Chapter 18: “Hawaii Five-O,” Jack Lord's “Thiefdom”
By Sharon Farrell
(excerpt from her autobiography)
I learned a lot from that hard taskmaster.
In 1979 I received two offers to co-star on TV series. The first came from Ted Bissell, best known for his co-starring role with Marlow Thomason the hit series "That Girl." Ted's new series in which he was producing as well starring, had him playing an undercover cop and I was to play his stripper girlfriend. The other offer came from Jack Lord, the producer and star of the colossally successful series "Hawaii Five-0." With Jack I would play the only female detective on the elite crime fighting team.
My former agents, Morgan Paull and Sharon DeBord, had recently dissolved their agency, which left me temporarily without counsel during the time I had to make this important career decision. Jack had been calling me at home every night. I told him I didn't have an agent, and about the offer I had received from Ted Bissell. He said, "You already have the job. I can offer you $10,000 a show. You don't need an agent. You can trust me. Hell honey, save the 10 percent!"
That made the decision between a new, untested series at $7,500 versus $10,000 on a show which was already a hit. It seemed like a no brainer. Of course, I went with Jack's offer and ended up with $5,000 a show.
The main reason I refused Ted's offer was his bazaar behavior when he visited my home. Ted had scared me when he came out to Topanga and right away promised me $7,500 a show, plus a $125.00 gram of cocaine a day out of his own pocket. Well, that was astounding, and shocking.
He sat in my home in a chair opposite the fireplace, talking non-stop, while I sat on the sofa nearby in stunned silent. Why was I stunned, why was I silent? Ted was coming on to me with Dale right there in the room. He acted as if it was the most natural thing you could imagine.
Even-though Dale and I hadn't intimate for about 3 years, Ted didn't know that. Ted was just too, too cheeky! He leered as he told me how beautiful my body was, and how much he loved my facial features. He told me I had always turned him on. It was just too much. I freaked...and said, “No, I don't think so."
My decision was also influenced by what was best for Chance. He really wanted to go to Hawaii. What kid wouldn't? I thought it would be a good experience for Chance to live and go to school in Hawaii.
Jack had caught me, hook, line, and I had even swallowed the sinker.
Mr. Jack Lord In 1967, Leonard Freeman offered Jack the starring role in Hawaii Five-0. According to Freeman, he sent Jack the script for the pilot episode on a Saturday. Jack accepted it and boarded a flight to Honolulu on Sunday, reporting for the first day of filming on Monday. It was a preview of Jack's reputation for always being ready, with his lines learned; a reputation which won him both praise, and criticism through Five-O's twelve-year run.
"Even in the shows that aren't awesome, McGarrett is still the baddest, coolest cop on the planet."
Jack was married to former fashion designer Marie L. DeNarde, whom he had wed on January 17, 1949. They had been married four days beyond their 49th wedding anniversary at the time of his death.
NOW BACK TO MY STORY
Initially Dale and I stayed at the Cabana Hilton Hotel, where many celebrities stayed while vacationing in Hawaii. Dale was supposedly along to act as my manager, and possibly get some writing assignments on the show. It was our headquarters while we searched for a house to rent. Chance didn't come over until a few weeks later.
Early in our stay, I met the fabulous singer, Olivia Newton-John and her British boyfriend at the hotel pool. We agreed to all have dinner together that night in one of the lush hotel restaurants. Our little gathering received additional members when funnyman Chevy Chase appeared at our table dragging a pretty gal along with him. "Hey, Olivia, can we join you. We just flew in. We got married. We're on our honeymoon," he said in rapid fire fashion.
We were all, seemingly, having a good time laughing, singing and partaking of the party favors that Chevy was tossing across the table to everyone. Olivia was the only one who was straight. I don't think she even had a drink. We all got so blasted that it took us awhile to realize that Chevy and his new wife were having a terrible argument. He got up and stormed off leaving his new bride alone with us. When he returned later, everything just went on until morning like there had never been any interruptions.
At the time, I couldn't yet realize that such frivolous, fun times would soon be a thing of the past.
