Hawaii Five-O

By Brian Faucette

Hawaii Five-O, created by Leonard Freeman in 1968, is an American police procedural drama series that was produced by CBS Productions and aired for twelve seasons. Author Brian Faucette discusses the show’s importance by looking at how it framed questions around the security and economy of the Hawaiian Islands in connection with law enforcement, the diversity of its population, the presence of the US military, and the influx of tourists.

Faucette begins by discussing how the show both conformed to and adapted within the TV landscape of the late 1960s and how those changes helped to make it the longest-running cop show in American TV history until it was surpassed by Law and Order. Faucette argues that it was Freeman’s commitment to filming on location in Hawaii that ensured the show would tackle issues pertinent to the islands and reflect the diversity of its people, culture, and experiences, while helping to establish a viable film and TV industry in Hawaii, which is still in use today. Faucette explains how a dedication to placing the show in political and social context of the late 1960s and 1970s (i.e., questions around policing, Nixon’s call for "law and order," the US military’s investment and involvement in the Vietnam War, issues of racial equality) rooted it in reality and sparked conversation around these issues. Another key element of the show’s success is its connection to issues of tourism and the idea that TV can create a form of "tourism" from the safety of the home. Faucette concludes with discussion of how Hawaii Five-O led to the development of other shows, as well as attempts to reboot the show in the 1990s and in 2010.

Faucette makes a strong argument for the series as a distinctive artifact of a time in US history that witnessed profound changes in culture, politics, and economics, one that will excite not only scholars and students of television and media studies but any die-hard fan of gripping police procedurals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780814344330

Book preview

Cover Page for Hawaii Five-O

Hawaii Five-O

TV Milestones

Series Editor

Barry Keith Grant, Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu.

Hawaii Five-O

Brian Faucette

Wayne State University Press

Detroit

Copyright © 2022 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan, 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4432-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8143-4433-0 (e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021943072

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Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Aloha

1. I’m Worried about a World without Law and Justice: Policing the Islands

2. What Are You Waiting For, Soldier?: The Unpopular War

3. When Push Comes to Shove, a Hawai‘ian Will Never Trust a Haole: Depicting Race Relations in the Islands

4. Two Million Guests a Year Pass through Here. We Invite Them, and We’re Responsible for Their Safety: Tourism Television

Conclusion: Book ’Em, Danno: The Legacy of Hawaii Five-O

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

My earliest memories of watching Hawaii Five-O were with my mother, Mary Servoss, my grandmother Nancy Elizabeth Caldwell, and my brother, Jeff Faucette, who each shaped my love and interest in film and television. Watching reruns of this and other cop shows developed my lifelong fascination with this type of television.

The impetus for this book began when I was approached by Roger Sabin to contribute to his book on cop shows, so I must thank him for that opportunity.

I want to say thank you to editor in chief Annie Martin, who was gracious enough to listen to my pitch for a book on the show at an SCMS conference when she was the acquisitions editor for Wayne State University Press. Thank you to Marie Sweetman, who replaced Annie Martin as acquisitions editor for the TV Milestones Series and became my editor, for your patience, encouragement, and willingness to help me through the many iterations of the book even as I doubted myself. I want to thank Barry Keith Grant, series editor of the TV Milestones Series, for his feedback and suggestions on how to improve the manuscript and his commitment to ensuring that scholarship on television studies is supported. I also want to thank the anonymous readers whose thoughtful readings provided many helpful suggestions to better the book.

Many thanks also go to Chris Becker, associate professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at Notre Dame for her assistance in locating research materials for me and for reading and offering feedback on the early stages of the book. Thank you to Ina Rae Hark, who has been gracious enough to share her own knowledge about writing a TV Milestones volume, including sharing her initial book proposal, which was invaluable to me when I was developing my own proposal.

I need to thank my University of Kansas contingent, which includes John Tibbets, Ron Wilson, Mona Mwakalinga, and my partner in crime when it comes to a love of crime/cop shows, Bärbel Göbel Stolz. I also want to thank my colleagues at Caldwell Community College, in particular Matt Williams, who has patiently endured hallway conversations about the show and offered avenues to consider. The librarians at Caldwell Community College greatly assisted me with research help and were instrumental in locating resources I needed for the book. Jason Sperb has been gracious enough to share his own research about Hawai‘i and the show, including the original show bible, which was instrumental in helping me frame my thinking about the series. Lori Morimoto was invaluable in creating the index for the book.

A book is a difficult thing to write, and often writers cannot see the problems in their argument or structure. Therefore, I cannot thank my colleague Kelly Harrison enough for his willingness to read a draft of the manuscript and his suggestions for ways to improve it. A hearty thank you also goes to Avery R. Russell, who was also kind enough to read the manuscript and offer suggestions.

