Article 113

Richard Chamberlain

Richard Chamberlain explained to me why he is so anxious to change his clean-cut Doctor Kildare image.

"If Angela Lansbury played Mame for five years, you know she would be doing everything possible to get out and do something else. That's how I feel about forgetting Kildare."

I understand that Richard screams when someone even mentions the word doctor; and actually he doesn't have to worry now about the change in his image.

With his long hair, mod clothes and the cultivation of a cynical expression, you wouldn't take him for the same man.

Nonetheless, he was taking no chance of the mass epidemic that greeted him when he first came to England from adoring would-be patients.

On his last trip, he came over as he says, "in utter secrecy."

He landed at an army airfield at an unearthly hour in the morning and moved immediately into a London flat for the duration of his six-part television show for BBC, based on Henry James's "Portrait of a Lady".

Richard, who has learned a few British expressions, describes his role as "absolutely super".

At the end he dies with no Kildare in sight to save him.