Guest Stars

 

 

Hawaii Five-0 attracted wonderful guest stars. They were the cream of the crop, the best of the best, and we looked forward to seeing them each time they appeared. Here are just a few of them:

 

 

Lew Ayres​

 

Lew Ayres, who portrayed the governor in "Cocoon" (Pilot), was married at one time to Ginger Rogers. She, of course, was Fred Astaire's dancing partner in movies during the 1930s. Ayres also appeared as Dr. Elias Haig in “Anybody Can Build a Bomb” (Season 6), and as Commander Reginald Blackwell in “Legacy of Terror” (Season 8).

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Hume Cronyn

 

​A native of London, Ontario, Canada, and a member of a prominent political family there, Mr. Cronyn was married to the beloved actress, Jessica Tandy. The two often appeared together on stage and screen. He was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, the Order of Canada, and Canada's Walk of Fame. He received medals of honor from the Canadian government and an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Western Ontario. 

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Mr. Cronyn's work on Hawaii Five-0 included two highly popular episodes, “Over Fifty? Steal” (Season 3) and “Odd Man In” (Season 4). He portrayed the same character, Lewis Avery Filer, a thief who delighted in irritating McGarrett.

 

 

Khigh Dhiegh

 

Khigh Dhiegh was born Kenneth Dickerson in 1916 (some sources say 1910) in Spring Lake, New Jersey. Unlike other actors who replace their birth names with their professional names, Kenneth Dickerson kept his birth name throughout his life. His professional name rhymes with "why me."

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 Kenneth Dickerson was a devout Taoist and founded the Taoist Sanctuary (now, Taoist Institute) in North Hollywood, California. He was the author of The Eleventh Wing and numerous other books on Taoism.

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Although he was of Anglo, Egyptian, and Sudanese ancestry, Khigh Dhiegh made a career of portraying Asians. He made his mark in the role of Dr. Yen Lo in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and of Davalo in John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966).

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​​​​Khigh Dhiegh also performed in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” “The Wild, Wild West,” “Mission Impossible,” and “Kung Fu,” among many other productions. 

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In 1967, Leonard Freeman tapped Khigh Dhiegh to portray Red Chinese agent Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-0. It was a semi-regular role, which Khigh Dhiegh played in fifteen episodes. With Jack Lord, he was the only actor to remain on the series from its pilot through its final episode, playing the same character. 

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Khigh Dhiegh was married to Mary Pearman Dickerson and had two children, a son and a daughter. He passed away in Mesa, Arizona, on October 25, 1991.

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Bill Edwards

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​​Bill Edwards was born on September 14, 1918, in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. He had a love of horses and drew sketches of them from an early age, especially after his family moved to Wyoming. There, he learned to ride and, in adulthood, became a championship rodeo rider. In the 1930s, he gave up that rough life with its broken bones and moved to New York, where he became a model. An agent discovered him in 1940 and took him to Hollywood, where he went under contract to Paramount Pictures. In 1945, he married Hazel Allen with whom he had one child, a daughter.

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​Edwards did not catch on as an actor. Many of his appearances were uncredited; still others were minor roles. Indeed, he is best known for his appearances on Hawaii Five-0, where he appeared in 17 episodes, most often as McGarrett’s intelligence contact in Washington, Jonathan Kaye.

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​When Edwards was not acting, he was pursuing his love of art. He became a commercial illustrator, designing paperback book covers and paper dolls in the images of actresses. His paintings of Old West scenes gained national recognition, being accepted by the Air Force’s art program and by the Smithsonian.

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​​​Bill Edwards passed away on December 21, 1999, in Newport Beach, California.

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Mel Ferrer

 

Mel Ferrer was born on August 25, 1917 in Elberon, New Jersey. Hailing from a family of prominent New York physicians, Mel Ferrer was the first husband of actress Audrey Hepburn. He became a published author at the age of 23; won a battle with polio; and  was an actor, director, and producer, working with such big names as Howard Hughes. He appeared with Miss Hepburn in the epic War and Peace.

