John Hillerman
American actor who played Higgins, the uptight Englishman, in the 1980s TV show Magnum, PI
JOHN HILLERMAN, who has died aged 84, played one of the most joyous creations of 1980s popular American television: Higgins, the prissy English major-domo who was foil to Tom Selleck’s eponymous private eye in Magnum, PI.
A stuffed shirt par excellence, Higgins gave every indication of having missed his calling as the secretary of a golf club near Hemel Hempstead. Instead, he had fetched up as the caretaker of a large estate on Hawaii, the Robin’s Nest. This belonged to a permanently absent owner, Robin, a successful writer modelled on the likes of Harold Robbins and heard occasionally as the voice of Orson Welles.
For services rendered but never explained, Magnum lived in the guest house, when not solving crimes, and had the use of Robin’s Ferrari Testarossa. But he needed Higgins’s permission to enjoy facilities such as the tennis courts and swimming pool.
This naturally led to many a contretemps between the short, uptight Briton and the tall, relaxed American, their personalities expressed by their respective moustaches: Magnum’s luxuriantly abundant, Higgins’s trim to the point of repression. Both men were bachelors and Higgins kept two Doberman Pinschers named Zeus and Apollo. It was camp but charming fun.
So spot-on was Hillerman’s performance, which earned him an Emmy in 1987, that it came as a surprise to many to learn that he hailed not from Tunbridge Wells but Texas. Having spent a year as a young actor shedding his native drawl, he then listened for months to tapes of Laurence Olivier to perfect Higgins’s urbane manner and clipped pronunciation. “It wasn’t difficult for me,” he said. “I’d played a great deal of Noël Coward.”
Perhaps the only clue to the character’s improbable origins lay in his “back story”. Although the scripts for Magnum were a cut above most action series, and good enough to sustain it as a hit for eight years, Higgins was indubitably Hollywood’s view of an Englishman, a breed who all wore cravats and could find a red telephone box that worked.
Over 158 episodes it was revealed that the self-effacing Higgins was, despite his fastidious dress sense, an Old Etonian, the second son of the Duke of Perth and, indeed, held the title “Baron of Perth”. For all this noble blood, he had served as a sergeant-major in the Army for 37 years, as well as spying for MI6 and finding time to complete a doctorate at Cambridge in 1947 (when he must have been about 15). He had of course won the VC.
Arguably, a more culturally aware detective than Magnum might have suspected that Jonathan Quayle Higgins III (the suffix was a giveaway) was a bit of a fraud; but Hillerman carried it off with aplomb. Only in the final episode did he seemingly confess that in fact he himself was the mysterious Robin – although in the best traditions of television the truth of this was left as a cliffhanger.
The only son of a petrol station owner, of French and German ancestry, John Benedict Hillerman was born at Denison, Texas, on December 20 1932. He was educated at the town’s St Xavier’s Academy and then at the University of Texas, where he studied Journalism.
On graduating, however, he joined the US Air Force, serving for four years and rising to sergeant. Military life soon bored him and after discovering a taste for amateur theatricals he trained as an actor in New York. Having refined his accent, he found steady work in scores of minor roles on Broadway during the Fifties. Eventually he tired of penury and with just $700 saved moved to Hollywood.
He was encouraged to do so by his friend Peter Bogdanovich, who had been a fellow spear-carrier in a park production of Othello before making it as a film director. From 1971 onwards, Hillerman appeared in small parts in four of Bogdanovich’s films, including The Last Picture Show, as well as in movies such as High Plains Drifter, Blazing Saddles and Chinatown.
He was also in television series of the time, including Kojak, Hawaii Five-o and Wonder Woman, before landing the part of Higgins in 1980. The character became so well-known that Higgins later crossed over to appear in episodes of Murder, She Wrote and Simon & Simon.
Hillerman made the most of his success, buying a penthouse overlooking the ocean in Waikiki, where he read prodigiously and played cards; he lost hundreds of dollars to Selleck while teaching him poker.
After Magnum ended in 1988, he made few other appearances on screen, one exception being as Dr Watson to Edward Woodward’s Holmes in a TV movie, Hands of a Murderer (1990). He retired from acting in 1999.
He never married.
John Hillerman, born December 20 1932, died December 9 2017