Actor James MacArthur, 72, who died today in Florida of natural causes, came from theatrical royalty. His adoptive parents were playwright Charles MacArthur and "First Lady of the American Stage" Helen Hayes; his godmother was silent movie legend Lilian Gish. "They did teach me a lot about the theater just through my life with them," he told Teen Life magazine in 1957. "They never pushed me in any direction. Any major decision has always been my own to make." MacArthur is probably best known for his six-season role as Detective Danny "Danno" Williams in the original Hawaii Five-0 TV series, but his career lasted 40 years, starting when he made his stage debut in a summer stock production of The Corn Is Green at age eight. He appeared in the Disney movies Kidnapped, Swiss Family Robinson, and The Light in the Forest, and acted on such TV series as Climax!, Spencer's Mountain, and Gunsmoke. In 1975 he acted with his guest-starring mother in an episode of Hawaii Five-0, and in 1981 he performed the lead role in a production of The Front Page, which his father had co-written in the 1920s.
