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James MacArthur and Emme Tomimbang, outside of the Wo Fat restaurant in Honolulu during a 1996 television special.
A landmark structure in Honolulu, the former Wo Fat restaurant, is to be restored and redeveloped, the Honolulu Star Advertiser reported.
Hawaii Five-O creator Leonard Freeman used the name of the of the Chinese restaurant for the arch villain who would oppose lawman Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord).
Wo Fat, played by Khigh Dhiegh, made his first appearance in the 1968 Five-O pilot. Initially, Wo Fat was a Chinese agent. After the U.S. and China established diplomatic relations in the 1970s, Wo Fat went independent.
Regardless, Wo Fat took on McGarrett a number of times during the 12-year run of the show. The 1980 series finale brought back Wo Fat one last time.
A rebooted series that began in 2010 (with the spelling Five-0) had its own version of Wo Fat. The second version of the character was killed off in the 100th episode of that series. That installment aired in 2014.
Here’s an excerpt of the Star Advertiser story that describes developer plans to convert the restaurant for multiple uses:
The Wo Fat project calls for a cafeteria-style eatery and some retail on the ground floor along historic Hotel and Maunakea streets, and a 23-room boutique hotel on the second and third floors in what for decades served as the main dining halls for one of the largest and most prestigious Chinese banquet restaurants on the island.
The 86-year-old building was acquired by new owners in 2017, the newspaper said. The restoration project will cost an estimated $10 million. The Star Advertiser described some of the problems involved with the project.
It’s not a simple undertaking. In the early 2000s, the former owners of the building allowed it to become a nightclub and its proprietors decided to paint over the distinctive artwork that adorned the ceilings and columns, as well as the building’s unique, multi-colored stained-glass windows — with black.
The development group spearheading the project is named Mighty Wo Fat LLC.
Hawaii Five-0 began its ninth season with a remake of the original show’s pilot. While it was pretty close to the 1968 TV movie in places, the 2018 version was more hyper.
Part of it couldn’t be helped. The original (written by Leonard Freeman and directed by Paul Wendkos) has more time to work with. It filled a two-hour time slot. In those days you got around 50 minutes of show after excluding commercials.
The 2018 version filled a single-hour time slot, and these days you get 40 to 43 minutes or so without the commercials.
The remake also gives McGarrett 2.0 (Alex O’Loughlin) more of a personal motive. (Of course.)
In the original, McGarrett was a friend of Hennessy, a U.S. intelligence operative (he wasn’t identified as working for the CIA) who turns up dead. It turns out he was one of several agents who had mysteriously died. In the remake, McGarrett had known all of the dead men.
With the remake, McGarrett puts things together really, really quickly. Still, the show faithfully recreates the sensory deprivation tank torture of the 1968 pilot. In that TV movie, the pilot was supervised by Wo Fat.
The Wo Fat of the current show was killed off back in 2014. Nevertheless, Wo Fat 2.0 (Mark Dacascos) makes an appearance in the form of a hallucination while McGarrett is being tortured. There’s a new villain, part of a “rogue” faction of Chinese intelligence. He happens to have a shaved head like the original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh).
The 2018 version also retains (understandably) the style of the current series. So, we still get arguments between McLaughlin’s McGarrett and Scott Caan’s Danno. In the remake, McLaughlin and Caan are together where Jack Lord’s McGarrett was by himself in the 1968 pilot.
Also, of course, the fight scenes are faster paced and violent than what viewers got in 1968. In the original, the climatic fight is between McGarrett and a traitorous U.S. intelligence agent. (They had to let Wo Fat go so he’d spread false information McGarrett had been programmed to say.). In the remake, McGarrett fights several guys, including the lead villain.
To be honest, I haven’t watched the current series that closely for the past few years. The remake held my interest. It was interesting to see what would be included.
Finally, the writing credit read, “Written by Leonard Freeman and Peter M. Lenkov.” Lenkov is the executive producer of the current series. The script of the remake used a surprising number of lines from Freeman’s original script.
