James MacArthur

James Gordon MacArthur, born December 8, 1937, in Los Angeles, California, was an American actor and recording artist whose career spanned radio, stage, film, and television. He died on October 28, 2010. Adopted by playwright Charles MacArthur and actress Helen Hayes, he grew up in Nyack, New York alongside his elder sister Mary, the MacArthurs' biological daughter, who died of polio in 1949 at age 19. His upbringing placed him in close proximity to major figures of American literary and theatrical life; Lillian Gish served as his godmother, and family guests included John Steinbeck, John Barrymore, Harpo Marx, Ben Hecht, Beatrice Lillie, and Robert Benchley. MacArthur attended the Allen-Stevenson School in New York before enrolling at the Solebury School in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he captained the basketball team, played guard on the football team, edited the school paper, rewrote the student constitution, and served simultaneously as president of his class, the student government, and the drama club. At Solebury he also dated fellow student Joyce Bulifant, a future actress whom he married in November 1958 and divorced nine years later.

MacArthur's first professional performance came in 1948 on the Theatre Guild on the Air, appearing alongside his mother. His stage work began in 1949 in Olney, Maryland, in a two-week production of The Corn Is Green, a role he repeated the following summer in Dennis, Massachusetts. His sister Mary, who was also in the production, had asked him to join the company. Before pursuing leading roles, MacArthur worked in summer-stock theater in various capacities, including as a set painter, lighting director, and parking lot attendant. During a Helen Hayes festival at the Falmouth Playhouse on Cape Cod, he took on walk-on parts and developed an interest in theatrical lighting, eventually lighting productions for Barbara Bel Geddes in The Little Hut and for Gloria Vanderbilt in The Swan. In 1954 he played John Day in Life with Father alongside Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney.

His screen career accelerated in 1955 when, at age 18, he played Hal Ditmar in the television episode "Deal a Blow" on the series Climax!, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Macdonald Carey, Phyllis Thaxter, and Edward Arnold. The New York Times noted that he "performed splendidly." Frankenheimer subsequently directed a film adaptation, retitled The Young Stranger, released in 1957 with MacArthur again in the lead. That performance earned him a nomination for Most Promising Newcomer at the 1958 BAFTA Awards. He went on to appear in World in White and episodes of General Electric Theater, Studio One in Hollywood, and Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.

Walt Disney selected MacArthur to star in The Light in the Forest in 1958, casting him as a white man raised by Native Americans. In April 1957 he had signed a three-picture deal with Disney, earning $2,500 per week for the first film, $3,000 for the second, and $3,500 for the third. Because he was studying history at Harvard, his availability was initially limited to summer breaks. Disney cast him next in Third Man on the Mountain (1959), in which he played a young man climbing the Matterhorn; his mother appeared in a cameo role. MacArthur left Harvard in his second year to pursue acting full time, subsequently appearing in two additional Disney productions, Kidnapped (1960) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960).

His Broadway debut came in 1960, when MacArthur appeared in Invitation to a March, playing opposite Jane Fonda. Originally from Los Angeles, he received a Theatre World Award in 1961 for that performance. Although he did not return to Broadway after that production, he continued working in theater throughout his career, appearing in productions including Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Moon Is Blue, John Loves Mary, Barefoot in the Park, and Murder at the Howard Johnson's.

In the early 1960s MacArthur also pursued a recording career, releasing several singles. His spoken-word recording "The Ten Commandments of Love" charted on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1963, peaking at number 94, and "(The Story of) The In-Between Years" was another minor chart entry. In 1963 he was also nominated for the Top New Male Personality category of the Golden Laurel Awards. That same year he starred in and produced a television pilot, Postmark: Jim Fletcher, about a writer, though the series was not picked up. His film work during this period included The Interns (1962), Spencer's Mountain (1963) with Henry Fonda, Cry of Battle (1963), The Truth About Spring (1965), The Bedford Incident (1965), and Battle of the Bulge (1965). He returned to Disney for the television production Willie and the Yank (1967), released theatrically as Mosby's Marauders, and appeared in The Love-Ins (1967) before taking a brief role as a preacher in Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High (1968).

That film's writer, Leonard Freeman, was developing the police procedural Hawaii Five-O, and after Tim O'Kelly was deemed too young by test audiences for the role of Jack Lord's assistant, MacArthur was cast instead. He played Danny "Danno" Williams on the series for eleven years, a role that made him widely recognizable and financially successful; he invested much of his earnings in Hawaiian real estate. MacArthur departed the show in 1979, stating that it had grown bland and predictable, and the series was canceled one year later. Following Hawaii Five-O, he guest-starred on programs including Murder, She Wrote, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Vega$, Walking Tall, and Superboy, and appeared in the miniseries Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story.