Soap star’s poor start served him well
Robert Guillaume Actor BORN NOVEMBER 30, 1927 DIED OCTOBER 24, 2017, AGED 89
THE opening of Robert Guillaume’s 2002 autobiography is nothing if not arresting: “I’m a bastard, a Catholic, son of a prostitute and a product of the poorest slums of St Louis.”
But from such squalid beginnings, Guillaume rose to become a ground-breaking star of stage and screen and one of the best-loved actors on television.
As Benson, the acerbic butler on sitcom Soap, he won huge acclaim. An Emmy award for best supporting actor in 1979 led to a spin-off show, Benson. The sitcom ran for seven years and won him another Emmy, as best lead actor, in 1985.
“The minute I saw the script, I knew I had a live one,” he recalled in 2001. “Every role was written against type, especially Benson, who wasn’t subservient to anyone.
“To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the ’40s and ’50s (movies) and had to keep their mouths shut.”
Guillaume’s fame came after an upbringing so hard it seems a wonder he ever escaped it at all.
Born Robert Williams in St Louis to an alcoholic, prostitute mother, his early years were spent in a back-alley slum without running water or electricity, before he was rescued by his grandmother, who enrolled him in a Catholic school.
While there he sang in the choir, before joining the army in 1945 and then taking a series of low-paid jobs in St Louis, including that of the city’s first black streetcar driver.
But it was after enrolling at Washington University, where a music professor spotted the potential in his tenor voice, that he found his true calling. Changing his name from Williams to the more memorable Guillaume, he toured with Broadway shows including Porgy And Bess and Guys And Dolls, for which he earned a Tony nomination in 1977.
That year he was cast as Benson and, at the age of 50, found himself financially secure for the first time. Creditable roles in The West Wing-creator Aaron Sorkin’s Sports Night and as the voice of Rafiki in The Lion King, as well as guest appearances on a range of sitcoms meant he worked into his eighties.
In 1985 he married TV producer Donna Brown. She survives him, along with their daughter Rachel, as well as three children from previous relationships.