A pair of O’Briens

Hawaii Five-O logo in the main title; Liam O’Brien, brother of actor Edmond, was story consultant in the third season.

A major h/t to .@smilingcobra on Twitter. Sometimes you don’t get the connections. But it turns out actor Edmond O’Brien and his brother Liam O’Brien had connections to spy entertainment.

Edmond O’Brien (1915-85) had been a major player in movies such as White Heat, D.O.A., The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Fantastic Voyage. He was also a villain in a second-season episode of Mission: Impossible titled The Counterfeiter.

In the 21st century, less well known is Liam O’Brien, who died in 1996. His Los Angeles Times obituary described him as “a poet and cartoonist and then worked as a labor organizer before turning to writing plays.”

For the 1970-71 season of Hawaii Five-O, Liam O’Brien got the title of “story consultant.” In those days, a story consultant might be an in-house writer or he or she may have arranged free-lance writers to do scripts.

During his one season on Five-O, Liam O’Brien didn’t get any writing credits. Many of the episodes were written (or re-written) by scribes Jerry Ludwig and Eric Bercovici, either by themselves or as a team.

Given O’Brien’s story consultant title, he may well have been involved in assigning scripts or conducting story meetings during that Five-O season.

Later in his career, Liam O’Brien worked on series such as Police Story and Miami Vice.