So it was nice to see Freeman share in the full writing credit and not be relegated to a “story by” credit. Freeman died in 1974, after production of the original show’s sixth season had ended production. It would run another six seasons without him, although it was never quite the same.
Fifty years ago this month, Hawaii Five-O debuted. While a cop show, it had an element of international intrigue from the start.
The two-hour television movie version version of the pilot, which first aired on CBS on SEPT. 20, 1968, concerned a plot where Red Chinese intelligence operative Wo Fat was torturing U.S. intelligence agents in the Pacific Rim and obtaining important information.
Steve McGarrett, the no-nonsense head of state police unit Hawaii Five-O is drawn to the case because the latest victim was a friend of his. The lawman, a former U.S. Naval intelligence officer, isn’t one to back down from official pressure to lay off.
The pilot immediately grabbed the attention of viewers. A short pre-titles sequence shows Wo Fat using a sensory deprivation chamber for the torture. That’s followed by a 90-second main title featuring a stirring theme by Morton Stevens.
The composer initially thought about re-using the theme he wrote for an unsold pilot, CALL TO DANGER. His wife, Annie Stevens, strongly advised against the move, according to a 2010 STORY IN THE HONOLULU STAR ADVERTISER. As a result, Stevens created one of the greatest themes in television history.
The series was conceived by veteran television producer Leonard Freeman, who wrote the pilot. Freeman’s 1967 first draft had a team led by McGarrett, with a mid-20s Hawaiian sidekick, Kono Kalakaua, a third, heavy-set detective and Chin Ho Kelly, who was the Honolulu Police Department’s liaison with Five-O. In the final version of the story, the sidekick became the Caucasian Danny Williams; the Kono name was given to the heavier-set character; and Chin Ho was made a full-fledged member of Five-O.
Freeman & Co. were preparing to film the pilot with American actor Robert Brown as McGarrett. Rose Freeman, widow of the Five-O creator, told a 1996 fan convention in Los Angeles that CBS objected to the casting and, just five days before filming was to start, Brown was replaced with Jack Lord, the first screen incarnation of Felix Leiter in Dr. No. Brown ended up starring in another 1968 series, Here Come the Brides.
Perry Lafferty, a former CBS executive, told the story a bit differently in an interview for the Archive of American Television. His version, though, still had Jack Lord as a last-minute casting.
The pilot had Tim O’Kelly as Danny. When the series was picked up, Freeman recast the part with James MacArthur, who a small, but notable role in Hang ‘Em High, a Clint Eastwood Western film that Freeman had produced.
The international espionage aspect of Five-O remained throughout the show’s 12-year run, though less so in the later seasons. Wo Fat, played by Khigh Dhiegh, made a NUMBER OF RETURN APPEARANCES, including the 1980 series finale. As the U.S. and China began to normalize diplomatic relations, Wo Fat became an independent menace. In the ninth-season opener, Wo Fat attempts to take over the Chinese government.
George Lazenby in a 1979 episode of Hawaii Five-O
Five-O matched wits with a number of other spies played by the likes of Theodore Bikel (who had tried out for Goldfinger), Maud Adams and Soon Tek-Oh. George Lazenby, the second screen James Bond, played a secondary villain in a 1979 episode filmed on location in Singapore.
Five-O wasn’t always an easy show to work on. Freeman died in early 1974, after the sixth season completed production. Zulu (real name Gilbert Kauhi), who played Kono left after the fourth season; he told fans at the 1996 convention about problems he had with Jack Lord. His replacement, Al Harrington as another detective, departed in the seventh season.
Nevertheless, Five-O had a long run. When it left the air, Five-O was the longest-running crime drama, a status it held until Law and Order, the 1990-2010 series.
Lord’s Steve McGarrett emerged as one of the most recognizable television characters. In 2007, 27 years after the final Five-O episode, THE NEW YORK TIMES’S OPINION PAGES summed up Five-O’s appeal.
“Evil makes McGarrett angry, but when he speaks, his voice is startlingly gentle, exuding a quiet control that a beleaguered generation of parents surely wished they had when facing the forces of social decay,” reads the commentary by Lawrence Downes.
