5 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Hawaii Five-O’

HAWAII FIVE-O, Jack Lord, 1968-1980 — Everett Collection

45 years ago, Danno booked ’em for the last time, when Hawaii Five-O aired its final episode. The show — which starred Jack Lord as tough-as-nails Detective Captain Steve McGarrett, who headed up a special police task force that rooted out organized crime and espionage in the Hawaiian islands — debuted in 1968, making it the last scripted 1960s drama still on the airwaves when it took its final bow.

The show made Lord a superstar and familiarized many viewers with Hawaii, which had only become a U.S. state in 1959, and its impact is still being felt today, in countless other police procedural dramas set in exciting and unusual locales — and in the ultra-popular 2010 series reboot, which ran for 10 seasons in its own right.

Here are five things you probably didn’t know about one of TV’s most beloved police dramas.

1Chin Ho Kelly wasn’t just a TV cop — he was one in real life, too

KAM FONG, as Detective Chin Ho Kelly on Hawaii Five-O, 1968-78, series ran from 1968-80

Everett Collection

Kam Fong Chun played veteran cop Kelly, one of the police officers who worked under Captain McGarrett — but he wasn’t just acting. Chun, who was born in 1918, was a Honolulu police officer for 16 years, a career he arrived at after suffering unimaginable tragedy: Chun worked at the Pearl Harbor shipyard and was present on the day of the Japanese bombing attack that led the U.S. to enter World War II; two years later, his wife and two young children were killed when two B-24 bomber planes crashed onto the family’s home.

Chun retired from police work in 1959 and decided to try his hand at acting; after appearing in regional theater productions and small roles in locally-shot films (including an uncredited role in Gidget Goes Hawaiian), he auditioned to be Hawaii Five-O villain Wo Fat, but nabbed the heroic role of Kelly instead.

2Jack Lord was almost Captain Kirk

Everett Collection

Before Hawaii Five-O, Lord was best known for starring on the Western series Stoney Burke, as well as his appearance as Bond associate Felix Leiter in 1962’s Dr. No. Lord was supposedly replaced in the role in future Bond productions because he asked for more money and co-billing with Sean Connery.

A similar situation played out when Lord was approached to star in one of the other most famous TV shows of the ’60s. After a failed pilot with Jeffrey Hunter as the captain of the U.S. S. Enterprise, Star Trek series creator Gene Roddenberry got a second crack at creating a series pilot — and wanted Lord for the revised role of the starship captain, now named James T. Kirk.

Lord had an unusual demand, however: he wanted 50% of the profits from the series. Roddenberry passed, selecting William Shatner for the role instead. Surprisingly enough, Lord eventually got what he wanted, as well — his contract for Hawaii Five-O entitled him to one-third of the show’s profits. Lord also ended up taking creative control of the series after creator Leonard Freeman died in 1974, and directed several episodes in the show’s later seasons.

3Lord decided the show should be shot on location

Everett Collection

When Hawaii Five-O first aired, most shows were shot on backlots, regardless of setting — for an example, see the similarly tropical-themed Gilligan’s Island, which included a few establishing shots of Hawaii, but was mostly filmed in Los Angeles studio, with a lagoon that was turned into a parking lot during off-seasons.

Lord didn’t just get, as previously mentioned, an unusually large share of the show’s profits; according to his 1998 New York Times obituary, “his contract gave him control over dramatic decisions on every episode, and it was he who insisted, against the network’s wishes, that the show be shot entirely on location in Hawaii.”

This decision didn’t just help create a sense of realism for the show; it was a massive boon to Hawaii’s then-nascent tourism industry, as well as its state economy — production costs and money spent on staff room and board amounted to $100 million per year fed into the state’s economy.

Lord also became personally smitten with the state — though he had previously lived in Beverly Hills, he and his wife moved to Hawaii to work on the show, and never left.

4It created a long-lasting slang term

Everett Collection

You may have heard police referred to as “the five-o,” but that isn’t why the show is called Hawaii Five-O; rather, the slang term was derived from the series. The “five-O” in the title actually referred to the fact that Hawaii was the 50th state.

5Magnum, P.I. was literally created to use the show’s production facilities

MAGNUM P.I., Tom Selleck, (Season 1), 1980-88

Robert Phillips/Everett Collection

When Hawaii Five-O debuted in 1968, Honolulu did not have much in the way of film production facilities; because the show was shot on location , TV production studios were built there for the show.

Once it went off the air, the question arose: what to do with the costly and now-empty studios? The answer: bring Tom Selleck and his glorious mustache to our TV screens. Magnum, P.I. was conceived to be set in the same area, and debuted just months after Hawaii Five-O bid its final goodbye.

Though Jack Lord was supposedly repeatedly approached for a cameo on Magnum and refused, there were still some Five-O connections: Chun appeared on the series twice.