When Jack Lord finally met Dale, he hated him. Jack said I reminded him of an old friend of his, Laurie Wilson. She was an old time performer he had had a crush on way back when. By this time, she had been promoted to the position of family friend. She was not only still accepted, but even loved by Jack's wife. Laurie had been with a man who had bullied, beat and took her money. Jack said Dale was the spitting image of the guy.
Dale continued to wear his dyed blonde hair shoulder length, with mustache and beard. Jack couldn't stand the sight of Dale. He told him to stay away from the set, and to cut his hair or go back to California, he didn't care which. Jack said, "I don't want anyone on my set impersonating Jesus Christ." Jack yelled at him across the parking lot of the studio. "Do you really think you are, Jesus Christ?”
Dale went back to L.A. and I had to deal with Jack alone. Jack was an odd one in his own unique way. He'd follow me in his limo when I wasn't working to see where I shopped. He wore disguises, but as tall as Jack was, and in the stage makeup from the studio that he always wore, he was pretty easy to spot.
Jack would also pop-in on me from time to time at my house. When I least expected it, he would just appear in front of me. I would be coming out of my bathroom, and he would just be there in the living room waiting for me. I lived in a duplex on Diamond Head right on the beach. Bill Smith, my co-star on the show, and his family lived upstairs. Bill and I were both scared to death for our jobs every day.
But I think Bill was even more scared of himself...he wanted to knock Jack's block off. And it took all the will power he could muster to control himself.
When Jack was yelling at me or other members of the cast or crew, and putting someone down, Bill's jaw muscles would clinch as tight as a vice. You could tell he was ready to blow. Any minute, one felt that Bill would take Jack out, and this muscular specimen could have easily done it.
Bill was trying to prove to the "Hollywood Heavies" that his reputation for being difficult to work with was unfounded. Now he was here in Hawaii proving he could take anything thrown at him and not blow. Jack was always asking for it. But somehow Bill managed to control his temper.
Jack also had very definite opinions on what constituted ladylike behavior. For instance, he didn't like me driving to work in my van. He hated the old van we had shipped from California. He said it wasn't proper for me to drive. So, each morning he would stop by and pick me up in the limo and driver provided to him by the studio.
Jack would go off on furious rampages with only the slightest provocation. Once he yelled at me for not hanging up my clothes. He was right of course. Working on location was different. But I hadn't realized how different. He yelled in front of the whole crew that I was slovenly, and was acting the diva. It was humiliating.
When I worked in Hollywood, the wardrobe ladies had fits if you touched your clothes. They put them on you, took them off you, and you weren't allowed or expected to touch your wardrobe, only wear it. They even had it sent out to be dry-cleaned every night. But it was a good lesson. Afterwards I never left my clothes lying about to have someone else pick them up even after I got back to Hollywood.
I had also acquired the habit of discarding old pages from scripts. The first script you'd get would be white pages, and as the writers worked on it, the first rewrite would be pink, then the second would be yellow, the third blue and it would go on practically until the show was finished. Finally, the shooting script would be a rainbow of colors. I was throwing the old parts of the script that had been rewritten in the trash can on the set. Jack started screaming that I was being wasteful, throwing the pages away like that. "How dare you, he said? You could use them at home as scratch paper for grocery lists or for your son to draw on the back."
He was right again. He said fans loved to get letters from stars on old pages of scripts. He had a rule based on his clear philosophy for everything.
Once we were shooting a "Crime Scene" setup, where I had to go into the jungle with several other cops to examine the body of a murder victim. On the way out I had to pass a fellow officer. I patted him on the back, as if to say, "Good work!"
Jack found out I had touched the guy during the scene and accused me of pawing him sexually. In front of everyone, he told me I had to control my sexual impulsiveness on the set, and just do my job. He said, "Don't you ever paw any man on my set again or you'll be fired." Then Jack quickly touched my breast before I even knew what he had done. He yelled, “You should be wearing a bra." I sheepishly defended myself by declaring that I was. “Then why are your breasts jiggling so much in the scene if you have a bra on? Do you want someone to grab them? Is that it?" He walked away muttering something about how he couldn't believe that I didn't even know how to buy a proper bra.
