Jack Lord
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Jack Lord | |
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| File:Felixleiter.jpg Lord as Felix Leiter in Dr. No | |
| Born | John Joseph Patrick Ryan |
John Joseph Patrick Ryan (December 30, 1920 – January 21, 1998), best known by his stage name Jack Lord, was an American television, film, and Broadway actor. He was best known for his starring role as Steve McGarrett in the American television program Hawaii Five-O from 1968 to 1980. Lord also appeared in several classic feature films earlier in his career, among them Man of the West (1958) starring Gary Cooper and the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962) starring Sean Connery.
Early years
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Jack Lord was the son of Irish-American parents. His father, William Lawrence Ryan was a steamship company executive. He developed his equestrian skills on his mother's fruit farm in the Hudson River Valley. At the age of fifteen he started spending summers at sea, and from the deck of cargo ships, painted and sketched the landscapes he encountered — Africa, the Mediterranean and China. He was educated at John Adams High School in Ozone Park, New York, Fort Trumbull Merchant Marine Academy, then located in New London, Connecticut, graduating as an Ensign with a Third Mates License.
He attended New York University on a football scholarship, and earned a degree in Fine Arts. He spent the first year of World War II with the War Department's Corps of Engineers, building bridges in Persia. He then returned to the Merchant Marine as an Able Seaman before enrolling in the deck officer course at Fort Trumbull. While making maritime training films, he took to the idea of acting.
This is when he decided to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse, working first as a salesman for Horgan Ford, then later as a Cadillac salesman in New York to fund his studies. Later, at the Actor's Studio, he studied with Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Marilyn Monroe.
Career
His first work on Broadway was in Traveling Lady with Kim Stanley. He was then cast as a replacement for Ben Gazzara in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Prior to that he had been in several off-Broadway and pre-Broadway plays including The Little Hut (his first play), The Illegitimist, and The Savage. His first Hollywood movie role was in Court Martial of Billy Mitchell with Gary Cooper. Early in his career, he met his wife, Marie de Narde, who gave up her own career to support him.
Lord was the first actor to play the character of Felix Leiter in the James Bond film series, introduced in the first Bond film, Dr. No. One story alleges that the film producers did not ask Lord to reprise the role in later films, since they felt that having the same actor playing Leiter would upstage the dominance of Sean Connery as the leading man.[citation needed] There is another story that Lord demanded co-star billing, a bigger role and more money to reprise the Felix Leiter role[citation needed] in Goldfinger which resulted in director Guy Hamilton casting the role to an older actor to make Leiter more of an American 'M'.
In 1962, Lord starred as Stoney Burke, a rodeo cowboy from Mission Ridge, South Dakota, in the television series of that name, which featured Warren Oates and Bruce Dern in recurring supporting roles.
In 1965, Jack Lord was considered for the role of Captain Kirk on Star Trek; the role ultimately went to William Shatner. Because Lord wanted to co-produce and have a percentage in ownership of the series, he was ultimately rejected by both Gene Roddenberry and Desilu Studios.[citation needed]
Artist
Two of his paintings were acquired by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum of Modern Art by the time he was twenty. Lord was also known for being a very cultured man who loved reading poetry out loud on the set of his TV show and as being somewhat reclusive at his Honolulu home.
Death
Jack Lord died of congestive heart failure at his home on January 21, 1998 in Honolulu, Hawaii, at the age of 77. He left an estate of $40 million, and being a philanthropist in his lifetime, the entire estate went to various Hawaiian charities upon his wife Marie's death in 2005.[1] Portions of their estate were auctioned on eBay in March 2007.
Trivia
 | This article contains a list of miscellaneous information. (July 2008) |
- Traci Lords derived her stage surname from Jack Lord.[2]
- He was dubbed "the Lord" (behind his back) by the cast and crew of Hawaii Five-O because of his imperious manner.[3]
- Lord met his son (from his first marriage), only once when the boy was an infant. The boy was later killed in an accident at age thirteen..[4]
- Bill Murray, in a "Saturday Night Live" sketch, once asked "Quien es mas macho: David Janssen, Lloyd Bridges o Jack Lord?"
References
- ^ From Jack and Marie Lord, a parting gift of $40 million - The Honolulu Advertiser - Hawaii's Newspaper
- ^ Lords, Traci (2004). Traci Lords: Underneath it All. Retrieved 2008-04-05.
- ^ Peck, Michael (2005-07-28). "News" (Reprint). TVGuide. Retrieved 2008-04-26.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Peck, Michael (2005-07-28). "News" (Reprint). TVGuide. Retrieved 2008-04-26.
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