Richard Chamberlain obituary

Richard Chamberlain, who died today at the age of 90, went out to fame as the Dr. Kitare television pinks in the 1960s.

His good elegant appearance won female legions and guaranteed him to work on a lot of quite forgettable television films.

But, in the middle age, his career shot again.

Chamberlain became king of the television miniseries of the 1980s: interpreting a western prisoner in Shogun and a Catholic priest tempted by love in the birds Thorn.

He denied being Gay when he faced a French magazine in 1989, and did not speak publicly about his homosexuality until he turned 70.

In interviews that promote their 2003 memories, he advised other handsome leading actors to maintain their sexuality for themselves.

“There are still a lot of homophobia in our culture,” he said. “Please, do not pretend that we are all wonderfully, happy accepted.”

George Richard Chamberlain was born on March 31, 1934 in Beverly Hills, California. He died a day before his 91st birthday.

His seller father had a problem with the drink, which affected the childhood of young Richard. He described himself as a “shy, serious and dreary child, painfully thin, with a long and sad face.”

He admitted to having been the “little cooperative child of the school”, but discovered a taste and talent for athletics.

In Pomona College, he was bitten by the error of acting, and a role in the ants and men of Bernard Shaw convinced him that he had found his vocation.

Paramount Studios was interested in him, but the thoughts of a career as an actor were suspended after they called him, turning 16 months as a sergeant with the United States army during the Korean War.

On his discharge, he made several cameos on television programs, including an episode of the popular Western, Gunsmoke.

Not everyone had chosen Chamberlain as a future star.

He was handsome enough: with profiles at that time sprouting on his “fine aristocratic face, suggesting a young Florentine nobleman, directly from the Renaissance.”

But, it was naturally different, what worked in his favor when he auditioned to interpret Dr. James Kitare, a medical inmate who struggles to learn his profession, in the new NBC star medical drama.

“Maybe it was inevitable,” said a friend and rival. “Who else could be as anti-totally as Dick?”

The series was executed for almost 200 programs in five seasons.

A new land arrived, by raising issues such as drug addiction, which had not been previously shown on American television.

There was a great reaction of fans.

Chamberlain received 12,000 cards per week. In Pittsburgh, 450,000 people came to see him in a parade, and in New York, he almost caused a riot when a child saw him and called his name.

The study took full advantage of this attention, launching novels, comics and games with the image of Chamberlain.

Fans would even write to ask “Dr. Kildare” to solve their various medical problems.

And Chamberlain had an unlikely single: Three Stars Shine Tonight, where romantic words were added to the distinctive opening song of the program.

He won a Golden Globe Award for the best TV actor in 1963. But, three years later, the public began to decrease, and NBC disconnected.

Now an international star, Chamberlain struggled to leave Kildare behind.

In 1966, I hoped to enter films, but the reviews presented their performance in the light romantic comedy, Joy in the morning.

The public, they said, laughed in “all wrong places.” Then, he decided to ignore Hollywood and make a living on stage.

He reached a rocky start when a musical version of breakfast at Tiffany’s, in which he starred with Mary Tyler Moore, closed after only four shows.

Production is still seen as one of Broadway’s biggest turkeys. But a movement to England gave him the opportunity to reinvent himself as a “serious actor.”

In 1967, there were protagonist roles in the portrait of Henry James of a lady and in front of Katherine Hepburn in a satirical comedy called Madwoman of Chaillot.

And, two years later, he became the first American to play Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theater from the great John Barrymore in 1925.

This time, the criticisms were excellent and reviewed the role of Denmark’s most tortured prince for a television version for Hallmark.

But Chamberlain was chosen as Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s exaggerated biographical film, music lovers, in which he starred with Glenda Jackson.

The critics based the film, on which a great work was made of the relationship between a composer with repressed homosexual trends and his nymphomaniac wife, although later became a cult success.

Chamberlain went on to play Lord Byron in front of Sarah Miles in Lady Caroline Lamb and the French swordach Aramis in The Three Musketeers by Richard Lester.

It also appeared, along with half of Hollywood, in the imposing hell, as a crooked electrical engineer whose corner cut leads to the spectacular destruction of a 138 -story building.

In 1977, the Roots television series, set in the era of American slavery, attracted huge audiences and was nominated for almost 40 Emmy awards.

It caused a resurgence of the miniseries that attracted Chamberlain to television.

He walked Roger Moore and Albert Finney to be chosen as John Blackthorn, an English navigator captive in Japan of the seventeenth century, in Shogun.

The series was shown in NBC for five nights in 1980, with audiences that reach almost 30 million.

After having won a Golden Globe, Chamberlain picked up another as Father Ralph of Bismaart in The Thorn Birds, a priest divided between God and his sexual desire by the actress, Rachel Ward.

It was even more successful than Shogun, winning a audience of 60% of television viewers and 16 Emmy nominations.

In the 1990s, Chamberlain’s career began to decrease.

There was a succession of solid performances, instead of outstanding, in films made for television and endless appearances invited in other people’s shows.

These included a sequel to The Thorn Birds called missing years, with Amanda Donohoe replacing Rachel Ward.

In 2003, long after having stopped interpreting romantic men, Chamberlain published his biography Shattered Love, in which, for the first time, he confirmed that he was gay.

Despite a relationship of more than 30 years with actor and director Martin Rabbett, with whom he had starred once in the film Allan Quatermain and the city of lost gold, had maintained their private life privately.

“I thought there was something very, very bad about me,” he said, “and wanted to cover up. I remember making a pact with myself that I would never reveal this secret.”

Chamberlain and Rabbett separated in 2010.

In later years, Chamberlain was happy to play a gay man, especially in desperate housewives and Will & Grace.

He continued acting in the musical theater, including spamalot tour productions, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.

But he never regretted having hid his sexuality to protect his career.

“I would have been a happier person who was out of the closet and was free,” he told El Pais in 2024. “But I had other reasons that made me happy. I was a work actor and for me, that was the most important thing.”

He will be remembered as the king of the television miniseries: the handsome protagonist in everything, from Dr. Kildare to the thorny birds.

Despite the attempts to reinvent himself as a serious stage actor, he was at his best on the small screen, entertaining millions looking at home on the couch.

Because, although there were always better actors than Richard Chamberlain, few rival their ability to celebrate a television audience.