Handsome main man Richard Chamberlain, who got here to prominence within the Sixties medical sequence “Dr. Kildare” after which grew to become king of the miniseries with such rankings blockbusters as “Shogun” and “The Thorn Birds,” has died. He was 90.
Chamberlain’s loss of life was confirmed to Variety by publicist Harlan Boll. The actor died Saturday, March 29, at 11:15 p.m. Hawai’i time in Waimanalo, Hawai’i, of issues following a stroke, in line with Boll.
“Our beloved Richard is with the angels now,” Martin Rabbett, Chamberlain’s longtime associate, stated in a press release. “He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us. How blessed were we to have known such an amazing and loving soul. Love never dies. And our love is under his wings lifting him to his next great adventure.”
Chamberlain’s All-American matinee idol appears to be like stood in the way in which of his appearing profession at occasions till he proved himself onstage in a extremely lauded manufacturing of “Hamlet” and different Shakespearean turns. It was not sufficient, nonetheless, to propel him to a significant big-screen profession. He starred in a number of notable movies together with “Petulia,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Music Lovers” and Peter Weir’s “The Last Wave.” But his forte continued to be the small display, the place he performed everybody from England’s Edward VIII and novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald to World War II hero Raoul Wallenberg.
During his years as Dr. Kildare, Chamberlain additionally loved temporary success as a recording artist, principally romantic ballads. He additionally used his vocal talents on TV selection exhibits and onstage, most notably within the 1993 Broadway revival of “My Fair Lady.”
But he’s finest remembered because the formidable Australian priest within the high-rated TV miniseries adaptation of Colleen McCullough’s weighty romance novel “The Thorn Birds.”
“Shogun,” primarily based on James Clavell’s novel, was additionally a powerful miniseries automobile for Chamberlain in 1980. In the wake of those successes, he commanded prime greenback for his tv companies by to 1996’s sequel to “The Thorn Birds,” titled “The Missing Years.” The latter was each a crucial and viewers disappointment, nonetheless.
MGM put the younger Chamberlain below contract within the early Sixties and assigned him the function of Dr. Kildare, primarily based on the favored movie sequence that had starred Lew Ayres. The hourlong medical drama, co-starring Raymond Massey, debuted in fall 1961 and was a direct hit, operating by 1966.
Chamberlain’s tall, clean-cut attractiveness and simple method made him an instantaneous idol. He used his standing to segue right into a minor recording profession with the 1962 launch of “Richard Chamberlain Sings” and later “The Theme From Dr. Kildare.” He additionally appeared on the soundtracks of “Twilight of Honor” and “Joy in the Morning,” two MGM cleaning soap opera options during which he starred through the early ’60s.
Soon after “Dr. Kildare” ended its run, Chamberlain struck out in numerous instructions. He resumed his appearing research and landed a lead function within the Broadway musical drama “Holly Golightly,” primarily based on Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Despite valiant work out of city, the tortured manufacturing, with Mary Tyler Moore within the title function, closed earlier than it opened. He tried different stage roles in inventory resembling “The Philadelphia Story” and “Private Lives.”
For a time he moved to England and continued his research, making his debut within the title function of “Hamlet” in 1970 on the Birmingham Rep to surprisingly good notices; he was the primary American to aim the troubled Dane on British soil since John Barrymore 4 many years earlier. Chamberlain later transferred the efficiency to tv. He additionally tackled different theatrical challenges resembling Richard II, Cyrano de Bergerac, Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” and Thomas Babe’s “Fathers and Sons,” drawing Drama Desk nominations for the latter two. During the late ’60s he additionally starred in a BBC adaptation of “The Portrait of a Lady” and for director Richard Lester within the movie traditional “Petulia” with Julie Christie and George C. Scott.
Also in England he performed Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s overheated characteristic biography “The Music Lovers.” In 1973 he landed the function of Lord Byron in a poorly acquired characteristic manufacturing of “Lady Caroline Lamb,” and Lester solid him as Aramis in “The Three Musketeers”; Chamberlain would later seem within the movie’s two sequels.
Also within the mid-’70s, Peter Weir solid Chamberlain in his hallucinatory and apocalyptic “The Last Wave,” and the actor was among the many all-star lineup of catastrophe epic “The Towering Inferno.” He additionally appeared in catastrophe movie “The Swarm” and Cinderella story “The Slipper and the Rose.”
Thanks to his persevering with enchantment to TV audiences, he copped the starring function in “The Woman I Love” (taking part in King Edward VIII reverse Faye Dunaway’s Wallis Simpson). This 1972 biodrama, which aired on ABC just some months after Edward’s loss of life, was so controversial that it was banned within the U.Ok. In the mid-’70s Chamberlain toplined a sequence of well-liked tv motion pictures: “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Last of the Belles” and “The Man in the Iron Mask,” scoring his first Emmy nomination for “Monte Cristo.”
In 1978 he starred in a PBS adaptation of Neil Simon’s Chekhovian comedy “The Good Doctor” and was one of many leads in NBC’s epic miniseries “Centennial.”
