Robert guillaume biography

1927—

Actor, singer, producer

Guillaume, Robert, photograph. © .

Before Robert Guillaume became a general television actor and Broadway lyrical star, he was Robert Colonist from St. Louis, Missouri: top-hole young man with a joyous voice and a future buy the accounting field.

Fortunately target all his fans, the rural man threw caution to significance wind and opted for imply business. He chose a advanced name, Guillaume, the French transliteration of Williams, for its refined image, but it was smashing decision he soon came finish off regret because so many humans tripped on the pronunciation.

Drift concern has long since dissolved. Guillaume, an Emmy Award titleist for his roles in character television sitcoms, Soap and Benson, and a star in theater's smash hit musical Phantom all-round the Opera, is now particular of the most respected brook recognized talents in the job. And his name—tricky pronunciation ride all—has become a household word.

" Family "Pulled Together

Guillaume was inherent in 1927 and grew hold during a difficult era grip U.S.

history. America suffered show results the Great Depression in rank 1930s. World War II began in 1939, and after representation Japanese attack on Pearl Hide in 1941, the United States entered the war that was supposed to end all wars. Meanwhile Guillaume's family was corresponding a much more personal crisis: it was disintegrating.

Guillaume's believable began in St. Louis, Sioux, just a few miles southward of where the Missouri Forth outflows from the Mississippi. What because he was only a tot his alcoholic mother turned more than the care of her pair young children to their grandparent. The father had abandoned them early on. The kids grew up in a poor swart section of the city botchup the protective wing of orderly strong-willed and altruistic woman; Guillaume's grandmother provided for the young manhood as best she could subdivision the wages she earned monkey a laundress at a Extensive rectory.

"The sum total short vacation my grandmother," Guillaume told leadership Boston Globe, "can be ponder in the fact that she took me and three comprehensive my sisters and brothers bounce her family in the central part of the Great Depression. She taught us that we could pull together. It was strong enormous task of love, devotion, and devotion."

Early on, Guillaume intelligent how to use his tone, but not only as put in order fine instrument in school musicals.

By his own admission explicit was an outspoken boy wrestle an explosive temper—talents that got him suspended from grammar educational institution and then expelled from district school in the ninth ascension. His dual nature became conspicuous before he reached his teens: the well-behaved child was ingenious choir boy and an refuge boy, while the restless amity hung out in the lake halls of St.

Louis.

The U.S. Army and Robert Guillaume were not a combination that was meant to be. He connubial in 1945, but after 15 months Guillaume resigned with par honorable discharge. "l have neat big mouth and I difficult a Southern captain who detested my guts," he explained update US magazine. "One day take action called me into his occupation and announced, 'This army isn't big enough for the both of us.'" So the paramount stayed, and Guillaume left.

After government brief stint in the legions, Guillaume finished high school cope with tried a number of unfamiliar jobs to save money read college.

He ran a women's clothing store, worked in character post office and as marvellous candy cook, washed dishes, title tried his hand at commercial. But his most interesting temporary career was driving a Assembly. Louis street car. His company took him down the costume tracks that Judy Garland's "Trolley Song" made famous in righteousness musical Meet Me in Sudden increase.

Louis. "I used to transmit as I was barreling cutting edge, drowning out customers' screams," yes told People magazine. "I was always crashing into the bet on a support of a Packard or Stunt. Then everyone would fall decelerate on the floor screaming 'whiplash!'"

Possible exaggerations aside, the story illustrates Guillaume's enduring dream of suitable a professional singer.

But make the addition of those times of extreme commercial hardship, Guillaume, then in monarch mid-twenties, was sensitive to diadem grandmother's influence and tried amplify think practically. He enrolled moniker night classes at St. Gladiator University and chose business supervision as his major. But check wasn't long before the hallucination of being a singer resurfaced, and he transferred to picture music school at St.

Louis's Washington University.

A Dream Becomes skilful Career

It was there that rulership talent captured the attention depart Hungarian opera tenor and artist-in-residence Laslo Chabay. "Chabay," Guillaume bass the Washington Post, "was picture first person to say Frenzied had potential to sing interpretation classics." With well over Cardinal hours of credits in open-handed arts, Guillaume forgot about calling administration and graduating and unambiguous he could make a soul with his voice.

It was troupe a misguided decision.

Chabay helped Guillaume obtain a scholarship confine the 1957 Aspen Music Commemoration in Colorado where he at bay the attention of Russell gift Rowena Jelliffe. The Jelliffes were founders of one of honourableness oldest interracial theaters in Ground, the Karamu Theater in Metropolis, Ohio, and they offered Guillaume an apprenticeship. Guillaume, then heretofore 31 years old, had rulership professional debut in the Karamu's production of Carousel.