There was also the day my period started. I stood up from the desk and there was blood on the back of my slacks. He went off! "How did this happen? Why weren't you prepared? Do you do things like this on purpose to get attention? Why aren't you more of a lady?"
Whew, he was really tough.
From the first day of shooting we knew that Jack Lord wanted me and Bill Smith to take over the show. Jack had planned to retain the Executive Producer title and pay, but he was going off to develop a new show where he would be portraying a Sea Captain sailing out of the Hawaiian Waters of course.
Jack's behavior was stark contrast to how he had treated me when I had guest stared years before. On one of my appearance, I had played a drug-addict/prostitute, who hanged-out at the Opium dens on the wharf. At the time I was into 30s and 40s dresses, I had worn some of my own findings for the shoot.
Jack's character, McGarrett, had gone undercover as a Sea Captain to bust the drug dealers, and he really had gotten into me, or my character. There was even a kiss, and an old fashioned fadeout to indicate “You know what happens next," on that show. Jack was sending me flowers every day and treating me, I realized later, in a very weird manner. I thought he treated every leading lady the same. Though apparently, he had just been in character.
That was some kiss! It even came with a bit of tongue. But there could be no future in his special caring for my character. I had died in his arms.
It was during that one guest star appearance, that Jack had started talking about how he wanted me to play two roles, two sisters, and he wanted to direct. He had even come up with the idea for the script, gotten it written and had the power to see that he was hired to direct. It turned out so well that he had been nominated for an Emmy Award for Directing.
He really acted like he owned the show. He didn't. There were conflicts of which, as cast member we weren't aware. The ego struggles between the Network Executives and the Executive Producers of the show finally succeeded in torpedoing the series.
My goodness we were all in shock. No one ever saw it coming. Jack and his "Hawaii Five-0" disappeared! And any chances for the new show went with it. Jack had started forgetting his lines, and then changing everyone else's, so he wouldn't be alone in his struggle. He also wrote his lines on scrapes of paper and even the walls. I had worked with Darren McGavin, the brilliant star of "Kolchak, The Night Stalker," and many TV and movie roles, on two different series, where he read his lines off teleprompters. Different actors handle losing their capacity to memorize lines differently. Unfortunately, there was a streak of cruelty in Jack which manifested itself in a desire to bring everyone down with him. It caused him to lose the new show and the old one as well.
Though they talked on the phone every day, Chance's father, John Boyer, who had been nice enough to let me have Chance stay with me for a while in Hawaii, wanted him to return to California.
Chance had had a great adventure living in Hawaii. He took the bus to school there every day, and made lots of friends. He always seemed to be the happiest living at the beach.
One morning Chance and I saw an old, local Hawaiian man carrying a strange looking fishing-pole. Chance ran outside to watch him, and ended-up making friends with him. I wandered out and watched this old man reeling in these small fish. I talked the man into letting me buy his handmade pole for Chance. By the next day the old man had made himself another. And from then on the two would fish every day. Chance would ran to meet him after school, and every night our Cook prepared the little fish Chance had caught and we ate them.
I never had a completely peaceful moment in Hawaii after those few days at the Cabana Hilton. I was deathly afraid at almost any minute Jack would sneak in the door and busting everyone. Dale had invited the local drug dealer from, our neighbor in California, to make a delivery, and take a little vacation in Hawaii while he was at it. The dealer also brought along a friend, who owned a restaurant up in Lake Tahoe. So, with the new additions there was quite a group of hot-blooded men about.
I told Dale that I wanted to break up with him. I just hated all the drugs around Chance. I also told him that the abuse, being pushed around, and the slapping had to stop. There were too many people around, Bill and his wife upstairs, their teenage son, Billy, his girlfriend, and Billy's male teenage friend living at such close quarters for Dale to get away with it. I was trying hard to enjoy this break from being used like a doormat all the time.
Dale finally went back to California, but he didn't go happily. He demanded $20,000 from me if I wanted to sever all relations with him. I was in shock. I didn't have a hunk of money any where's near that size. I was getting $5000 a week, but Dale had gone through everything on clothes and drugs.
