Richard Chamberlain, TV heartthrob and ‘king of the miniseries,’ dies at 90
Richard Chamberlain, the sandy-haired TV heartthrob who starred on the popular 1960s medical drama “Dr. Kildare” and later was touted as “king of the miniseries” for his leading roles in ratings sensations such as “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds,” died March 29 in Waimanalo, Hawaii. He was 90.
The cause was complications from a stroke, said his publicist, Harlan Boll.
Blue-eyed and porcelain-faced, and with an acting style that veered from earnest to wooden, Chamberlain was rarely a critical favorite in his prime. People magazine once summed up his reputation as an actor: “pretty – and passionless.”
Over the years, he tried to correct that impression by tackling Hamlet and other Shakespearean parts on the English stage, growing a beard and wielding a samurai sword for “Shogun” (1980), and playing a hunky but tormented Catholic priest wrestling with illicit love in “The Thorn Birds” (1983), one of the most-watched miniseries of all time.
In his 1970s swashbuckling phase, he appeared in so many period pieces – including movies and TV films such as “The Three Musketeers,” “The Four Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte-Cristo” and “The Man in the Iron Mask” – he joked about becoming “a cape freak.” He also starred as the African hunter Allan Quatermain in two 1980s adventure-comedy films, each derided by most reviewers as a poor man’s Indiana Jones and made tolerable only by Chamberlain’s stolid dependability.
But there was no denying Chamberlain’s popular appeal, which began with his overnight success on “Dr. Kildare” in 1961 at age 27. The show was based on a hit film series in the late 1930s and 1940s starring Lew Ayres as the idealistic medical intern James Kildare and Lionel Barrymore as his experienced and crusty mentor, Dr. Leonard Gillespie. Raymond Massey reprised the latter part on the NBC show.
“Dr. Kildare” drew millions of viewers and made Chamberlain a household name during its five-year span. As the title character, he advanced from intern to resident and handled all manner of crises in a big-city hospital with an equanimity beyond his years.
The success of “Dr. Kildare” launched a side career for Chamberlain as a Billboard-charting singer, although his choice of repertoire (“April Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream”) erred toward the blander end of the pop spectrum.
Buoyed by a huge following for his TV and music work, Mr. Chamberlin made a disastrous attempt in 1966 to conquer Broadway in a musical version of Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” that closed in previews. The chief miscalculation, he said, was having Edward Albee, who specialized in unnerving dramas, as the adapting playwright. “The preview audiences had come expecting a lighthearted musical,” he explained to the New York Times, “and what they got was a tragic story with a few songs.”
Chamberlain foundered in the career doldrums until film director Richard Lester cast him against type in “Petulia” (1968), in a supporting part as Julie Christie’s cruel, mercurial husband. He also played a young Parisian activist in “The Madwoman of Chaillot” (1969), opposite Katharine Hepburn, and Octavius Caesar in a 1970 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” in which he ably held his own in a cast that included Jason Robards, John Gielgud and Charlton Heston.
In a daring bid to move beyond his TV persona and sharpen his craft, Chamberlain moved to England in 1968 and starred in “Hamlet” the next year at the Birmingham Repertory Theater. “My experience of acting Shakespeare was confined to a two-line part in a college production of ‘King Lear,’ ” he wrote in a Times essay the next year on his unexpected decision. “I felt as equipped to tackle Hamlet as a mountaineer facing Everest barefoot.”
The reviews were respectable and encouraged his further work in classical fare. Chamberlain, who also filmed “Hamlet” for TV, returned to the United States to tour in a production of Shakespeare’s “Richard II.”
He played Thomas Mendip in a 1974 TV version of Christopher Fry’s play about a medieval witch-hunt, “The Lady’s Not for Burning,” that was broadcast on PBS and starred Eileen Atkins. (Less successfully, he portrayed Lord Byron in the 1972 film “Lady Caroline Lamb,” a casting decision Times reviewer Roger Greenspun called “absurd.”)
