Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

= me Hidden Panic Oi Richard ChaHiberlain tabbed for its big TV bid seemed as sterile as a role of gauze, and just about as exciting. He was certainly handsome enough. Then, as now, his fine-lined aristocratic face suggested (as his drama coach, Jeff Corey, noted the minute he saw him) “a young Florentine noble — straight out of the Renaissance.” His mouth and nose were strong and straight, his hair a cap of pure gold. His slate blue eyes were large and set sensitively wide, “almost turning the corners of his face,” as his artist friend, Martin Green, points out, “so that you can see them from the side.” Overall, Dick had an inviting fresh, scrubbed and showered look, which later moved his comedienne friend, Carol Burnett, to call him, “squeaky clean,” swiping a shampoo ad slogan. Dick’s body was quite strong and tidy, as it still is. It’s the body of a track athlete — star sprinter in high school and relays in college — whip muscled but spare. His fair skin gets a honey tan that gives him an Apollo like glow when he’s stripped down. That sight, seen as Dick worked out in bathing shorts, had once moved a co-ed named Claire Isaacson to gasp, “I’ve just seen a Greek god!” Yet, with all this, Richard Chamberlain seemed hardly the type to set off romantic rockets around the world. He was so self effacing in person that you had to look twice to notice him. “Dick was all eyes and a mouth wide then,” recalls his pal and publicist. Chuck Painter. “He was the kind of a guy who comes into a room and fades right into the wall. Now that ‘Kildare’s’ a hit he is com ing out in all sorts of ways. But for many months he was quiet like a mouse.” Dick was so quiet that when he was sent to Arizona for a bit in “A Thunder of Drums,” right after he’d made “Dr. Kildare’s” pilot at M-G-M, it was three days before the director knew who he was! On that same location. Painter persuaded a reporter from the Tucson Star to interview Dick. He soon wished he hadn’t. The reporter kidded Dick’s stiff reserve unmercifully, printing his cautious reactions word for word like, “I didn’t expect that question” and “I really don’t know what to say.” Dick has that first sorry interview framed today in his dressing room as a horrible reminder of how not to behave. Even after “Dr. Kildare” began, its star was so unprepossessing that for weeks Dick couldn’t get past studio gate cops in his car without calling the publicity department for help. He had no decent dressing room because he couldn’t bring himself to speak up for one. After NBC had beamed him all over, Dick’s manner was so unimpressive that, when his car got stuck in heavy rain one night, he tried five households before one would allow him to call for help — and they passed him the phone outside on a long cord. Then “Dr. Kildare” leaped to TV’s top ten, never to drop out. And things have changed considerably since that day for Richard Chamberlain. Last fall, as grand marshal of Baltimore’s “I Am An American Day” parade, Dick reviewed a crowd of 400,000 eager fans — then had to flee to a Coast Guard cutter in Chesapeake Bay to escape a mauling. In Pittsburgh, 450,000 swarmed the streets for a look at him in-person and the cops whisked Dick through back alleys to a safe stakeout. In New York he tripped a near riot when a kid spotted him despite levis and a sweat shirt before the lion cage at Bronx Zoo. ( Continued on page 85)