A Dickens of a Time: Richard Chamberlain Gets Scrooged

Richard Chamberlain was America's heartthrob on a TV hit of the early 1960s, Dr. Kildare. When he left the show, and went to England to reinvent himself as a serious classical American actor, he became the stuff of legend.

In the early 1980s, Chamberlain went on to revitalize the lackluster television landscape, when he raised the bar with such watershed miniseries as Shogun and The Thorn Birds, in which he starred alongside Barbara Stanwyck and Christopher Plummer.

By then, Chamberlain also had accumulated remarkable film credits. He worked with such legendary actresses as sex goddess Raquel Welch, as well as Oscar-winners Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, and Glenda Jackson, along the way. He appeared with two of the most ruggedly macho icons of filmdom: George C. Scott and Oliver Reed.

Throughout most of his long career, Chamberlain kept mum about his sexual orientation, despite having a longtime partner with whom he shares a home in Hawaii.

Nor has the modest headliner been inclined to gloat about a film and theater résumé that would appeal strongly to any sophisticated person.

Never one to rest on his highly accomplished laurels, the 70-year-old Chamberlain has been garnering raves for his memoir, Shattered Love.

Better yet for us in the North Country, he's playing the title role in Scrooge this November.

I spoke with Chamberlain about his views on gayness, politics, and television in a phone interview between rehearsals in Chicago.

You were in the military in the '50s?
I was sent to Korea. It was, thank God, after the Korean War. So, I didn't go into battle, but it was pretty rough. I was in for two years.

Any thoughts on the current military situation? Did you watch the foreign-policy presidential debate the other night?
I did watch the debate.

I thought Kerry came off pretty well. He's in an extremely difficult position. You have to support a war that shouldn't have happened.

I hope that I'm wrong -I pray that I'm wrong- but I think the War in Iraq may be one of the great blunders of history. It might fire up that part of the world in the most amazing way. It really scares me.

I think Bush is handling it extremely badly.

Speaking of Bush, do you think he's used the same-sex marriage debate to feed citizens' fears?
No doubt.

Well, your book certainly is a counterpoint to all the fear circulating nowadays. You’ve been very open.
I was actually as homophobic as anybody. I was very down on myself for being gay, and, of course, pretended not to be forever and ever and ever, because of my career.

But I suddenly had this extraordinary kind of epiphany while I was writing the book. I suddenly realized -not intellectually, but deep, deep into my soul- that being gay was the nonissue of all time.

It simply doesn't matter. It's absolutely nobody's business, except the person who's gay, and whoever his partner and friends are. It doesn't make any difference at all. None. It's of no importance whatever.

For instance, if you tell me you're straight, what does that tell me about you? Nothing. Except the particular category you might be sleeping with.

You could be stupid. You could be smart. You could be a saint. You could be a devil. You could be Hitler. You could be St. Francis. It doesn't tell me anything about you.

Nor does the moniker "being gay." It's the nonevent of all time. And the residual fears about it that exist very strongly in some segments of our society are completely made up!

Personally, I have to say I'm not the least bit interested in getting married, but what I am very interested in is having the rights of married people. Martin and I have been together for 28 years. We've built our lives together. We've built our careers together. We're in the process of building a wonderful house together, which is the pinnacle of our relationship.

And if I conk, the government steps in, and takes 50 percent of everything. Martin would have to move out of the house, and sell it.

If I was sick, he doesn't have any hospital visitation or medical decision rights. We can't share health insurance.

And that's something married couples just take for granted. If a husband or a wife dies in a married couple, the government takes nothing.

Not a cent. It's absolutely, totally, ridiculously unfair.

Do you think gay activists have handled this well?
I'm not sure. My personal instinct is that the push for marriage should have followed a push for domestic partnerships.

And what do you think about the more liberated gay images on TV today? Some think Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Queer as Folk reinforce stereotypes, while others think it breaks archaic taboos.
I think both. They are reinforcing stereotypes to a certain extent, but a lot of the guys in these shows are really, really likable.

The thing I like about Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is that the straight guys aren't in any way frightened by, intimidated by, or disgusted by gay guys. They get on just great. It's wonderful for people to see that.

In Dr. Kildare, in the early '60s, you were the prototype of the ideal upright American professional. Images of men, and how they're portrayed on television and in movies, have changed a lot.
I was really playing a kind of '50s person when I did Dr. Kildare. He was hardly a '60s kind of guy. Certainly, styles of acting have changed a lot. It's gotten much more realistic.

Once again, you're doing a piece that comes out of a great literary tradition. You're known for your background in well-written films and miniseries. Do you do much historical research?
The script for the musical Scrooge very closely follows Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. And most of what I need is right there in the script.

I've found in the past that whenever I've played historical characters, reading about them often doesn't help nearly as much as just studying the script itself.

So, I have done the research and all, but I'm not sure it's changed the character very much from what I would have done had I just read the script.

For instance, Shakespeare's Richard II. It doesn't help at all to study the real Richard II, because they're not the same person.

You've inhabited so many characters who are outside contemporary times so well. Any idea of what it is that gives you that magic touch?
I don't know. I'm a born romantic, so I love the past more than the more technological present in certain ways.

I like the costumes. I like the sweep of the stories, the exuberance and unlikely actions and feelings of the characters that modern culture doesn't quite embrace. I think the age of manners made drama so interesting. Now that anything goes, it's almost impossible to shock an audience. And shock is a wonderful ingredient of good drama.

So, why do we return to plays and films that don't shock us anymore, like Scrooge, The Four Musketeers, My Fair Lady, and Shogun?
The ones you've mentioned are great stories. Those are always going to be great stories.

The Thorn Birds was an almost unbeatable love story. First, it infused the people in love with tremendous passion, and then put these horrific barriers between them. That's what makes a good love story.

© 2004 John Townsend