold our tents now and go home.

"And that was just the beginning. I’ve gone on the road to promote Hawaii Five-0. I’ve made 70 to 80 phone calls from my home at 6 o’clock in the morning every year to talk to television editors and columnists about the show. Nobody paid me to do that - and I didn’t want pay. That’s the kind of thing you have to do behind the scenes if you are going to succeed. I ask professionalism from the people with whom I work. I work hard and I expect everyone else to, and if they don’t, they hear from me. It’s as simple as that.

"Birth is always hard, and to make ours more difficult we were pre-empted four out of our first nine shows on the air," Lord remembered. "Then, when we first went on, we had a lead-in called Blondie which lasted 13 weeks. After than, Mike Dann (the vice president of CBS) came down here. I remember walking with him along the beach, and he said, ‘Jack, I’ve got a great new lead-in for you. It’s a thing called The Queen and I - it’s about an ocean liner, with Larry Storch. That was our ‘big lead-in,’ and that was also a flop.

"But in spite of that, I think CBS realized we had something interesting going here. We had the right cast and solid story lines, and, even though we weren’t getting Brownie points in the Nielsens because of the preemptions and the difficult time slot, I have a feeling network people realized we were a quality show. Nobody ever told me, but I think they knew we were on the right track.