Hawaii Five-O Star James MacArthur Quit The Show Despite His Fame - "I Grew Bored"

Mar 23, 2022

Feeling like you're part of the family is important for many people. Whether it's your biological family, a close group of friends that you live with, or a wonderful couple that invited you into their home, the people we want to be our family are our true family.

For actor James MacArthur, he found a way to his family through adoption. He was adopted by playwright Charles MacArthur and his wife, actress Helen Hayes, when James was just an infant. James had been born on Dec. 8, 1937, in Los Angeles, California, but grew up in Nyack, New York, alongside his elder sister and the MacArthurs' biological daughter.

He was a star child, finding great passion in a variety of sports, including basketball, football and baseball. James was also fascinated by cultural issues and was part of his student government before going on to become class president.

Of course, James found a love for drama and began starring in local plays. As he grew older, he began landing more illustrious roles in the acting industry, including roles in both movies and television. He was surrounded by amazing people in the entertainment industry throughout his life thanks to his parents, and went on to have a very successful career. James' most iconic role was as the fictional police officer Danny "Danno" Williams in the TV series "Hawaii Five-O."

Even though James knew that he was adopted, he never felt the need to search for his birth parents, and instead found a true home with Charles and Hayes. Read on to find out more about their beautiful family.

A Lifetime Of Success

Throughout the course of his career, James showed a great level of passion and potential – and it's clear that he had the talent to back it up. His career first started with roles on the radio. In 1948, he obtained a role in a play that was broadcast on radio with the Theatre Guild on the Air.

He later credited his parents as a driving factor behind his decision to pursue acting, as CBS News wrote:

"They did teach me a lot about the theatre just through my life with them," he said of his parents in a 1957 interview in Teen Life magazine. "They never pushed me in any direction. Any major decision has always been my own to make."

His first role on an actual stage came at the age of eight, when he played in a summer production of the stage play "The Corn is Green."

James' career continued to pick up, and when he was just 18 years old, he landed a small role in an episode of "Climax!" Although he had gained a place at Harvard to study history, James decided to drop out during his sophomore year and focus all his energy upon his acting career.

As the 1950s continued, James found more fame and recognition and even went on to obtain roles in Disney films, including "The Light in the Forest," "Third Man on the Mountain" and "Kidnapped." His acting featured a diverse casting of roles. Although he initially played many coming-of-age characters, he later branched out to include outcasts, rebels and even criminals and antagonists. 

It was clear that James had an impressive amount of talent and was capable of portraying a wide range of roles.

However, it was his role as Danno in "Hawaii Five-O" that firmly cemented James as an iconic actor in the minds of generations of viewers. The series aired from 1968 to 1980. As a main star for the first 11 seasons, James found great fame and fortune from the series and invested much of his earnings into real estate in Hawaii.

Despite such a busy schedule, James managed to find time for love. His first wife was actress and author Joyce Bulifant, whom he was married to from 1958 to 1968. In 1968, on the set of "The Angry Breed," James met fellow actress Melody Patterson, and the two fell in love. They tied the knot on Kauai in 1970 but divorced before the end of the decade. James went on to have four children with his third wife, Helen Beth Duntz, whom he was with until his death on Oct. 28, 2010.

Happy With His Family

While James went on to have a family of his own later in life, he grew up with adoptive parents. In an interview with Good Housekeeping in 1962, James talked about how he always knew his mother Hayes was an actress, but always saw her as "a woman I call Mom." His father Charles was also famous and had a career as a playwright.

In 1956, James was given a letter explaining that he was adopted. "While we were looking at the letter, Mom asked if I wanted to know about my birth," he said. "'No,' I answered without hesitation. But she wouldn't accept that as final." 

James continued, "I did think about it then, long and hard, but there was nothing I had to work out, really." He explained that he believed 30% of a person was made up of inheritance, and the other 70% was based on their environment. Since his adopted parents were his environment, James viewed them as his true parents. "If after all that, I still wasn't Mom and Pop's son, then I wasn't anybody's son, and the word had no meaning," James said.

However, James did consider how his parents viewed his adoption. He said:

"I can remember Pop getting very angry about newspaper stories that referred to me as their 'adopted son.' The last time this happened was when I was a senior in high school. I can still remember Pop's words: 'He's been our adopted son for 17 years. When does he stop being adopted and start being our son? Don't these people have any heart?'"

James never tried to reach out and find his biological parents, staying true to his first decision.

Deciding To Quit

The actor often made firm decisions and kept to them. One of these decisions was also why he left "Hawaii Five-O" before the show was scheduled to end. Years later, he would explain his reasoning on his website with clear and direct words:

"Quite frankly, I grew bored. The stories became more bland and predictable and presented less and less challenge to me as an actor." Once this decision was made, that was it and James left the series and his iconic role behind to look for more interesting things to do. Years later in 2003, when asked what he missed the most about the show, his answer was: "Living in Hawaii."

Did you know that James MacArthur was adopted? What do you think about his views toward his family? Let us know, and be sure to send this to your loved ones as well.