Chamberlain slipped back into modern dress to play a sleazy electrical contractor in “The Towering Inferno” (1974), an all-star disaster drama set in a skyscraper that catches fire, while also donning ruffled shirts and pantaloons for the “Musketeers” films that reunited him with Lester.
His run of historic parts led to his work on “Shogun,” the 10-hour miniseries based on James Clavell’s novel about a 17th-century English seaman who is shipwrecked in Japan and becomes a warrior amid battling clans. The lavish NBC production cost $22 million and was seen by 120 million viewers, one of the biggest audiences ever.
Yet Chamberlain said the phone did not ring for his services on further prestige projects. “I was stunned,” he told the Times years later. “Finally, because I wanted to remodel my house, I took a film in Canada, ‘Murder by Phone,’ a pretty dumb movie in which you sent electricity through the phone and killed people.”
Then came “The Thorn Birds,” which aired on ABC and was based on Colleen McCullough’s mega-selling novel. He played Ralph de Bricassart, torn between his vow of chastity and the attentions of his young soulmate, Meggie Cleary (Rachel Ward), as he advances from priest to cardinal. The sprawling saga was a ratings blockbuster, and Chamberlain remained a staple of TV movies and miniseries for years.
“A miniseries has to seem special,” he told the Times, diagnosing the qualities that make for a good prospect. “We were worried about ‘Shogun’ because so much of it was in Japanese. But it caught on for that very reason. ‘Thorn Birds’ verged a bit on soap opera, but it was filled with compelling issues, like what withholding love does to people.”
George Richard Chamberlain was born in Beverly Hills, California, on March 31, 1934. His father, who ruled the home with a domineering personality, was a salesman, and his mother was a homemaker. Growing up, he said, he was more “terrified” than shy.
“I didn’t like real life. But the movies – man, I loved to go to the movies! That’s where I wanted to be,” he told the Associated Press. “Pretending to be other people was something I did anyway.”
At Pomona College, the rousing reaction he received in a George Bernard Shaw comedy convinced him that he had a future as an actor. After two years in the Army in Korea, he landed brief roles on shows such as “Gunsmoke” and “Mr. Lucky” before vaulting to attention on “Dr. Kildare.”
He received Emmy Award nominations for his leading work on miniseries and specials, including “The Count of Monte-Cristo” (1975), “Shogun,” “The Thorn Birds” and “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” (1985) as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jewish lives during World War II.
In other miniseries work, Chamberlain played men of the American frontier (“Centennial,” “Dream West”) and in “The Bourne Identity” (1988) was novelist Robert Ludlum’s globe-trotting amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne, a role Matt Damon later reprised. He also appeared in a critically derided 1996 sequel to “The Thorn Birds.”
Off-screen, Chamberlain long struggled to hide his homosexuality, a secret that he feared might ruin his career. He told TV Guide he was “desperately afraid” his secret would leak out.
“I used to get chased by hot teenage girls,” he added. “I got 12,000 fan letters a week. And all the fan magazines would ask me about my love life. And I felt somewhat besieged. But I was good at the game.”
He was nearing 70 when he publicly came out in his 2003 memoir, “Shattered Love.” For decades, he made his home on Oahu with director-producer Martin Rabbett.
In his senior years, Chamberlain said he was also liberated as an actor, free to choose smaller but more intriguing parts onstage. For one of his finest roles, in a 2014 off-Broadway revival of David Rabe’s caustic drama “Sticks and Bones,” he again donned a clerical collar, to devastating effect.
He portrayed an egocentric Catholic priest who spews hollow pieties and casual bigotry as he counsels a blind, emotionally damaged Vietnam War veteran. The part gave him only 20 minutes of stage time but brought Chamberlain excellent reviews. Reviewer Ben Brantley in the Times praised his “wonderfully unctuous performance.”
“A job like this is ideal,” Chamberlain said. “I’ve got one-and-a-half scenes, but a really good scene!”