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His work on Hawaii Five-0 includes Father Neill in “The Bells Toll at Noon” (Season 9) and the villain, Emil Raddick, in “To Kill a Mind” (Season 9).

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Mr. Ferrer passed away on June 2, 2008, in Santa Barbara, California.

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Helen Hayes

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Best known to us as James MacArthur's mom, Miss Hayes was known as The First Lady of American Theater. Born in 1900 in Washington, DC, she made her stage debut at the age of five at the Belasco Theatre in DC as a singer.

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In her only appearance on Hawaii Five-0, her character said she had appeared with the (fictitious) prominent actor, David Belasco. Her character in “Retire to Sunny Hawaii...Forever” (Season 8), Aunt Clara Williams, seemed to be almost a reprisal of her character, stowaway passenger Ada Quonsett, in the movie Airport (1970), although some sources say she was actually playing her role, Ernesta Snoop, from The Snoop Sisters on television. Miss Hayes won an Academy Award for her appearance in Airport and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her appearance on Hawaii Five-0. She was one of only fifteen actors to win awards for her performances on stage, in movies, and on television.

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Miss Hayes passed away on March 17, 1993, in Nyack, New York.

 

 

Eileen Heckart

 

Eileen Heckart was born on March 29, 1919, in Columbus, Ohio. Although Miss Heckart was known primarily as a character actress on the stage and the small screen, she carried starring roles well. She portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt in the television mini-series Back Stairs at the White House. She appeared with Pat Hingle, another Five-0 veteran, in the William Inge / Elia Kazan Broadway production of  The Dark at the Top of the Stairs.

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Miss Heckart portrayed grand dame Agatha Henderson extraordinarily well in the Hawaii Five-0 episode “Honor is an Unmarked Grave” (Season 8). Whether she was answering McGarrett's questions through a barrier of orchids or quietly informing her lawyer that she believed she would be the defendant in her upcoming murder trial, she remained completely in control of her emotions.

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Miss Heckart passed away on December 31, 2001, in Norwalk, Connecticut.

 

 

Pat Hingle

 

Martin Patterson “Pat” Hingle was born on July 19, 1924, in Miami, Florida. He grew up in Weslaco, Texas, and graduated from the University of Texas. He served in the Navy during World War II. 

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Mr. Hingle appeared in three episodes of Hawaii Five-0, all as the same character, the egotistical physicist, Dr. Grant Ormsbee. If he and Jack squabbled as brothers Gooper and Brick Pollitt in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, they really outdid themselves  in “The Defector” (Season 8), “Man on Fire” (Season 9), and “To Kill a Mind” (Season 9).

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Mr. Hingle is best remembered to younger viewers as Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies. He is known to fans of Hang 'Em High (written by our own Leonard Freeman) as The Hanging Judge and to World War II historians as the man who portrayed Admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey in the television mini-series War and Remembrance.

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Twice married with five children, Pat Hingle passed away on January 3, 2009, in Carolina Beach, North Carolina.

 

 

Mildred Natwick

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Born on June 19, 1905, in Baltimore, Maryland, Miss Natwick primarily was a stage actress, although she caught the attention of television viewers with her appearances as San Francisco Police Commissioner Stewart McMillan's (Rock Hudson) mother in McMillan & Wife, as Helen Hayes' partner in crime solving in The Snoop Sisters, and even as a little-old-lady Robin Hood in a Magnum, PI episode, “Limited Engagement.” Let it not be forgotten that she portrayed Corie Banks Bratter's (Jane Fonda) mother in the film Barefoot in the Park and the spinster Miss Ivy Graveley in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Trouble with Harry.

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Miss Natwick appeared in two episodes of Hawaii Five-0, “Frozen Assets” (Season 10) and “The Spirit is Willie” (Season 11), portraying the same character, Millicent Shand, who surely must have inspired Murder She Wrote's Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury).

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Miss Natwick passed away on October 25, 1994, in New York City.

