“Benson” actor and musical star
Robert Guillaume died at home Tuesday in Los Angeles.
NEW YORK — Robert Guillaume, who rose from squalid beginnings in St. Louis slums to become a star in stage musicals and win Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the sharptongued butler in the TV sitcoms “Soap” and “Benson,” has died at age 89.
Guillaume died at home Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to his widow, Donna Brown Guillaume. He had prostate cancer, she told The Associated Press.
Among Guillaume’s achievements was playing Nathan Detroit in the first all-black version of “Guys and Dolls,” earning a Tony nomination in 1977. He became the first African-American to sing the title role of “Phantom of the Opera,” appearing with an all-white cast in Los Angeles. He also voiced Rafiki in Disney’s “The Lion King.”
While playing in “Guys and Dolls, he was asked to test for the role of an acerbic butler of a governor’s mansion in “Soap,” a prime-time TV sitcom that satirized soap operas.
“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.”
The character became so popular that ABC was persuaded to launch a spinoff, simply called “Benson,” which lasted from 1979 to 1986. The series made Guillaume wealthy and famous, but he regretted that Benson’s wit had to be toned down to make him more appealing as the lead star.
Guillaume’s career almost ended in January 1999 at Walt Disney Studio. He was appearing in the TV series “Sports Night” as Isaac Jaffee, executive producer of a sports highlight show. One day in his dressing room, he suddenly collapsed.
The 71-year-old actor was treated for a stroke. While it was minor, causing relatively slight damage, he spent six weeks in a hospital.
Guillaume resumed his career and traveled as a new spokesman for the American Stroke Association. He also made appearances for the American Heart Association.
In “Guillaume: A Life,” his 2002 autobiography, he laid bare his troubled life. He was born fatherless on Nov. 30, 1927, in St. Louis, one of four children. His mother named him Robert Peter Williams; when he became a performer he adopted Guillaume, a French version of Williams, believing the change would give him distinction.
His early years were spent in a back-alley apartment without plumbing or electricity. His alcoholic mother hated him because of his dark skin, and his grandmother rescued him, taught him to read and enrolled him in a Catholic school.
He was expelled from school and then the Army, though he was granted an honorable discharge. He fathered a daughter and abandoned the child and her mother. He did the same to his first wife and two sons and to another woman and a daughter.
He worked in a department store, the post office and as St. Louis’ first black streetcar motorman. Seeking something better, he enrolled at St. Louis University and then at Washington University in St. Louis, where a music professor trained his superb tenor singing voice.
After serving as an apprentice at theaters in Aspen, Colo., and Cleveland, he toured with Broadway shows “Finian’s Rainbow,” “Golden Boy,” “Porgy and Bess” and “Purlie,” and began appearing on sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford and Son.” Then came “Soap” and “Benson.” His period of greatest success was marred by tragedy when his 33-year-old son Jacques died of AIDS.
Guillaume’s first stable relationship came when he married TV producer Donna Brown in 1985 and fathered a daughter.