Also, now as a result of that show being on, the cruise industry is just growing all over the place. Princess Cruises, who I now represent, is the fastest growning cruise line in the world.
But the character was so successful, that first one, that they wrote him again and he came in right at the end of the first year in a show called THE BOX. I was up for the Emmy for that one too.
I always think that I love doing what I'm doing at the moment. The past is over. I can't go play one of those characters again. But I can play this and I can continue to grow in what I'm doing at the moment and that's really what I'm thinking about now.
I checked myself out in that funeral parlour scene. I saw myself laughing, because there was a shot of Ed and I together and Mary was right in back of us. My head turned from the camera and I saw myself laughing, because Mary was absolutely brilliant in that thing.
I decided that I didn't care to do any more television, because financially I was fixed enough, I didn't have to worry about it.
I don't know, since I'm older, I must tell you, I do enjoy playing nice people. I think there's more longevity.
I haven't killed anyone on television in years and years. Must have been twenty something years.
I just love the hours of the theatre, I love the way it operates. I always say that when you're doing a play it's like getting a shot of B12, and when you do television for a long series you need a shot of B12.
I went over to shoot for six days. It turned out to be ten days, very nicely so. A little money.
I went to my captain's table one morning at 7 o'clock and there was Helen Hayes, Maurice Evans and Mildred Natwick. When I was a little boy, I used to go the theatre to see them.
I'm just there to do interviews and stuff, because we have about 40 media people there, so it's a very, very busy week. But that's the only time. I did marry, I think on one show, about 25 couples in Acapulco Bay once, but that was all just for kicks.
I've played heavies for years and years and years. I was bald. I came to Hollywood. I did a play about junk. I was a pusher, so I played pushers for years and years and years. I did war movies and things like that.
It all depended on the cut. Some of them were really on the ship. Some were really on the set. Like if they had the stars for a week, the stars coming off, that was usually on the set, except if we were on location for that particular show.
It was tough for him in that newsroom with Ted Baxter getting all the glory and this poor guy doing all the work. Murray worried so much he worried his hair off!
It's very trying on a marriage when you're doing a one hour show, week after week after week. You don't have enough time for people that maybe you should have top priority.
Jim Brooks as you know c'mon, he's won Oscars I mean you just can't stop Jim. He's really going. And everybody else.
"Oh Murray Slaughter, wow, what a nice sweet kind of guy." I said, yeah, but you really can get it off on other parts that are really exciting and you can get your teeth into. But people remember.
So he won by one percent. My wife and I gave him the first cheque. He won by one percent. The next time he won by 65%. He was doing great.
Somebody did an article in one of the newspapers saying that at that time I had the most visibility of any actor around. Kind of nice, you know, when that thing was happening.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to be an actor, to be like them. And there they were at my table, all talking about how nervous they were, about the lines, and so forth. No matter how big you get, you still have the same kinds of anxieties and so forth.
There are a lot of new opportunities that are poking their head up in my future. I've been very fortunate that way, but for right now, what I like is what I'm doing.
This is a group effort. This is group theatre. This is no big star turn. You could do things with it to do that but it would just be out of kilter. This is one reason I like this play. This is a unit.
This is a group playing together and that's the only way, I feel, this play can be successful and moving. I am so lucky to have the people that are in it. When I came here I didn't know who was going to be in the play.
Too bad Ted's not here, because he was one of the most talented men I ever knew.
We had to be very careful on our best behaviour when we went to these other countries. And then I made a living, I had a chance to support my wife and my kids. It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful program from that point of view.
We have nine ships and in the next two years will have ten, eleven and twelve. So things are going very nicely and all because of that program that people thought was mindless and so forth.
We sat down and read it for the first time and I thanked God under my breath, because they were all so good. And my leading ladies are both exceptional. I mean, everybody in the play. I could just go on all night about them.
We used two Princess Cruise ships. The Island Princess and The Pacific Princess. They were identical ships.
We went out for six weeks a year. We first started in Mexico and we did that for so many years that we finally said we've got to explore and start going globally. And then we started going all over the world.
We were making new ones the second year. We were in syndication the second year. So we were on Saturday nights, prime time, every morning, and then they put it on Sunday evenings too. So it was all over the place.
Work is work. A lot of times, when parts are offered, it depends where you are with your life. "I can't turn this down because it might do something for my image," or "I can't turn this down, it may affect my future."
You know, nine years and six weeks is a long time for any show and I'm very grateful. But if you haven't got a script you shouldn't try to do it.
You know, you have to put bread on the table. So you thank God you got the job.
Gavin first acted with Joyce Bulifant in McHale's Navy. They would later play husband and wife on the 1970s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Some of the activities that Gavin MacLeod has participated in outside of acting include being a paid spokesperson for Princess Cruises and representing the charities Feed the Children and Boy's Town, USA. He was honored as "Humanitarian of the Year" by the Gift of Life Foundation in 1992.
Gavin's father was an Ojibwe ("Chippewa") Indian and was the owner of a service station in upstate New York.
Gavin MacLeod was generally overweight and paunchy for much of his early career. He lost weight at the suggestion of producers of The Mary Tyler Moore Show at the same time as Valerie Harper (the summer of 1971).
MacLeod was offered the role of Captain Stubing on The Love Boat when Dick Van Patten declined it and starred in the series Eight is Enough instead.
MacLeod took his professional name from the last name of his drama coach at Ithaca College and the first name of a character with cerebral palsy on a 1950s television drama.
MacLeod worked as an usher at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, and later landed a part in the Broadway production A Hatful of Rain.
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