The writer ends his piece describing what it might be like if McGarrett was president. He dispatches Kono and Chin to stop illegal immigration and tells Danny that he wants undocumented workers “legalized. Tell Congress to send me a bill. I want it tough, and I want it fair. And I want it on my desk Monday morning.”
In 2010, CBS introduced a new version of the show, with a slightly different spelling (Hawaii Five-0, with a digit instead of a capital O as in the original), a younger McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and a Danny with more attitude (Scott Caan).
The current series is in its ninth season. For the 50th anniversary of the original show, it will feature a remake of Cocoon, the 1968 pilot. The remake is scheduled to be telecast on Sept. 28.
The 2010s Five-0 has other significant differences than the original. In the eighth season, the McLaughlin and Caan versions of McGarrett and Danny decided to go into the restaurant business on the side. I can’t imagine Leonard Freeman would have approved.
Khigh Dhiegh, Soon Tek-Oh, Andrew Duggan and Jack Lord in a scene from the original Hawaii Five-O pilot in 1968.
Hawaii Five-0 is doing a remake of the original Hawaii Five-O pilot, Cocoon, the current show’s executive producer said on Twitter and Instagram.
“For those who guessed it… we’re redoing the 1968 pilot “Cocoon” for our season 9 premiere of #h50 – best way to celebrate our 50th anniversary- honoring the original and creator Leonard Freeman,” Peter Lenkov wrote on Instagram.
The original Hawaii Five-O was a police drama that often had espionage story lines. That was established with the two-hour TV movie pilot, written and produced by Freeman and which aired in September 1968.
In the pilot, Chinese agents are abducting U.S. intelligence agents and subjecting them to a new form of torture, dubbed the cocoon. They’re suspended in a pool, wearing a mask (with a tube supplying oxygen) with their ears, nose and eyes covered.
The lack of sensory impulses eventually breaks them and they provide crucial intelligence information. They are then killed, with their deaths made to look like an accident.
Lawman Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) gets involved when Hennessey, a friend of his and an intelligence agent, turns up dead, apparently the result of a drowning. McGarrett doesn’t buy it. Hennessey never learned to swim because he sunburned too easily.
The pilot also introduced Wo Fat (Khigh Dheigh), who’d be McGarrett’s arch foe during the series.
The remake is going to have to make one major change. The Wo Fat of the current show (Mark Dacascos) was killed off in a 2014 installment that was also the 100th episode.
The current series debuted in 2010 and, as Lenkov noted, will begin its ninth season this fall. In 2013, the show also did a remake of an episode of the original series, Hookman, about a killer with no hands.
UPDATE (3:30 p.m.): Lenkov posted a photograph on Instagram from the remake. McGarrett 2.0 (Alex O’Loughlin) is undercover doing repair work inside a ship, the same way Jack Lord’s McGarrett did in the 1968 pilot.
Wo Fat triumphs (for a while) over McGarrett in Nine Dragons
This year marks the 40th anniversary of one of the best episodes of the original Hawaii Five-O series, the two-hour Nine Dragons.
The first episode of the 1976-77 season was one of the best encounters between the original Steve McGarrett (Jack Lord) and the original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh).
The episode also featured the most James Bond-like plot of the original 1968-80 series. Wo Fat intends to lead a coup of China, then launch a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States.
To ensure no other nations retaliate, Wo Fat abducts McGarrett. The lawman, under torture, is recorded as saying the U.S. was responsible for the deaths of Chinese leadership (that Wo Fat plans to accomplish). The film will be broadcast as the attack against the U.S. takes place, causing other countries to not attack China.
All of this, of course, is rather fantastic. Nevertheless, it features one of the best performances by Khigh Diegh as Wo Fat. The actor (1910-1991) essentially gets a chance to meld his two best-known characters: Wo Fat and the Chinese brain washing expert in the 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate.
What’s more, Jack Lord’s McGarrett, for once in the series, is utterly defeated, at least for a time. Despite McGarrett’s resistance, he eventually gives in. McGarrett, naturally, rallies and escapes. McGarrett has no memory of the defeat until he gets a chance to view the film shortly before Wo Fat intends to use it.