My final thank you is to my wonderful and brilliant wife, Jessica Chapman, who has been a tireless champion of mine since we first met. She is also at times my toughest critic, biggest supporter, and the person I share every piece of writing with. She has read multiple drafts of chapters and the manuscript itself, and without her patience, love, and insights, I would not have been able to finish the book.

Introduction

Aloha

With its iconic wave opening, pulsating theme composed by Morton Stevens, energetic credit sequence crafted by the Iranian-born Reza Badiyi, and multiracial cast, the long-running CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) police procedural Hawaii Five-O set the standard for future iterations of police series. It originally premiered on Thursday, September 20, 1968, at 8 p.m. The brainchild of Leonard Freeman, Hawaii Five-O was built around his fascination with the idea of man’s evil amid paradise. It was this unique combination of paradise, its exoticism for white middle-class Americans, and the thrill of seeing justice meted out that made the series a hit. Over the course of twelve seasons, it was one of the top twenty highest rated series in the United States. Throughout its run, the show was nominated for multiple Emmys in editing, cinematography, directing, music composition, and outstanding drama series in 1973. It won Emmys in 1970 and 1974, both times for Stevens’s compositions. Each week Hawaii Five-O offered viewers the opportunity to travel to the islands, explore their beautiful flora and fauna, learn about the complicated history of the islands, and see the possibility of a society where racial and ethnic diversity extended beyond token portrayals of minorities as more than criminals or servants, all while assuring them that the forces of law and order were protecting Americans and their way of life. This book relies on the scholarly methods of TV studies rather than just trivia about the series and examines the show’s production history and its cultural, racial/ethnic, economic, and technological impact on the US television industry from 1968 to 1980. The book uses a mix of close textual analysis and critical assessment and, in doing so, illustrates how Hawaii Five-O grappled with the issues of its day and in the process developed a model that other crime shows later emulated.

The show struggled in its initial Thursday at 8 p.m. slot against the sitcoms The Flying Nun (1967–70) and Bewitched (1964–72) on ABC and the western Daniel Boone (1964–70) and the cop show Ironside (1967–75) on NBC. It was when the show moved to Wednesdays at 10 p.m. in December 1968 that the ratings improved from sixtieth to fifteenth place. The move ensured that it remained in the top twenty-five highest rated shows for the rest of its twelve-year prime-time run, despite the fact that its place on the schedule would shift throughout the rest of its airing. Karen Rhodes recounts her own experience watching the show, explaining that the 8 p.m. slot was inconvenient for young mother mothers who wanted to watch the show but did not want to expose their kids to the show’s violence and grittiness. Thus, as she argues, when it moved to 10 p.m., it allowed young mothers to have their children in bed and housework finished so that they were ready to get away to Hawaii for an hour.¹ Rhodes argues that it was these women in the key advertiser age demographic of eighteen to thirty-four who watched the series for its lush scenery, the dreamlike milieu of Hawaii, handsome Jack Lord and James MacArthur as well as the enticement of danger.² It was the action, beautiful locations, and complex discussions of topical issues like race, Vietnam, and the changing nature of the United States that helped make the series successful. That success ensured that it would leave a lasting cultural imprint and one that can be felt today with the state of the police procedurals that still dominate the airwaves of CBS. It for these reasons that it is surprising that the series has received relatively little attention from television scholars, despite the fact that it was the longest running cop show in history until it was surpassed by Law and Order (NBC, 1990–2010).

When the series debuted in 1968, the US TV industry was in a state of flux, as it faced changing fortunes in earnings. The three primary networks—NBC, ABC, and CBS—saw their profits rise from $37 million in 1962 to $56 million in 1963 and reach a record of $60 million in 1964. Earnings began to stabilize rather than continue to rise in the years 1965–68, even as the networks averaged $63 million for the rest of the decade. These earnings were directly related to the structure of the industry, which in 1964 consisted of 564 television stations across the United States, with 93 percent of those stations being affiliated to one of the three networks: NBC (37 percent), CBS (34 percent), and ABC (22 percent).³ This system ensured that these three networks were now operating as a close-knit, mature oligopoly that competed against each other for audiences and advertising revenues, while still controlling the television market among themselves when it came to access (deciding what companies to work with), output (determining what programs got made and at what cost), and pricing (knowing what each other’s advertising fees were and setting individual rates accordingly).⁴ It was against this backdrop that CBS became the leading network in the United States, winning its ninth straight season for 1963–64, having