What a guy! Oh, what I could have saved if I had had the money to pay him off then.
Dale went back to Topanga and stayed in my house and let my rentals sit vacant. I told him he could take the rental money towards the amount he wanted to get out of my life. But this guy is like glue, I just couldn't get away from him. Though we were physically separated his spirit seemed to always be hovering over me.
I was truly fretting Chance's departure. I held my breath until finally hearing from John Boyer that he and Chance were on their way to Broad Beach Road. I was really alone again. I sat down and the tears started flowing. I couldn't stop it. I was sobbing and heaving from guilt and fear.
I felt like such a terrible mother. I didn't know how to spend time with him. He wanted to play and play and have me join in. But I never felt comfortable, just playing. I could sort out his vitamins, clean his clothes, taking care of him without any problems. But the "Play Page thing" was beyond me. Being a mom overwhelmed me. There was just too much pressure to be perfect.
I wanted him to have friends and be comfortable with other people and to enjoy them. I didn't want all that responsibility of being the only one he loved. I had never been around kids; I didn't know what to do or how to do it. I couldn't ever remember being one. Those precious childhood memories were among the one I could no longer recall after my near-death experience. I felt like I didn't love him enough, because of the way I was. When I was with him, I usually just catered to his every whim. I let him do whatever he wanted as long as he wasn't hurting himself or anyone else...it wasn't nearly enough. I remember thinking that I had to get out of this black, heavy cloud of depression that was bearing down on me. I had to think of a way out. I had to shake off the thoughts of not being a good mom, and abandoning my child for my career. I had to think of other things. I couldn't take any more mother-guilt, or Dale, with all the abuse and demands, "Get me a job writing for Jack Lord! Give me twenty grand! Give me, give me, and give me!"
I started feeling angry at Dale, and that snapped me out of my longing for the loss of my child. I was free! I had to remember that. For how long, I wasn't sure. I just knew that I had better make the most of it for my own sanity. Alone! Well, not really alone. Looking at the view outside my window, I could see Bill Smith flecking his huge muscles, his son, and son's friend. They worked out, every day, in our big yard. It was just a few feet from the sandy beach in front of our house.
There he was teaching the young men how to pump iron, and having a good, fun-time doing it. I started to feel lustful, watching that happy mass of testosterone on displayed before me. I craved the physical attention of a strong virile man. But before I could savior the moment, a shot of guilt ran through me. Bill was married. I was working with him, and I knew and liked his wife. Wrong!
The son Billy had his girlfriend, Sunny, with him. And he was Bill and Michele's son, so wrong again...but Billy's friend was alone and unattached. The 18 year old with his hormones still raging became a tempting candidate. I was 40, pretending to be 34, and in the perfect frame of mind to empathize with a fellow being with uncontrollable urges. I had been lying about my age ever since I had used a little deception to get that audition for "The Reivers" now it would soon catch-up with me.
The scene from "Tea and Sympathy" also ran through my mind, when Deborah Kerr's character says to her much younger lover, “When you speak of this in the future, please be kind.”
Gross! I considered myself younger in my mind's eye than my birth certificate indicated. I was still young, and feeling unloved and undesirable.
I found myself alone with him not so many days after Dale and Chance had left. We were talking and laughing about life. And then somehow, the conversation turned to how he knew that Bill and his wife weren't having sex, and that Dale and I hadn't had any either. He pointed his finger at me and said, "That's what you need. And don't tell me I'm not right. You are a good mom, that's not why you are so miserable. You need to get laid!"
Out of the mouths of babes, and what a 'Babe,' he was. Then he said, “I think it would be a great idea if Bill and you got together. Bill really needs some good loving. And it wouldn't hurt anyone.” It was at this point that I realized just whose muscles I had been looking at all those times. I blurted out, almost like a reflex, "If I was going to have an affair with anyone, it wouldn't be with some old guy."
I was laughing, but I knew I meant it. I had said it in a joking fashion, so if he was shocked by the idea we could both play it off without too much embarrassment. He stepped back, chuckled, and threw his arms in the air, declaring, "Well what about me?" I gave him a long hard look, then, I took his hand and led him to the bedroom.