 

 

Lois Nettleton

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Lois Nettleton was born on August 16, 1927, in Oak Park, Illinois. She was named Miss Chicago of 1948 and was a semi-finalist in that year’s Miss America Pageant. She served as Barbara Bel Geddes’ understudy in the role of Maggie the Cat in Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and, occasionally, played the part opposite Jack’s character, Brick Pollitt. She acted in another Tennessee Williams play, Period of Adjustment (1962), this time on film. Most of Lois Nettleton’s work was on television. She won an Emmy Award for her portrayal of a bereaved lesbian in an episode of The Golden Girls.

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Her only appearance on Hawaii Five-0 was in “Sing a Song of Suspense” (Season 8) in which she portrayed Chelsea Merriman, a singer, who was sponsored by a mobster who had killed a young woman. The episode was highly popular with fans who would like to have seen McGarrett establish a relationship with Chelsea.

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​Miss Nettleton passed away on January 18, 2008, in Woodland Hills, California.

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Alfred Ryder

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Born on January 5, 1916, in New York City, Alfred Ryder was married at one time to Kim Stanley with whom Jack starred in the Broadway production of Horton Foote's The Traveling Lady. He studied under Lee Strasberg and was a lifelong member of the Actors Studio. He acted from the age of eight and made his first adult appearance in Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938).

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During World War II, he served in the Army Air Forces. In his first film, Winged Victory (1944), he portrayed Private First Class Milhauser. He served as understudy for Sir Laurence Olivier in the Broadway production of The Entertainer (1958). He went on to serve as stage director on and off Broadway. Alfred Ryder is best remembered as a character actor on television. We remember him as Harry Quon in the Five-0 episode The Late John Louisiana (Season 3).

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Mr. Ryder passed away on April 16, 1995, in Englewood, New Jersey.

 

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Andrew Duggan

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Born on December 28, 1923, in Franklin, Indiana, Andrew Duggan served in the US Army during World War II.

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He portrayed President Dwight Eisenhower in the mini-series Back Stairs at the White House and in a biography, J. Edgar Hoover. He also portrayed President Lyndon Johnson in another biography, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover. He appeared in numerous television series, including seven episodes of Hawaii Five-0.

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Mr. Duggan passed away on May 15, 1988, in Hollywood, California.

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Albert Paulsen

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Albert Paulsen won an Emmy Award in 1964 for the Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre presentation “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” based on an historical novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

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​Elliott Street

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Besides Elliott Street’s outstanding work as an actor, he was an instructor of theater and speech at the Meridian (Mississippi) Community College and served as executive director of the Grand Opera House Revitalization Project in Meridian.

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​Harold Gould

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Harold Gould, who studied at Cornell and the Neighborhood Playhouse and taught drama at Randolph-Macon Women's College (now Randolph College) in Virginia and at the University of California.

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Manu Tupou

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Manu Tupou, who graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Actors Studio and helped to develop the New Era Acting Technique, a simper acting style than the traditional method acting. 

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Milton Selzer

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Milton Selzer, who studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and The New School before becoming a Shakespearean actor. Turning to films, he appeared in such classics as Marnie, Raise the Titanic, and Capricorn One. He is said to have been the most prolific television actor on record.

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Simon Oakland

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Simon Oakland, who began his career as a concert violinist before becoming a strong and talented actor on stage, in films, and on television.

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Soon Tek Oh

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Soon Tek Oh, who studied at UCLA and the Neighborhood Playhouse, became a prolific actor, and worked to improve the image of Asian-Americans in the acting profession, establishing several theater companies to their benefit. 

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Jean Simmons

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Jean Simmons, who began acting in her native England before moving to the United States, was named to the Order of the British Empire for her services to acting.

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Bruce Wilson

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Bruce Wilson appeared in seven episodes of Hawaii Five-0. He is perhaps best remembered as Hood-Clovis in “Leopard on the Rock” (Season 2) and as Lyons, the demolitions expert in “The Last Eden” (Season 3).

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Richard Morrison

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Richard Morrison was born April 3, 1930, in Ohio. He appeared in five episodes of Hawaii Five-0, perhaps best remembered as Lai Han in “Is this Any Way to Run a Paradise?” (Season 4).

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He worked as a social worker for more than thirty years and passed away on February 14, 2008, in Belgrade, Montana.

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