Nine Dragons included contributions from one of Five-O’s best writers (Jerome Coopersmith, his next-to-last script) and directors (Michael O’Herlihy, his final effort for the series). Above all, it features one of the best scores for the show by Morton Stevens, who composed the classic Five-O theme.
Finally, the episode includes on-location filming in Hong Kong, a first for the show. To defray the cost, CBS struck a deal with Air Siam (everybody in the epiosde who takes a flight flies on Air Siam).
Five-O would not have such on-location filming until the end of the 11th season, where a two-hour episode was filmed in Singapore (The Year of the Horse), that included one-time 007 George Lazenby.
The original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh) gloats when he momentarily has an advantage over Steve McGarrett
James Bond fans are debating whether it’s a good idea or not for a rebooted Ernst Stavro Blofeld to be part of Bond 24. What spurred the discussion was A REPORT IN THE MAIL ON SUNDAY saying such a move would occur.
At this point, it’s not known whether that’s really happening or not. Even if it is, fans might know it for sure until Bond 24 comes out in the fall of 2015, similar to how Agent Eve in Skyfall turned out to be a rebooted Moneypenny.
That hasn’t stopped fan debates concerning a 21st century version of Blofeld. Some think it’d be great, especially if a new Blofeld were closer to the character depicted in Ian Fleming’s novels. Others say it’s best to leave Blofeld in the past.
A similar rebooting of an arch foe has been done, and completed, on the rebooted Hawaii Five-0. That series debuted in 2010 on CBS and its 100th episode was telecast Nov. 7. We’re talking about, of course, Wo Fat, who was Steve McGarrett’s greatest enemy in the original 1968-80 Hawaii Five-O.
This post is simply a look at the choices the new series made in rebooting Wo Fat. It’s not meant as predicting or advocating how Blofeld should be rebooted (if he is at all) in Bond 24.
The original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh) was very much the mastermind, manipulating events and spinning schemes. He left the rough stuff up to his flunkies. At times, he even displayed a sarcastic sense of humor.
Initially, Wo Fat worked for China. At the time the original series debuted, the United States didn’t have diplomatic relations with China. In the second half of the series, Wo Fat went independent and in one seventh season episode says the current Chinese government is too soft. In a two-hour episode in the ninth season, he plans to stage a coup, seize power and launch nuclear missiles at the U.S. Wo Fat thought big.
This version of the character didn’t show up all that often and there were some seasons where he didn’t appear at all. Each encounter between Wo Fat and McGarrett seemed more special (excluding a second-season episode where Wo Fat only made a cameo appearance.) Wo Fat gets captured in the final episode. There was no personal connection between Wo Fat and McGarrett (Jack Lord), although the villain came to despise his adversary.
Mark Cacascos, Wo Fat 2.0.
For the new series, there’s a new mean, lean Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos). This Wo Fat is an independent terrorist, though he appears to be welcome in North Korea, which he uses as his base of operations for one episode. He plots, engages in his own fighting and brutally kills people on his own. He also shows up a lot more often — 15 of the first 100 episodes. Wo Fat and the new McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) have a number of intense fights over those episodes.
And, it turns out, Wo Fat’s hatred of McGarrett turns out to be personal from the start, although this wasn’t revealed initially.
This McGarrett has a mother who is a U.S. spy. She had been assigned to kill Wo Fat’s father but killed his mother instead. Mom McGarrett initially tried to raise Wo Fat as her own but her U.S. intelligence bosses said that was a bad idea. As a result, Wo Fat has a big hatred of the McGarrett clan from the start.
For his final appearance, Wo Fat 2.0 tortured McGarrett (and not for the first time on the series). Eventually, McGarrett got free and the two had one last all-out fight. They’re laying on the floor, exhausted, each holding a gun on the other. Wo Fat sarcastically calls McGarrett brother. “You’re not my brother,” McG replies. No more Wo Fat.
