Hawaii Five-0: Richard Nixon's America in A Tropic Clime

In September 1968, CBS put the crime drama "Hawaii Five-0" on the air.  It starred the steely-eyed and hair-unruffled Jack Lord playing a well, steely-eyed and unflappable  Lead Detective Steve McGarrett. Lord, the first Felix Leiter from the James Bond series entry "Doctor No" (1962), was the head of a fictitious Aloha State police unit called "5-0".  These coppers operated out of the Iona-ni Palace in Honolulu, built in the 1880's as the last residence of the Hawaiian Royal Family. (A sure indication of American Mainland Hegemony moving on in and adding insult to injury.)  

Perhaps the producers realized even in those days that they couldn't pretend Hawaii was a Caucasian enclave in the Pacific---three of "5-0" detectives were Asian or Samoan Americans.  It was likely the first US-made television show to do this.  (Although I remember some of the early episodes had white actors playing Asian villians in traditional Charlie Chan/FuManchu style).  According to Wikipedia, many Hawaiians worked behind the scenes on the show and learned television production from the ground up.  (This  was in part because the show was filmed entirely in Hawaii and television crews of high calibre were hard to come by.)  

 

The show lasted twelve seasons (284 episodes) and was the longest running cop show in American television history until the original "Law and Order" series passed it's mark in 2006.

The show's impact has carried in pop culture beyond its span as a regular and syndicated cop show. It is now slated to be revived for television in the 2009-10 season with an actor playing, you guessed it, Steve McGarrett's son.  

Lord, by the way,  died in 1998, after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.   He became a  

recluse in the last eighteen years of his life and had little if any public appearances. Perhaps he wanted to be remembered only as McGarrett, 5-0, the guy who caught the bad guys and said  "Book-em, Dan-O--Murder One" at the end of each successful snuffing out of trouble in paradise. 

     

What  made the show so successful? 

 In a word, Hawaii. 

Yes, there  were good production values to the show, but was the writing that much better?  My viewing some of the shows in reruns in the 80's discounts that theory.  Was Lord and his co-star James MacArthur (son of Broadway legend Helen Hayes) playing compelling characters, with nuance and interesting character arcs.  Please.  As critic said of another actor, Jack Lord's McGarrett was so stiff I think his dramatic range went from one to four winkles on his forehead.  

The only bigger zombie-cop on American Television at that time was super-minimalist Jack Webb's authoritarian robot from "Dragnet." 

 

From their earlier work in films, its clear  both Lord and MacArthur we're better actors than the parts they were playing indicated, but television at this time dictated that police types were stoics, above emotions beyond righteous anger and smug satisfaction at booking crooks and arch-criminals.  Of all the arch-criminals, of course, their most dangerous adversary was the diabolical renegade Red Chinese agent, Wo Fat.  "Wo Fat" was named after a Chinese restaurant in downtown Honolulu. 

 

As the show's success increased Jack Lord reportedly became more and more an imperious tyrant on the set, trying to insure quality (and also to some crew members, retaining control of every aspect of the show to his McGarrett persona's advantage .)  He apparently had few if any friends from the show. It's easy to imagine there must have been some resemblance between the set of this show and the pressure cooker of the other imperious star, Richard Nixon, back in Washington audio-taping his own destruction in the White House of the early 1970's after the Watergate Break-In.   Lord's politics were decidedly close to America's President: Law and Order and One Man in Charge.   

 

Although he was harder to work with than the average star, when his wife passed away a few years ago, it was discovered that they had left most all of their 40 million dollar estate to charity.     

I think people tuned in because it was set against a tropical paradise most Americans could only hope to visit.    I mean, if you're sitting in your house in Chicago or Toronto on a cold night or anywhere where they have real Winter, wouldn't this show's opening  be appealing to you?  The soundtrack was created by the veteran composer Morton Stevens and it's still very recognizable.       

 

 

In this typical "5-0" scene McGarrett is trying to find out if a small boy can identify his kidnappers.  How ironic that Hawaii's Top Cop is wearing is so sombre, wearing a blue suit in a hot climate and using a tape recorder.  He is the perfect cop of the Nixon Era, complete with the Watergate Scandal accesssory of then top-drawer recording equipment.  

Here for music fans is an extended version of Morton Stevens pop classic.