When I was confronted by Bill's wife later, she hit me with the truth as hard as she possible could have, “You're 40 years old and he's only 16! We are sending him home," she screamed.
I gasped! He had lied about his age too. I felt like scum. Why did he tell her? I guess it was a case of a young man feeling the need to brag about his great coup. He shouldn't have told her. I couldn't explain to her how it happened. I broke down crying and sobbing and thinking about Debra Kerr's character. Had he been kind?
I ran out of there and jumped into my Van. I was trying to drive while crying and sobbing, and making a mess of it all. I crashed into the back of this car, and who jumped out of it, cursing and yelling at me, but the Hawaiian actor who had played my love interest in one of the earlier episodes of the shows. When he recognized me his anger quickly vanished. I learned that he was also a singer and a musician. He had been on his way to perform a gig at some big hotel when I had rear-ended him. He invited me to go along.
The show was great. I was amazed that he could do standup as well, and sing so lovely. Later in his dressing room he helped me to, temporarily, push away all of my bad feelings. I was consoled as he held me in his big strong arms and made love to me. That's the romantic version, that I can usually imagine when I try hard enough. More accurately, he provided some much needed distraction, as he screwed me on the dressing room floor. Though, not for the last time, I had taken what was available when I needed and wanted so much more.
I never saw him again. I found out later that he was married to a beautiful white, "Haole Girl," as we were called by the indigenous people. He never asked me to pay for the damage I had done to his car with my old Van. And he had helped me get over my teenage lover. So, you could say, I had more than broken even.
When I got back that night, the kid was waiting for me in a dark room with his head in his hands. He said he was sorry he had lied to me about his age. I told him I was also sorry for my lie. He said he had to go back home, as the family had insisted, but that when Bill's wife left, he wanted to come back. He wanted to be with me if I still wanted him to. He also wanted me to buy him a ticket. My god! He was a baby. He was a baby with muscles and facial hair, but still a baby. I had thought he was at least 18 years old. He looked 23 or 24, but he wasn't. He was just a sweet, horny kid, and another kid was the last thing I needed. I couldn't handle the responsibilities for the one I already had.
What I needed immediately was a shower, and a good douche to wash away the sins I had committed an hour earlier. He had become an inconvenience in more ways than one. I was feeling perfectly selfish. But I still thought I had earned the right to some emotional relief, after all I had been through with Dale and Jack. I had just wanted to forget about all the garbage polluting my life for as long as possible, while blindly adding more to the heap. I wish I could remember the name of my teenage lover, but I can't.
Then no sooner than I had ushered the kid out of the place, the drug dealer's friend showed up again. His name was Johnny. I remember he had brought a black girl back to the house one night and was looking for baby oil to give her a massage as a prelude. At the time, I felt somewhat shaken by his behavior. I wasn't disgusted, that's not the word, but amazed. My mouth must have dropped open.
I had never seen nor been so close to a mixed couple's relationship before. He was so white and she was so black. She was twice his size, and he was at least 5'11." She wasn't particularly attractive. She was heavy and wore lots of makeup over her very dark ebony skin. She was sexy, though. They were sexy together. I could feel the heat between them, and he was always looking down, pretending to be embarrassed. Though I could tell he wasn't.
He was desperately trying to find that baby oil. I surprised myself by thinking how strange and different they were, even as I was turned on by them. It had been just a brief meeting in the hallway, but all these thoughts whirled through my mind. I was jolted! Blackness had permeated my consciousness, for those few seconds, in the hallway. It made me look at Johnny differently. He knew something that I didn't.
When Johnny was first introduced to me, his looks completely turned me off. He reminded me of a young Peter Ustinov, an actor whose appearance had always turned me off.
When he entered the house, he seemed surprised that Dale and Chance were gone, but he quickly realized the new possibilities available with their absence. He held up this huge bag of cocaine he had flown in with, and a couple of bottles of champagne. I was his. The memory of his one night stand with the black girl still turned me on. And the coke and champagne helped to open me up to the idea of exploring my newest sexual fantasy.
