LOS ANGELES — Gavin MacLeod, the veteran supporting actor who achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” before going on to even bigger fame as the cheerful Capt. Stubing on “The Love Boat,” has died. He was 90.
MacLeod died early Saturday, his nephew, Mark See, told Variety. MacLeod’s health had been poor recently but no cause of death was given, the trade publication reported.
Known to sitcom fans for his bald head and wide smile, MacLeod toiled in near anonymity for more than a decade, appearing on dozens of TV shows and in several movies before landing his “Mary Tyler Moore” role in 1970.
He had originally tested for Moore’s TV boss, Lou Grant, a part that went to Ed Asner. Realizing he wasn’t right for playing the blustery, short-tempered TV newsroom leader, MacLeod asked if he could try instead for the wisecracking TV news writer, his jokes often at the expense of the dimwitted anchorman Ted Baxter.
FILE – In this May 30, 1983 file photo the cast of the television series “The Love Boat,” at the Great Wall near Beijing, China. From left to right: Fred Grandy, Ted Lange, Jill Whalen, Gavin MacLeod, Lauren Tewes and Bernie Kopell. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021.
(AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing, File)
FILE – In this Jan. 6, 1980 file photo, from left, actor Gavin MacLeod and actor Ed Asner paddle away during a local art museum fund-raising ping-pong tournament in Downey, Calif. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/George Brich, File)
IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR PRINCESS CRUISES – Jan Swartz, President of Princess Cruises, standing center, and from left, Fred Grandy, Ted Lange, Jill Whelan, Gavin MacLeod, Lauren Tewes and Bernie Kopell attend the ceremony honoring Princess Cruises and the original cast of “The Love Boat” with a honorary star plaque at the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, May 10, 2018 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Casey Rodgers/Invision for Princess Cruises/AP Images)
Actors Gavin MacLeod, right, and Georgia Engel take part in a panel discussion on the PBS special “Betty White: First Lady of Television” during the 2018 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton, Tuesday, July 31, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
FILE – Former cast members of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, sans Mary Tyler Moore, are reunited for the Museum of Television and Radio’s 9th annual Television Festival in Los Angeles on March 21, 1992. From left are Gavin MacLeod, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Ed Asner. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Craig Fujii, File)
FILE – In this Oct. 15, 1982 file photo shows Gavin MacLeod with actress Debbie Reynolds and Marilyn Michaels on the set of “The Love Boat.” Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Doug Pizac, File)
Gavin MacLeod, center, an original cast member in the television series “The Love Boat,” addresses the crowd during a Friends of Hollywood Walk of Fame honorary star plaque ceremony for the cast and Princess Cruises, Thursday, May 10, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
Actors Gavin MacLeod, right, and Georgia Engel take part in a panel discussion on the PBS special “Betty White: First Lady of Television” during the 2018 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton, Tuesday, July 31, 2018, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
FILE – In this May 10, 2018 file photo, Gavin MacLeod, a cast member on the TV series “The Love Boat,” salutes the crowd as he speaks at a Friends of Hollywood Walk of Fame honorary star plaque ceremony for the cast and Princess Cruises in Los Angeles. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
FILE – In this Jan. 2007 file photo, the cast of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” from left, Gavin MacLeod, Cloris Leachman, Mary Tyler Moore, Valerie Harper, Georgia Engel and Ed Asner, present the award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a comedy series at the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, in Los Angeles. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
FILE – In this Nov. 2, 2003 file photo, actors Betty White, left, Georgia Engel, second left, Gavin MacLeod, center, Valerie Harper, second right, and John Amos pose for photographers during arrivals at CBS’s 75th anniversary celebration in New York. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano, File)
FILE – IN this July 31, 2018 file photo shows actor Gavin MacLeod during a panel discussion on the PBS special “Betty White: First Lady of Television” during the 2018 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif. Gavin MacLeod has died. His nephew told the trade paper Variety that MacLeod died early Saturday, May 29, 2021. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” was a smash from the start and remains a classic of situation comedies. It produced two spinoffs, “Rhoda” and “Phyllis,” starring Valerie Harper and Cloris Leachman, who had portrayed Mary’s neighbors.
It was still top-rated when Moore, who played news producer Mary Richards, decided to end it after seven seasons.
MacLeod moved on to “The Love Boat,” a romantic comedy in which guest stars, ranging from Gene Kelly to Janet Jackson, would come aboard for a cruise and fall in love with one another.
Although scorned by critics, the series proved immensely popular, lasting 11 seasons and spinning off several TV movies, including two in which MacLeod remained at the cruise ship’s helm. It also resulted in his being hired as a TV pitchman for Princess Cruise Lines.
“The critics hated it. They called it mindless TV, but we became goodwill ambassadors,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013.
Among his final TV credits were “Touched by An Angel,” “JAG” and “The King of Queens.”
MacLeod’s lighthearted screen persona was in contrast to his private life. In his 2013 memoir, “This Is Your Captain Speaking,” MacLeod acknowledged that he had struggled with alcoholism in the 1960s and ’70s. He also wrote that losing his hair at an early age made it hard for him to find work as an actor.
“I went all over town looking for an agent, but no one was interested in representing a young man with a bald head,” he wrote. “I knew what I needed to do. I needed to buy myself a hairpiece.” A toupee changed his luck “pretty quickly.” By middle age, he didn’t need the toupee.
MacLeod, whose given name was Allan See, took his first name from a French movie and his last from a drama teacher at New York’s Ithaca College who had encouraged him to pursue an acting career.
After college, the Mount Kisco, New York-native became a supporting player in “A Hatful of Rain” and other Broadway plays, and in such films as “I Want to Live!” and “Operation Petticoat.”
He made guest appearances on TV shows throughout the 1960s, including “Hogan’s Heroes,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” He also appeared on “McHale’s Navy” from 1962 to 1964 as seaman Joseph “Happy” Haines.
One major role he auditioned for: Archie Bunker in “All in the Family.” But he quickly realized that the character, immortalized by Carol O’Conner, was wrong for him. “Immediately I thought, ‘This is not the script for me. The character is too much of a bigot.’ I can’t say these things,” MacLeod wrote in his memoir.
Other movie credits included “Kelly’s Heroes,” “The Sand Pebbles” and “The Sword of Ali Baba.”
MacLeod had four children with his first wife, Joan Rootvik, whom he divorced in 1972. He was the son of an alcoholic and his drinking problems helped lead to a second divorce, to Patti Steele. But after MacLeod quit drinking, he and Steele remarried in 1985.
The couple later hosted a Christian radio show called “Back on Course: A Ministry for Marriages.”
___
The late AP Entertainment Writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this story.
Be First to Comment