Peter Lenkov, the show’s executive producer who also wrote the episode, TOLD TV GUIDE he didn’t initially plan to kill off Wo Fat but, “If he had gotten away at the end, I think it may have seemed ridiculous.”
When I wrote the outline [for the episode], he wasn’t dead in the outline. And when I started writing the script, it really felt like a natural end to the episode. I had always envisioned following the pattern of the original show, with the last show that we ever do being the capture of Wo Fat. But I felt, when I was writing it, that that felt a little predictable for people who watch the show and know the original one…I felt like if I was going to surprise the audience at any point, this would be it.
In the rebooted show, which debuted in the fall of 2010, Wo Fat 2.0 (Mark Dacascos) was used a lot more than the original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh). Rebooted Wo Fat appeared in 15 episodes in less than five full seasons. By comparison, original Wo Fat appeared 13 times in 12 full seasons of Hawaii Five-O (which was how the original show was spelled). This counts his appearance in the pilot as only one appearance (even though the pilot was later re-edited as a two-part episode). We’re counting all other two-part episodes as one appearance for for each part. The original Wo Fat didn’t appear at all in seasons 6, 10 and 11.
Rebooted Wo Fat was supposed to be mastermind *and* terrific fighter. Thus, he was lean, mean and a master of martial arts. Portly original Wo Fat was content to be a mastermind who let others do the violence and generally manipulated events. It should be noted that Wo Fat 2.0 had virtual control of Hawaii (at the end of season 1 it was revealed the governor was under his control) but nobody knew it.
Author Richard Matheson died this week at the age of 87. Obituaries, SUCH AS THIS ONE ON NPR quite rightly detailed work such as I Am Legend, classic episodes of The Twilight Zone and the early 1970s television movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, which was one of Steven Spielberg’s early directing credits.
He also made an unlikely contribution to 1960s spy television. It wasn’t on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. or Mission: Impossible or Get Smart or The Wild, Wild West. Instead, it was the script for an installment of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., the spinoff that only lasted one season.
The specific episode was THE ATLANTIS AFFAIR, the ninth episode of the series. While it suffers some of the same campiness that crimped the entire Girl series, it is one of the better entries for the show. With Matheson scripting, April Dancer (Stefanie Powers) and Mark Slate (Noel Harrison) come across as more than competent, which wasn’t always the case in a show that too often played it for laughs while falling short.
Matheson’s script even introduces some science fiction elements. The villain in the episode is even played by Khigh Dhiegh, two years before his debut as Wo Fat, the arch-foe of Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O.
Season 12 of Hawaii Five-O, the last campaign of the 1968-80 show, is scheduled to come out on DVD on Jan. 10, according to the TV Shows on DVD Web site.
By this time, star Jack Lord as lawman Steve McGarrett was the only remaining member of the original cast still present. James MacArthur departed at the end of the 11th season. A new supporting cast was recruited, led by veteran character actor William Smith as James Carew, a cop looking for the men who killed his wife. Also on board was Sharon Farrell as Lori, the first Five-O woman officer. Prior to this, Five-O occasionally utilized policewomen working for the Hololulu P.D.
But there were notable returns. Composer Morton Stevens, who wrote the Five-O theme, was back scoring episodes after skipping the 11th season. Ross Martin, who had appeared in three season 11 episodes as a Hawaiian crime boss, was back in the role for two episodes in season 12. And Khigh Dhiegh as archvillain Wo Fat reprised the role one more time. The back of Five-O Season 12 box has at least three images from the episode, titled “Woe to Wo Fat.”
Actor Mark Cacascos has assumed the role of Steve McGarrett’s arch-nemesis, originated by Khigh Dhiegh in the original Hawaii Five-O series.
The new Wo Fat surfaced at the end of the Dec. 13 episode, which you can watch BY CLICKING HERE. It features the return of the man who killed the father of McGarrett 2.0, as seen in the pilot of the new series. It’s revealed that the killer is in the employ of Wo Fat at the very end of the episode.
The last time original Wo Fat appeared? April 1980 when the last episode of the original series ended. Here’s the final faceoff:
The Spy Command 