Richard Chamberlain, leading man of stage, screen, and TV, died on March 29. He was 90. The whisper-thin blond was best-known for his TV roles as Dr. Kildare, and in the mini-series Shōgun and The Thorn Birds. The Beverly Hills native served as a sergeant in Korea, then began his career as a stage actor (he later appeared on Broadway in revivals of The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady, as well as the Mary Tyler Moore flop Breakfast at Tiffany’s (we are being awfully hard on poor Mary this week!). But soon TV and movies were taking up most of his time: Twilight of Honor, Petulia, The Madwoman of Chaillot, The Woman I Love, The Three [and Four] Musketeers, Lady Caroline Lamb, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Towering Inferno, The Man in the Iron Mask, Centennial, King Solomon’s Mines, Will & Grace, Nip/Tuck, Desperate Housewives, and his 2019 swan song, Finding Julia. Chamberlain outed himself as gay in his 2003 autobiography Shattered Love: A Memoir: “When I grew up, being gay, being a sissy or anything like that was verboten. I disliked myself intensely and feared this part of myself intensely and had to hide it and became ‘Perfect Richard, All-American Boy’ as a place to hide . . . I'm not a romantic leading man anymore so I don't need to nurture that public image anymore. Over a long period of time, living as if you were someone else is no fun.”
