Jack Lord

Jack Lord is worth millions. He and CBS own Hawaii Five-0, and it’s made both of them rich. Yet Jack Lord sacrificed much to become the star of the longest running series on the air.

The man who plays Steve McGarrett is incredibly complex, and so, Modern People exclusively got the whole, strange, inside story of his very private life.

He is a big man. He looks 6-foot-3 and carries about 180 pounds of very solid weight. Relaxing in the living room of his Honolulu condominium on Kahala Avenue, he wars a blue and white print shirt that echoes the blue if his eyes. On his right sits former fashion designer Marie de Narde, his wife of 23 years.

His first admission is that Lord is not his real name.

“I was born in New York City and had three first names: John Joseph Patrick – all saints names – as a prelude to my Irish moniker of Ryan.” People say he seems more German than Irish, though.

His nickname in Hollywood, where he is generally regarded as a dictatorial egomaniac, is His Lordship. The joke is that he doesn’t need a plane to make the trip from the mainland to Hawaii – he just walks on the water!

“I’m a maverick,” he readily admits. “A non-compromiser. A long time ago I set up certain goals for myself and then I went after them. I never asked favors or cultivated important friendships in order to further my career.

“I’ve paid a high price for not playing the game because doing things my own way breeds resentment.”

His own way has definitely been the way he’s done things.

Born in 1922, the son of a steamship line executive, he spent his teen years working as a seaman. Off-duty, Jack killed time sketching and painting, until he was ready to go to New York University on a football scholarship (he was a first-team lineman). Art was his major.

After graduating he opened an art school, and some of his paintings were bought by New York’s famous Metropolitan Museum of Art. He fought in Korea, and started taking acting lessons from noted teacher Sanford Meisner when he returned.

“I was making $18,000 a year as a Caddy salesman – then!” he remembers. He hesitated to give up such a substantial living when he first got a chance to act.

“I came home one night to my sweet wife,” he recalls, “and told her that I had a part but that I was worried and didn’t know whether I should go into acting. She said one word that I’ll never forget: ‘Go.’That’s how I got my start.”

He never stopped. During the eight months of the year that Hawaii Five-0 is shooting, Jack works a week of more than 70 hours.

“For eight months of the year I am up at four every morning,” he nods. “I have my breakfast, then I jog along the beach for half an hour. I stop only to pick a fresh flower for Marie, then it’s back home again where I arrive to the marvelous aroma of fresh things baking in the oven.”

Marie babies Jack because they have no babies.

“When Jack decided to try being an actor,” she reminisces, “we realized we couldn’t afford a child. We knew the odds were against ever making it in show business, and were well aware of the sacrifices and dedication required.

“Several years later,” she continues, “we felt the time had come when we could devote our attention to children. We began making all sorts of plans for them. You can imagine how surprised and disappointed we were when it didn’t happen.”

Marie refuses, as does her husband, to discus his first marriage. He tries to keep it a secret now, but Lord was married once before, in 1942, when he was only 20-years-old.

“Jack asked us not to say anything about it,” explains his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Ryan.

The bride was a stunningly beautiful Vassar College student. Soon after the wedding, she became pregnant, and Jack was at sea with the Merchant Marines when she gave birth to a son, John Jr.

Mysteriously, in 1943 he filed a complaint that she had deserted him. In 1947 they divorced, and Lord commenced paying $50 a month in child support.

Their son died of hepatitis in 1955. Jack’s first wife (known as Mrs. Ryan since that was his name before he changed it) is now remarried and living in Connecticut.

So, Jack Lord leaves no heirs. But his life has had other compensations. He is one of the most respected men in Hawaii and his show has pumped $28 million directly into the islands’ economy. Locals are also pleased with the effect Hawaii Five-0 has had on the tourist business.

“The Hawaiian Visitors Bureau polled tourists visiting the islands for the first time and found that 25 percent of them came because of what they’d seen on our TV series,” brags Lord.

It seems like a good time to ask him about the rumors that he was offered the chance to run for governor of his adopted home state.

“Believe it or not,” he says in a confidential whisper, obviously flattered and delighted, “both parties came to me quietly and said, ‘Would you like to run for high political office in the state of Hawaii? I turned both of them down.”

Lord proclaims he could never be a politician because he’s too blunt, and he admits, “I always say what’s on my mind. Besides, I don’t belong to any political party. You immediately lose 50 percent of your audience if you do.”

Though Jack would never leave his highly-rated show for politics, he might leave it for movies. His contract is renewable yearly, so he can leave with very little notice. The black-haired actor regrets that his heavy responsibilities with Hawaii Five-0 prevent him from doing movies and he complains, “This series has been totally confining.

“I’ve had to turn down movies like A Bridge Too Far and Breakheart Pass. I write, paint and make jewelry as pastimes, but do I need other challenges for my career?” (Some of his paintings hang in the British Art Museum.)

One sure thing is that Jack will continue to work. As it is, he gets up at 4 A.M.. and goes to bed at 8:30 P.M., so the Lords never party, never go out to dinner, never see old friends.  In fact, neighbors regard them as “mysterious hermits,” and CBS executives who work with Lord marvel at his capacity for long hours and hard work.

Since he owns a chunk of 5-0, Lord works cast and crew hard, always getting his money’s worth out of them. Asked why he has a reputation as a slave driver, Lord frets, “I guess I open my mouth too much, say what’s on my mind – especially to the press.

“Maybe I am demanding. But I have to be. The press looks for all the wrong things, they twist what I say. They’re out to get something on you and they don’t leave until they get it. I don’t understand the press; that’s why I don’t let many of them come up here,” he frowns, indicating his condominium, tastefully decorated in shades of avocado, yellow and white.

This is his sanctuary. Hawaii is his paradise. Marie is his comfort. Despite gossip about his first marriage, his hermit-like, anti-social passion for privacy and his hard-driving personality at work, Lord sees himself as a sensitive artist, an actor who would like someday to direst films, a painter whose impressionistic canvasses bear a resemblance to the works of Van Gogh.

Marie sees him as the all-American boy. She recalls their first meeting:

“I was a very successful fashion designer. Very young, very self-involved.  While I gave things materially, I didn’t give of myself to others. Then came the night when this persistent guy arrived.”

Marie smiles at the memory, “I opened a door and there stood this big, rosy-cheeked, barrel-chested, all-American boy. The first thing that went through my mind was that he looked like an advertisement for a breakfast cereal.

“I discovered he could only talk about three things; art, athletics and his exciting adventures on the waterfronts of the world.”