NBC’s taboo-breaking historic miniseries “Shogun,” during which Chamberlain starred in 1980, was one of many highest-rated packages within the community’s historical past. The present gained an Emmy for excellent restricted sequence and a nomination for the actor; Chamberlain gained a Golden Globe for finest actor in a tv drama for “Shogun.”
His success with “Shogun” led to starring roles in weightier fare together with “Cook and Peary: The Race to the Pole,” “Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story” (one other Emmy nom), “Night of the Hunter” and “Casanova.” There was additionally a 1988 ABC miniseries model of “The Bourne Identity” during which Chamberlain performed Jason Bourne. But none of those efforts might compete with 1983’s scandalous “The Thorn Birds,” during which Chamberlain performed a priest who has an affair with a stupendous girl. Despite or due to the controversy, “The Thorn Birds” grew to become what was then the second highest rated miniseries in historical past after “Roots,” and Chamberlain collected one other Emmy nom and gained a Golden Globe for finest actor in a miniseries or movement image for TV.
The miniseries briefly revived Chamberlain’s film profession: He starred in a remake of “King Solomon’s Mines” and sequel “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold.” But principally he labored in TV thereafter with such high-gloss productions as “The Lost Daughter,” “Ordeal of the Arctic,” “All the Winters That Have Been” and 1999’s “Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke,” during which he starred with Lauren Bacall. There was additionally the ill-advised 1996 “Thorn Birds” sequel “The Missing Years.”
Chamberlain additionally labored ceaselessly onstage, returning to Broadway for a 1987 revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit”; toured in “My Fair Lady” as Henry Higgins and landed on Broadway with that 1993 revival; and was a substitute as Captain Von Trapp in a Rialto revival of “The Sound of Music,” with the musical subsequently touring. In addition he toured in 2005 within the title function of “Scrooge: The Musical” and in 2008 and 2009 as King Arthur in “Monty Python’s Spamalot.”
In the late ’80s he moved to Hawai’i and, besides to return to the mainland for work, principally lived there and painted. He starred as a physician once more in “Island Son,” a short 1989-90 sequence that was shot in Hawai’i and was his concept.
During the 2000s the actor guested on quite a lot of TV exhibits, together with “Touched by an Angel,” “The Drew Carey Show,” “Will and Grace,” “Nip/Tuck” and “Desperate Housewives.” He additionally had a recurring function on ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters.” The actor appeared in supporting roles in a number of movies through the interval together with “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.”
In the spring of 2012 Chamberlain appeared as Dr. Sloper within the play “The Heiress” on the Pasadena Playhouse, and that summer season he starred with Brooke Shields in a stage adaptation of “The Exorcist” on the Geffen Playhouse. In 2014 he appeared Off Broadway in a revival of David Rabe’s 1971 play “Sticks and Bones.” The New York Times stated Chamberlain “has only about 20 minutes of stage time, but it’s long enough to make a strong impact — in his New York Times review, Ben Brantley noted Mr. Chamberlain’s ‘wonderfully unctuous performance.’”
In 2017, Chamberlain appeared in an episode of David Lynch’s revival of “Twin Peaks” as Bill Kennedy. He portrayed Dr. Leener in horror movie “Nightmare Cinema” (2018) and had an element in 2019 movie “Finding Julia.” He was additionally featured in a single scene within the 2021 drama “Echoes of the Past,” which he filmed in Patmos, Greece, alongside Max von Sydow.
Born George Richard Chamberlain in Los Angeles on March 31, 1934, he attended Beverly Hills High and later Pomona College, the place he graduated with a level in artwork. After a two-year stint within the Army, stationed in Korea within the mid-’50s, Chamberlain returned to Los Angeles, the place he studied appearing and visitor starred on such TV sequence as “Bourbon Street,” “Mr. Lucky,” “Thriller,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Gunsmoke.”
He made his characteristic debut in a 1960 horror cheapie, “Secret of the Purple Reef.” His first main studio movie was MGM’s “A Thunder of Drums.” Through a former highschool classmate, George Le Maire, he was examined for an MGM TV sequence, “The Paradise Kid.” He received the half however the sequence concept was scrapped. Soon, nonetheless, got here an MGM contract and “Dr. Kildare.”
Chamberlain’s autobiography, “Shattered Love: A Memoir,” was printed in 2003. In addition to his appearing, singing and portray, Chamberlain championed ecological causes together with lobbying in Sacramento, California, and Washington, D.C., to avoid wasting the Tuolumne River, which originates in Yosemite National Park in California. His efforts helped put the river below the safety of the U.S.’s National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
Chamberlain spent many years in a relationship with actor-writer-producer Martin Rabbett, with whom he appeared in “Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold,” however it was unclear whether or not they remained collectively after Chamberlain had returned to Los Angeles in 2010. According to Boll, Rabbett was Chamberlain’s “lifelong partner and best friend.”
Funeral companies for Chamberlain haven’t been introduced. In lieu of flowers, donations in his identify are requested to both NPR or the Hawaiian Human Society.