Like many in Hollywood, Jack Lord found himself married twice, and it was his second wife, Marie De Narde, who perhaps had the most influence on him.
Not only did she quit her career to help him with his own, but she also convinced him he did not need to have any more children. His first and only son died shortly before his thirteenth birthday.
Born John Joseph Patrick Ryan on December 30, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, Lord was one of five children.
While growing up, he worked delivering papers. When he turned 14, his father, a ship surveyor, sent him to sea to work on freighters. Lord would spend his breaks from school traveling the world.
After graduating high school he spent another summer at sea and returned home just in time to begin school at New York University on a football scholarship. Once he completed college, he planned to join his brother Bill and become an artist, but World War II interrupted his dreams.
Amidst him being drafted into the war, Lord had fallen in love with Anne Cecily Willard. The couple got married, but their time apart would prove to be too difficult.
While the timeline is slightly unclear, what is now known is that Willard informed Lord while he was back on his ship that she was pregnant. She reportedly had plans to stay with her parents until she gave birth, though she did not want to raise them in the United States.
Lord wrote to his wife often, but his letters went unanswered. And as he was serving in Persia, now Iran, it was extremely difficult to get in contact with his wife.
When he returned stateside, Lord attended Officer Training School in Connecticut before being sent to Washington, D.C. for three years. It was in the nation’s capitol where he worked as an artist and assisted making training films that he discovered his love for acting.
Unfortunately, while his love for acting grew, his love life was falling apart. In 1946, Willard divorced Lord.
And that’s not even the worst part. Lord was always excited about starting a family, but between the war and divorce, he only saw his son once. His son, John Joseph Ryan, died August 24, 1955 after a brief battle with hepatitis. He only learned of his child’s death after Willard mailed Lord a copy of his death certificate.
Shortly after his divorce, Lord was visiting his brother in upstate New York when he came across a beautiful stone house. He learned the owner was Narde, a stylish and gracious New York fashion designer. He pursued her for weeks trying, though all of his calls went unanswered until finally, Narde responded.
She had no intentions of selling her house but agreed to a meeting with him. And as the saying goes, the rest is history. The two spent the evening getting to know each other, and soon they were a couple.
It didn’t seem to bother either that Narde, born in 1905, was 15 years older than Lord, as he proposed to her and she accepted.
The two married on January 17, 1949, and while Narde had already made a name for herself, Lord found himself struggling. He had spent years at sea and in the military and that cost him his first marriage.
So he took up acting.
And it was with his second wife’s help that his acting career took off.
“Meeting her made all the difference. I might have sailed on merchant ships for the rest of my life. She gave my life a purpose,” he said.
He appeared in his first film in 1949, followed by another in 1950. He was credited for appearing in an episode of The Hunter in 1952, and then the following year he began performing on stage. By 1954, Lord made his first Broadway appearance.
By the late 1950’s, Lord and Narde made the decision to move from New York to Hollywood to further Lord’s career.
He appeared as a guest on many TV shows such as Bonanza, Route 66, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E before starring in Hawaii Five-0.
According to some of Lord’s colleagues, his wife mothered him and he would often praise her cooking and housekeeping skills. He once said:
”Meeting her made all the difference. I might have sailed on merchant ships for the rest of my life. She gave my life a purpose.
Marie, who called herself an ”old-fashioned” wife, had no problem dedicating her life to Jack and becoming his guardian angel.
”I’m a housewife in the true sense of the word. Jack loves Italian food because he grew up in Brooklyn with Italian neighbors and loves the smell of tomato sauce. He loves my lasagna and chicken cacciatore,” Narde revealed in an interview with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1996.
Jack Lord children
Despite Lord’s love for children, the couple agreed early on in their relationship that they would not add any to their family.
”My idea of a good family was to have six children. But I pitched my tent for Jack. I think I did the right thing; I certainly tired,” Narde told Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1996.
The lack of children led Marie to ”adopt and shower too much love on younger people,” she said. She also showered her cat, Kitty Boy, with love.
Instead of having kids, Jack and Narde wanted to direct all their focus on Lord’s career.
And it paid off.
Lord and Narde remained married until Lord’s death in January 1988.
Jack Lord’s tragic death
Sadly, Jack Lord died from congestive heart failure at the age of 77.
According to the book Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries, Jack also suffered a slow decline from Alzheimer’s disease for at least seven years before his death.
His $40 million estate was donated to Hawaiian charities upon his wife’s death in 2005.
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