Television’s Love Boat captain Gavin MacLeod dies at the age of 90
- The actor achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show
- MacLeod’s health had been poor recently but no cause of death was given, Variety magazine reported
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 Captain Stubing on The Love Boat, has died. He was 90.
MacLeod died early on Saturday, his nephew, Mark See, told Variety magazine. 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 worked in near anonymity for more than a decade, appearing on dozens of TV shows and in several films before landing his Mary Tyler Moore role in 1970.
He had originally auditioned for Moore’s TV boss, Lou Grant, a part that went to Ed Asner. Realising he was not 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 dim-witted anchorman Ted Baxter.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a hit from the start and remains a classic of situation comedies. 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 1970s. 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 did not need the toupee.
MacLeod, whose given name was Allan See, took his first name from a French film and his surname 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 realised that the character, immortalised 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 film 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 stopped drinking, he and Steele remarried in 1985.
The couple later hosted a Christian radio show called Back on Course: A Ministry for Marriages.
