Obituary: Robert Guillaume wouldn’t keep his mouth shut and made a career with his voice
The butler in the sitcom Soap was so popular he got his own show and became one of America’s favourite TV stars
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For its time the comedy series Soap was groundbreaking TV. A send-up of traditional soap operas, every character was written against type, breaking as many stereotypes as possible. But perhaps the least stereotypical character was the African-American butler Benson.
Played by Robert Guillaume,
he was neither subservient, a simpleton nor lazy, unlike most previous coloured servants on TV. He was smart, sassy, and spent more time delivering pithy quotes than doing domestic work.
Yet he worked hard for his boss in other ways.
The role made Guillaume one of America’s favourite sitcom stars. His death this week at the age of 89 will be mourned by millions of fans worldwide. But while his biggest fanbase is among television audiences, Guillaume began his career as a singer and a stage star.
Born Robert Peter Williams in St Louis Missouri on November 30, 1927, in his 2002 autobiography Guilaume: A Life he wrote “I’m a bastard, a Catholic, the son of a prostitute, and a product of the poorest slums of St. Louis.” His father abandoned the family and his alcoholic mother gave her children to the care of their grandmother.
He was given a Catholic school education and imbued with a sense of self worth. At school he sang in musicals but was often outspoken, resulting in at least one expulsion.
In 1945 he joined the US Army, but again his tendency to speak out got him in trouble. A southern captain took a particular dislike to the mouthy African-American and told him the army wasn’t big enough for the both of them. Guillaume resigned and was given an honourable discharge.
He finished high school, and began a college education, taking various jobs to pay his way, including driving a St Louis trolley car. In 1955 he married Marlene Scott, they had two sons.
While studying for his business administration degree at St Louis’s Washington University, he also took arts courses and was discovered by Hungarian opera tenor, Laszlo Chabay. The singer secured Guillaume a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival School. He followed a dream to make a living from his voice.
At Aspen he was noticed by Russell and Rowena Jelliffe who took him to their Karamu Theater in Cleveland, an interracial troupe. Adopting the name Guillaume (French for William) he auditioned for dozens of parts but realised many rejections were because he was African-American. Taking the attitude that he would change producers’ minds he finally broke through, making his Broadway debut in Carousel, aged 31.
Oscar Hammerstein spotted him and cast him in Free And Easy, which took him on his first tour of Europe. He went on to appear in Kwamina, Finian’s Rainbow, Porgy And Bess and Purlie among others before becoming the first African-American Nathan Detroit in Guys And Dolls in 1977, earning a Tony Nomination.
Meanwhile he had also made several guest appearances on TV, including as a black doctor in All In The Family in 1975. In 1977 he was offered the role of Benson in Soap. Although he played a black servant, he later said he didn’t have to keep his “mouth shut” like black actors in similar roles in the past. It won him an Emmy in 1979.
Guillaume was so popular as Benson, he starred in a spin-off series about Benson working for a governor as his “director of household affairs”. The series ran from 1979-86 and earned him another Emmy and three Golden Globe nominations. During that time he divorced his wife Marlene and in 1986 married Donna Brown (they had one daughter).
When Benson ended he appeared in movies and other TV roles before landing his own series The Robert Guillaume Show in 1989. But its plot about an interracial romance was still too much for TV executives and audiences to handle at the time and it ended after one season.
In 1990 he triumphantly became the first African-American to play the Phantom in musical Phantom Of The Opera, replacing Michael Crawford, but that same year his son, Jacques, from his first marriage, died from an AIDs related illness.
In the early 90s he had two short lived cop comedies, but became familiar to a new generation when in 1994 he voiced Rafiki in The Lion King. He would later earn a Grammy for a recording of him reading the story.
While starring as the editor of a TV sports program in the sitcom Sports Night in 1999 he suffered a stroke, but returned to the set three weeks later.
He continued acting well into his 80s, saying in an interview that the one thing he hoped people could say of his performances was that he “always played true to me” and to the characters he played.
He died on October 24 from prostate cancer. He is survived by his second wife, daughters Patricia, Melissa and Rachel, and son, Kevin.
Originally published as Obituary: Robert Guillaume wouldn’t keep his mouth shut and made a career with his voice
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