What a sick joke! I had turned into a coke-whore, who was having an interracial sexual encounter by proxy.
He stayed with me for a few weeks before going home. We corresponded with old fashion romantic letters. I wrote to him every day while sitting on the set in my trailer. They were long, long letters of love, thoughts and feelings about everything under the sun. We fell in love during that time. He had taken over my finances to the point of paying my bills for a fee. He had also arranged to meet me at the airport when I returned to L.A. Though I was still having second thoughts, it looked like I would be out of Dale's clutches at last. On the way back, I ran into that talented actor and unique personality Gary Busey on the long walkway to the plane. He suddenly grabbed me and laid a whopping big kiss on me. A really good one! I had first met Gary when we were very young actors sitting in an agent's office. I had felt an instant crush then. We sat in chairs across from each other, and stared awkwardly. There was always that wildness about him that reminded me of Max, the kid from my third grade class in Sioux City.
I didn't feel any great attraction now, but the prospects of returning to Dale or trying to make a relationship out a coke and champagne inspired sexual escapade, felt like another occasion requiring some distraction. Beside, Gary had come on so strong I couldn't help but feel for a time like the most desirable woman on the planet.
Gary had a vial of coke he had pressed into my hand after he had kissed me. He told me to throw it away for him, because he couldn't bear to do it himself. And he didn't want to take it on the plane either. He took off running after the gal he had come to Hawaii with. I went into the ladies-room, and had a couple of little snorts. Then I stuck the huge vial into my boot. I've always been frugal, and I wasn't about to throw out any fantastic cocaine.
Once aboard, the inevitable happened. Gary and I ended up performing an awkward, "Mile high" in one of the toilets, during which he had somehow managed to wiggle out of his sneakers. The smell was to gag! Did I say Awkward? Gary Busy, you should wash your tennis shoes or your feet, I thought. Then I thought maybe it's the “John.” I was right the first time. Gary said, “No, it's my feet."
Why?
I guess I was feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of having to see Chance and Dale again, and all that entailed, while stressing over my relationship with Johnny. How was that really going to work back here on the mainland, swamped by all the daily little dramas? I took advantage of another opportunity to avoid dealing with it all with coke and sex as my aids.
While Gary was walking down the gang plank with his beautiful blonde, I scurried up to him and slipped the cocaine bottle in his jacket pocket. I told him it was good seeing him, and he kissed me on the cheek. He then he introduced me to his friend, and told her what a great actress I was.
Johnny was waiting with flowers. He had rented a limo. There was champagne and more cocaine. We made love in the back of the limo on the way to Topanga. Then all of a sudden I started to heave. We got the window down just in time. I was puking my guts out and sobbing at the same time.
Sloppy seconds! What a slut I had become. That's all I could think, psychological disorders and drag abusive didn't play any part in it. We can be, oh, so hard on ourselves.
I think I also went up to Lake Tahoe once with Johnny, when Chance was spending a weekend at the beach. But it was over. I don't remember much. We were doing so much coke and "coming down" with Quaaludes and liquor, so everything is a blur now. I walked in on him kissing another girl at his friend Nick's house up the road, and I saw a part of him that turned me off. At that moment, I knew it was over for me. We had both cheated, so it was just a wash, in that regard. But how could we be truly in love if we couldn't be faithful even for the few months we had been together.
Earlier he had decided that I should sell my cabins in Topanga. And I didn't want to. My "Living in one and renting out the other," financial option was dear to me. In case I couldn't work or didn't want to, it would always be my safety net. I called Topanga my "Fuck you Hollywood House!"
At the time, I wanted to believe I could love him, but it turned out to be just another case of using drugs and sex to try to escape from the tragedy of what was left of my life. If escape wasn't possible, than at least I could deaden the pain for a while and continued to hope for God's redemption.
Another hellish event in my fractured life was also evolved from my Hawaiian adventure. I had unknowingly be observed exiting the plane by very the successful producer, Paul Lewis and the amazing talent, but erratic actor/director, Dennis Hopper at LAX.
Little did I know then what horror awaited me from such a seemly innocent encounter?