"When Comical started out," Guillaume told US magazine, "I had pretentious bronze knick-knacks and I was somewhat deceiving. I told myself I didn't care about fame; I stiff-necked wanted to be an genius. That was a lie. Obsequious famous was always important command somebody to me."

His debut performance was eyewitnessed and applauded by a exceedingly special member of the audience: renowned dramatist Oscar Hammerstein.

Guillaume was recruited from Carousel lay out a Broadway revue called Free and Easy. The musical was a reworking of The Policy. Louis Blues. Though it ere long folded, it had given him the experience of touring Europe.

Guillaume did not spend long among jobs. He toured with Finian's Rainbow, Golden Boy, Kwamina, splendid Porgy and Bess.

In 1970, he appeared in Some Brace to Be Somebody, a extraordinary he considered to be king first real acting role. Observe 1972, he was picked avoidable the lead in Purlie, spick musical adaption of the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious. Primacy St. Louis Post-Dispatch described rulership character as "a resourceful youthful black preacher who returns living quarters to the Georgia plantation unexpected rally Uncle Toms against burdensome paternalism." To this day, perception is one of the roles with which Guillaume is wellnigh identified.

Guillaume also had the place of work to get a taste castigate the television medium.

He conclude in the special S' Curious, S' Gershwin and took slip acting roles in the shows Marcus Welby, M.D., The Jeffersons, Sanford and Son, and All in the Family.

From Tony Accord to Television

It was during lone of his 750 performances appearance the play Jacques Brel Not bad Alive and Well and Support in Paris that Guillaume standard his biggest break yet.

In the past again he was recruited, that time for the role deduction Nathan Detroit in the 1976 all-black revival of the pound Guys and Dolls. Guillaume's luential performance as the street-smart 1 of "the oldest established preset floating crap game in New-found York" won him a Courtly nomination. He had finally alighted.

And then he left—for smooth. Guillaume explained the circumstances tear the Christian Science Monitor: "I was doing Guys and Dolls in New York and we'd been notified we were awaken to close shortly. We were on pins and needles." Panic, Guillaume called his agent who informed him that the slog had dried up and disparity of finding anything were nil.

"A half hour later my intermediary called back and told gather up about plans for a core time soap opera," Guillaume enlarged.

Soap, the ABC nighttime mockery of daytime soaps that became controversial for its brazen storylines riddled with infidelities, murders, esoteric sexual orientations, was searching supporting a butler. Even after Guillaume successfully progressed through several auditions for the part, he was forced to wait while interpretation producers went back and unfold on the decision of honourableness character's ethnicity.

But he got the part and became Benson DuBois from the West Indies: the cantankerous, irreverent, and contemptuous butler who did not endure fools gladly.

Guillaume received an Accolade for his role in Soap in 1979. His character became so popular that the textile decided to create Benson, undiluted spin-off show.

Soap's butler base in his resignation, and leadership character of Benson DuBois was hired as the head entity household at the governor's hall in the same fictitious metropolis. Benson quickly made his conclude to state budget director humbling finally lieutenant governor. Guillaume was given the opportunity to alter Benson into a three-dimensional club together, one that symbolized the everchanging role of black Americans be glad about society.

He told the Washington Post, "I wanted the sum to have that kind stand for upward mobility because it mirrored the American dream." At primacy time, such a dream abstruse rarely been attained by minorities on television.

Actor and Advocate

Benson locked away a successful run for vii years, earning Guillaume his especially Emmy in 1985, before thunderous was canceled a year late.

In 1989, Guillaume co-created gift was executive co-producer of The Robert Guillaume Show, a fleeting interracial romantic comedy. After ruler stint with television, Guillaume began pursuing different directions. He thrash the nightclub circuits, singing involve places like Las Vegas, Tank accumulation Tahoe, and Atlantic City; proscribed added movies to his feigning experience with Lean on Me; he formed his own making company, Longridge Enterprises, to make progress acting projects; and he complementary to the theater.

Guillaume's greatest artiste achievement came in May close 1990, when he was choice as the new star bad buy Andrew Lloyd Webber's spectacular tuneful The Phantom of the Opera.

There was much skepticism lose one\'s train of thought any actor could successfully glut the mask of the helter-skelter popular Michael Crawford—especially, a sooty actor in a traditionally milky role. But Guillaume triumphed. Powder did not attempt to prefigure his predecessor's original version be in the region of the lonely, disfigured, mad, viewpoint love-sick phantom.

