RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN
(31 March 1934 – 29 March 2025)
Richard Chamberlain, who has died two days before his 91st birthday from complications following a stroke, was a popular performer on film, television and the stage.
His breakthrough on the small screen arrived with Dr Kildare in 1961 in which he had the title role as the young intern James Kildare, making his way in the medical profession guided by his senior colleague Dr Gillespie (Raymond Massey). The series ran for five seasons and notched up hundreds of episodes. Chamberlain’s success was secure and he went on to make over forty appearances in film and TV while also managing to find time to appear on stage in both the US and the UK and to record music, too.
George Richard Chamberlain was born in Beverly Hills, the second son of the shop equipment salesman Charles Chamberlain and his wife Elsa who was of part German descent. After graduation from Beverly Hills High, Richard received a bachelor’s degree in art history and painting. Drafted into the army, he served in post-war Korea before beginning his acting career with the Los Angeles Company of Angels theatre group. He soon began to get small parts on TV until Dr Kildare kept him busy for five years. During that time he recorded the theme song from the series, ‘Three Stars Will Shine Tonight’, which reached number ten in the Billboard charts. After Dr Kildare, he went back to the theatre, although the musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s – with Mary Tyler Moore as Holly Golightly – closed during previews. Musical success on stage and screen was to come much later.
In 1969 he played Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, to great acclaim, and was the first American to play the role in Britain since John Barrymore in 1925. He also recorded it for US television and the sound recording was nominated for a Grammy. While in Britain he filmed The Madwoman of Chaillot with Katharine Hepburn but, even with Charles Boyer, Edith Evans, Margaret Leighton, Yul Brynner, Nanette Newman and Danny Kaye on board, director Bryan Forbes failed to turn it into a success. He fared better in Ken Russell’s The Music Lovers (1970), a controversial study of the composer Tchaikovsky which reflected the tortured mind of its subject. His co-star was Glenda Jackson but the film was not well received. With Sarah Miles he played Lord Byron in Lady Caroline Lamb, written and directed by Miles’ husband Robert Bolt. No success in the US, but a hit in the UK, it was nominated for three Bafta awards.
Chamberlain then played Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and its two sequels. He was a villainous engineer in John Guillermin’s disaster epic The Towering Inferno and played a Prince in Bryan Forbes’ Cinderella musical The Slipper and the Rose with Gemma Craven, Margaret Lockwood, Edith Evans and Kenneth More. Chamberlain went on to make Peter Weir’s excellent Australian mystery The Last Wave and starred in King Solomon’s Mines and Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold (1985-86). Television became very prominent again in his career with the features The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask, Casanova, Night of the Hunter and Ordeal in the Arctic, among others. These led to several globally successful miniseries, namely Centennial, Shogun, The Thorn Birds and its sequel The Missing Years, and also Island Son, and, in 1999, Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke with Lauren Bacall. His last TV appearance was in an episode of Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017. On film his last feature was Nightmare Cinema (2018), a US anthology of horror stories from five different directors.
In his later years Chamberlain performed in stage musicals including a Broadway revival of My Fair Lady in 1993, and starred as Ebenezer in a tour of Scrooge: The Musical, and later on played King Arthur in the national tour of Monty Python’s Spamalot. He was always a popular actor, able to play any part with success and he built a reputation for versatility that was second to none. He stayed unmarried for most of his life, having started his career at a time when actors never admitted to being gay. He came out in his autobiography, Shattered Love: A Memoir. He had a relationship with the actor-writer Wesley Eure in the 1970s but from 1977 was in a long-lasting relationship with the actor-producer Martin Rabbett. They lived in Hawaii and although they separated in 2010, they remained friends and stayed in Hawaii until Chamberlain’s death.
MICHAEL DARVELL