Character actor switched from menacing villains to amiable skipper of Love Boat
Gavin MacLeod, who has died aged 90, was a character actor whose prolific career in menacing roles took an unexpected turn in the 1970s and 1980s when he became one of the most beloved faces on TV, as a wisecracking TV news writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and then as the amiable skipper of The Love Boat.
Bald at 18, with a husky physique as a young man and a faint ‘‘Noo Yawk’’ accent, MacLeod seemed unlikely to have the makings of a popular show-business personality who amassed more than 100 television and film credits over a six-decade career. ‘‘I went all over town looking for an agent,’’ he noted in his memoir of his early struggles, ‘‘but no-one was interested in representing a young man with a bald head.’’
Thanks to a secondhand toupee – all he could afford at the time – and some luck, he embraced his offbeat looks and initially found his niche playing drug pushers, malevolent authority figures and clammy thugs. He periodically dabbled in comedy before his breakthrough – as he neared 40 and after a diet and exercise regimen that dramatically slimmed him down – on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The series, which ran in the US from 1970 to 1977, was widely heralded as a cultural milestone for its uncondescending portrayal of the professional single woman and drew acclaim for what New York Times TV critic John J. O’Connor called ‘‘one of the best casts ever brought together’’ and ‘‘a comedy of character, growing out of personality development more than situation’’.
MacLeod played news writer Murray Slaughter, who seems in perpetual midlife crisis, and who enjoys deflating dim-witted anchorman Ted Baxter with an acerbic quip. In one of the show’s most famous episodes, involving a funeral for a TV clown named Chuckles, Ted remarks how his own service would have had far more people at it. ‘‘That’s right, Ted,’’ Murray says. ‘‘It’s just a matter of giving the public what they want.’’
When the show came to an end, MacLeod found himself inundated with offers. His agent passed along the script for a TV pilot produced by Aaron Spelling called The Love Boat, with a caveat that the idea ‘‘sucks’’. But MacLeod said he felt instinctively that the shipboard comedy-drama featuring multiple story lines – veering between poignant and broadly comic – had tremendous commercial appeal.
The problem, he said, was that his character, Captain Merrill Stubing, was originally conceived as a fear-inspiring recovering alcoholic. ‘‘I said you can’t have a mean guy come in week after week,’’ he told the Television Academy Foundation in 2003. ‘‘So we slowly started to evolve him into a father figure’’, with a reassuring salute.
‘‘Most of the mail I get, people say thanks for making them feel good. We give them happy endings.’’
The series, which ran from 1977 to 1986, was the epitome of escapism, taking audiences to exotic ports of call and featuring an ever-rotating passenger guest list of upcoming performers and long-vanished Hollywood stars.
Critics may have snickered – The Washington Post’s Tom Shales said The Love Boat pulls ‘‘the median level of mediocrity down to unfathomable lows’’ – but audiences watched in droves.
‘People turn on the television and see pretty girls in bikinis, people making love, the sun,’’ MacLeod told the Post. ‘‘Most of the mail I get, people say thanks for making them feel good. We give them happy endings.’’
MacLeod was born Allan George See in Mt Kisco, New York. His father, an alcoholic, flitted between jobs before dying of cancer at 39. After graduating from college in 1952, See renamed himself Gavin MacLeod and began making the rounds of Broadway and TV. Over the next several years, he became a prolific guest star in shows such as The Untouchables, Hogan’s Heroes and Perry Mason.
His first marriage, to former Rockette Joan Rootvik, ended in divorce in 1972. He later married, divorced and remarried Patti Steele, a singer and dancer. In addition to his wife, survivors include four children from his first marriage; three stepchildren; a brother; and several grandchildren and greatgrandchildren.
After The Love Boat, he and Patti also became staples of the Trinity Broadcasting Network with Back on Course, a Bible-driven, couples-therapy programme that aired for 17 years.
MacLeod spoke of his interest in helping others overcome adversity in deeply personal terms, noting his experience with childhood poverty, years of alcohol dependency and bleak career prospects until middle age.
‘‘When you think, as an actor, that it’s all over or when the door has been slammed in your face or if they say you’re too young, you’re too old, and you’re too heavy, or your hair is the wrong colour or you don’t have any hair, that is not necessarily what you should go by,’’ he told the Archive of American Television. ‘‘Go by your desire to do what you want to do, because when a door closes, another one opens.’’ – Washington Post