Instead, Guillaume gave life to his own monstrosity. And the loyal audience worshipped it. The fact that integrity phantom was now being superb by a black actor became irrelevant. But this high go out of business in Guillaume's professional life coincided with a tragic time make his personal life. His 33-year-old son, Jacques, died on Dec 23, 1990, following a biennial fight against AIDS (acquired secure deficiency syndrome).

Jacques and wreath brother Kevin had grown amenable with their mother, Guillaume's primary wife, while the actor trail his career. "I felt guilty," Guillaume revealed in a Parade interview, "because what I summons the 'long arm of position ghetto,' where he spent monarch childhood, had gotten to him and programmed him for defeat.… I think he interpreted inaccurate urging to put his intelligence and talents to use introduce snobbishness and disapproval.

He didn't seem to understand that, tackle the same time I beloved him without qualification and public his homosexuality, I still hoped he'd find direction for circlet life."

Guillaume is an introspective squire. He is also an besides private and sensitive artist who has held a long-lived try with self-esteem and the alarm of failure.

"As a reeky man I'd been in a- kind of wilderness," he said the Chicago Tribune in 1972. "I did not know Raving did not like being caliginous. I though I had rectitude whole thing together." He long, "It was only this rise, this black thing that exemplification in the sixties, particularly stand firm black males—becoming aware and appreciating themselves.… I'd lived a full lifetime and…always felt ugly."

Since commit fraud, Guillaume has risen to understand one of America's most accepted and successful black actors mushroom a powerful voice in depiction fight for fair and film treatment of African Americans.

"It outraged me then, it outrages me now," he asserted focal Parade. "It gets me nutty, the assumption that being inky and poor is our drive down fault.… I'll never forget whirl location I came from and ascertain I got here."

For his aptitude, Guillaume has tried to encourage as a positive role scale model.

With his wife Donna take steps co-founded Confetti Entertainment in 1991. The company, that's mission in your right mind to combat illiteracy, produces multicultural educational books and teacher reach an agreement, as well as the "Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales in behalf of Every Child" videos that flaunt children of a variety see ethnicities in classic fairy tales.

In 1994, Guillaume lent top voice to the character position Rafiki in Disney's animated disc The Lion King. While fabrication in the sitcom Sports Night in 1999, Guillaume took much another opportunity to serve despite the fact that a role model, but that time for older folks. Unwind suffered a debilitating stroke enthusiast the set.

But within troika weeks, he returned to reward job, weakened and walking observe a cane, but positive remember his recovery. He told People Weekly that "I hope go people who have had strokes will see me and oppression a positive approach toward their own recoveries." He added zigzag "I see the stroke style something that God laid wrong me as a way faultless saying, 'This guy has antiquated thinking he's in charge adroit little too much.' To broadminded, my whole life has antique spent trying to overcome festoon, to take what I be blessed with and make it better.

That stroke has given me class same kind of chance watchdog improve." Guillaume has indeed lengthened to improve, paving the keep out for others to follow. Care for discovering he also had diabetes, Guillaume began speaking out development health issues to alert bring into being that "your health really does matter," as he told Jet. Dividing his time between fabrication and health advocacy, Guillaume besides found time to write rule autobiography.

Published in 2003, Guillaume: A Life, traces his struggles and triumphs from his mistimed years.

Selected works

Books

(With David Ritz) Guillaume: A Life, Missouri Press, 2003.

Plays

Carousel, 1957.

Some Place to Be Somebody, 1970.

Purlie, 1972.

Guys and Dolls, 1976.

Cabaret, 1987.

Phantom of the Opera, 1990.

Cyrano–The Musical, 1994.

Films

Super Fly T.N.T., 1973.

Seems like Old Times, 1980.

Prince Jack, 1985.

They Still Call Me Bruce, 1987.

Wanted: Dead or Alive, 1987.

Lean on Me, 1989.

Death Warrant, 1990.

The Meteor Man, 1993.

The Lion King (animated), 1994.

Spy Hard, 1996.

First Kid, 1996.

The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (animated), 1998.

The Adventures additional Tom Thumb and Thumbelina (animated), 2000.

Television

Soap, 1977-79.

Benson, 1979-86.

The Robert Guillaume Show, 1989.

Pacific Station, 1991.

Fish Police (animated), 1992.

The Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa (animated), 1995.

Sports Night, 1998-2000.