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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE March 27, 2009

www.GayPeoplesChronicle.com

Kiss the girls

Richard Chamberlain says playing straight is as easy as playing dumb

by Anthony Glassman

There are few actors whose names are so synonymous with the term "romantic lead" as Richard Chamberlain. Now a dashingly handsome septuagenarian, he first became a household

berlain said. "And then I became this romantic leading man, and openness was not an option at all."

He came up with an analogy: “When you grow up in a society that says red hair is a sign of the devil, and you have red hair, you dye your hair.”

come up with ways to end the story. The cherry on top was the marvelous chemistry he had with Carter. "It was just a delight to do," he said.

While he has played many a role on screen, stage and in life, King Arthur in Spamalot presents a new challenge: playing stupid.

Richard Chaimberlain and Jeff Dumas in "Kiss the Girls."

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name as the eponymous lead in the 1960s Dr. Kildare television show, before ascending to the throne of King of the Miniseries with epics like Shogun and The Thorn Birds.

He's continuing his ruling ways as King Arthur on the current tour of the Monty Python musical Spamalot, opening at Playhouse Square's Palace Theater on March 31, Chamberlain's 75th birthday.

It's less romantic and more comedic, but he gets his kisses in.

"I get to kiss Merle Dandridge three times during Spamalot," Chamberlain enthused, referring to the beautiful young actress playing the Lady of the Lake.

Unlike heterosexual actors playing gay roles, Chamberlain, who came out in his 2003 autobiography, has no trouble kissing women.

“I actually love kissing,” he said. “I think kissing is the best part of romance. When I was in college and high school, I had girlfriends and we kissed a lot."

"Kissing Rachel Ward in The Thorn Birds was a pleasure," he continued. “I like women a lot, but I prefer men for those things."

“I have a feeling that straight men have a more difficult time kissing other men than women kissing other women, but I just love kissing," he concluded.

It was not always so easy for Chamberlain to be open about his sexual orientation, or who he likes to kiss. While "the town knew," he spent much of his career, in fact most of his life, putting forward a very different person than who he was inside.

"I grew up in the '30s and '40s where being openly gay was just not an option. It was the worst thing you could be, better to be a murderer or a traitor, so I grew up creating another Richard, and that's a horrible way to live," Cham-

Growing up in such a time, he took some of society's detestation into himself, internalizing that homophobia.

By the time he was writing his autobiography, however, he had already reached the pinnacle of success and been in a loving relationship for 30 years. He had "dropped a lot of the discomfort, but not all of it."

"There was this moment of a kind of grace when I realized deeply that I had been afraid of something that was a completely benign fact," he remembers. "If you tell me you are straight, what does that tell me? Are you smart, kind, petty, mean? It tells me nothing."

"All of the fear and doubt that I had been incubating for years was gone," he noted.

After coming out, which hit the mainstream media's entertainment coverage like a hurricane, one might have expected a horde of swooning woman to immolate themselves on his front yard in Hawaii, a field of blazing dowagers clutching DVDs of Shogun and The Thorn Birds.

That was not, however, the case. "I did get a few letters saying, 'Oh, we're so disappointed, but we still love you,' Chamberlain said, laughing at the absurd imagery of flaming female fans.

Despite his catalogue of iconic roles, his favorite was far less seen than The Three Musketeers or Towering Inferno.

"I did a show, a play by Tom Babe called Fathers and Sons, and I was Wild Bill Hickock and Dixie Carter [of Designing Women fame] was Calamity Jane," he recalled.

B-movie western actors were cast as bar patrons, “and the language in the play was so wonderful, the situation so bizarre."

At the time, it was the only new play Chamberlain had starred in, and he was involved with its creation, helping to

Arthur is many things, but intelligent ain't one of 'em. Luckily, Chamberlain thinks he has the character nailed down.

"I've always thought of myself as slightly stupid anyway," he laughed. "Stupid is fun to play, partly because it's funny."

"Arthur's naiveté and sweetness are on the plus side, but numbers do escape him," he continued. "He grows a lot during the show. He's sort of a mensch by the end."

The growth his character in Spamalot undergoes parallels his own growth in a 30-year relationship. His partner, Martin Rabbett, is a writer, producer, actor and agent 20 years his junior, so they matured together.

"We're very lucky that our emotional and spiritual growth has been parallel. Relationships are very hard work at times, and we were both quite immature in many ways," Chamberlain said, noting that he "sort of robbed the cradle."

"Stick together and learn together, and realize you're learning together," he continued, giving advice on how to keep a relationship going. "I'm so much less selfish than I was. I learned through the relationship that being right is so boring. I would much rather find out what is right than be right."

"Be open and allow yourself to love more deeply and all that," he concluded. "It's a kind of big school, in a way. To walk out is, I think, just a big mistake."

Spamalot plays at the Palace Theater at Playhouse Square from March 31 to April 5. Show times are at 7:30 pm, 6:30 pm on Sunday, with additional matinees on Saturday at 1:30 pm and Sunday at 1 pm. for tickets, go to www.playhousesquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

JOAN MARCUS