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Jack Lord
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, director and producer. He starred as Steve McGarrett in the CBS television program Hawaii Five-O, which ran from 1968 to 1980.
Born in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York, Lord was the son of Irish-American parents. His father, William Lawrence Ryan, was a steamship company executive. He grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York.
As a child, Lord developed equestrian skills on his mother's fruit farm in the Hudson River Valley. He started spending summers at sea, and from the decks of cargo ships painted and sketched the landscapes he encountered—Africa, the Mediterranean and China. He was educated at St. Benedict Joseph Labre School, John Adams High School, in Ozone Park, Queens, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy, then located at Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut, graduating as an Ensign with a Third Mate’s License. He attended New York University (NYU) on a football scholarship and earned a degree in Fine Arts.
Lord spent the first year of the United States' involvement in World War II with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, building bridges in Persia. He returned to the Merchant Marine as an able seaman before enrolling in the deck officer course at Fort Trumbull. While making maritime training films, Lord took to the idea of acting.
Lord received theatrical training from Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He worked first as a car salesman for Horgan Ford, then later as a Cadillac salesman in New York to fund his studies. Later he studied at the Actors Studio.
His Broadway debut was as Slim Murphy in Horton Foote's The Traveling Lady with Kim Stanley. The show ran for 30 performances, October 27, 1954, through November 20, 1954. Lord won the Theatre World Award for his performance. Lord was then cast as Brick as a replacement for Ben Gazzara in the 1955–1956 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He had been in The Little Hut (his first play), The Illegitimist, and The Savage.
Lord's first commercial film role was in the 1949 film Project X, an anti-Communist production. He was associate producer in his 1950 film Cry Murder. In 1957, Lord starred in Williamsburg: the Story of a Patriot, which has run daily at Colonial Williamsburg since then. In 1958, Lord co-starred as Buck Walden in God's Little Acre, the film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel.
Lord was the first actor to play the character Felix Leiter in the James Bond film series, introduced in 1962 in the first Bond film, Dr. No. According to screenwriter Richard Maibaum, Lord then demanded co-star billing, a bigger role and more money to reprise the role in Goldfinger, which resulted in director Guy Hamilton casting Cec Linder in the role; thereafter, until David Hedison played the role for a second time in 1989's Licence to Kill, the character would be played by a different actor for each appearance.
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Jack Lord
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, director and producer. He starred as Steve McGarrett in the CBS television program Hawaii Five-O, which ran from 1968 to 1980.
Born in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York, Lord was the son of Irish-American parents. His father, William Lawrence Ryan, was a steamship company executive. He grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York.
As a child, Lord developed equestrian skills on his mother's fruit farm in the Hudson River Valley. He started spending summers at sea, and from the decks of cargo ships painted and sketched the landscapes he encountered—Africa, the Mediterranean and China. He was educated at St. Benedict Joseph Labre School, John Adams High School, in Ozone Park, Queens, and the United States Merchant Marine Academy, then located at Fort Trumbull in New London, Connecticut, graduating as an Ensign with a Third Mate’s License. He attended New York University (NYU) on a football scholarship and earned a degree in Fine Arts.
Lord spent the first year of the United States' involvement in World War II with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, building bridges in Persia. He returned to the Merchant Marine as an able seaman before enrolling in the deck officer course at Fort Trumbull. While making maritime training films, Lord took to the idea of acting.
Lord received theatrical training from Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He worked first as a car salesman for Horgan Ford, then later as a Cadillac salesman in New York to fund his studies. Later he studied at the Actors Studio.
His Broadway debut was as Slim Murphy in Horton Foote's The Traveling Lady with Kim Stanley. The show ran for 30 performances, October 27, 1954, through November 20, 1954. Lord won the Theatre World Award for his performance. Lord was then cast as Brick as a replacement for Ben Gazzara in the 1955–1956 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He had been in The Little Hut (his first play), The Illegitimist, and The Savage.
Lord's first commercial film role was in the 1949 film Project X, an anti-Communist production. He was associate producer in his 1950 film Cry Murder. In 1957, Lord starred in Williamsburg: the Story of a Patriot, which has run daily at Colonial Williamsburg since then. In 1958, Lord co-starred as Buck Walden in God's Little Acre, the film adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's 1933 novel.
Lord was the first actor to play the character Felix Leiter in the James Bond film series, introduced in 1962 in the first Bond film, Dr. No. According to screenwriter Richard Maibaum, Lord then demanded co-star billing, a bigger role and more money to reprise the role in Goldfinger, which resulted in director Guy Hamilton casting Cec Linder in the role; thereafter, until David Hedison played the role for a second time in 1989's Licence to Kill, the character would be played by a different actor for each appearance.