| Robert Guillaume June 2002 |
For St. Louis’ own Robert Guillaume, Benson is just the tip of
the iceberg.
Known the world over for his portrayal of the smart, tough, and witty
butler who became a lieutenant governor in two television series of the 1970’s
and ’80’s, Guillaume is an accomplished singer and Broadway actor who has
been nominated for and won numerous awards for his achievements as a performer.
And, in 1999, after he suffered a stroke in real life, his condition was written
into the character he was playing on the sitcom Sports Life, and he
returned to work after just a few weeks’ absence.
Born November 30, 1927, in St. Louis and named Robert Williams, when he
went into theater, he decided to choose a name which he felt would be more
distinctive. “‘Guillaume’ is French for ‘William,’ and I just like the
sound of it,” he noted in an interview with the St. Louis Times.
Guillaume grew up in downtown St. Louis and went to St. Nicholas
Elementary School, St. Joseph High School, and St. Louis University, then later
also to Washington University. He left the city in 1960, but he remembers as a
child performing “in little school plays with the crate paper tutus and the
triangular hats.”
It wasn’t until he was in his mid 20’s, however, that he actually
thought of becoming a performer, Guillaume says. It was then “that I first
thought that maybe I’d sing, and my original goal was to become a concert
singer of German leader and French art songs and that sort of thing. Then I sort
of zeroed in on the Metropolitan Opera as a goal.”
When he received a scholarship from Washington University to study in
Aspen, Colorado, he “met some people from Cleveland who invited me to come
there and go on the stage.”
“I had always sung in those school plays, and I had some notion that I
had talent,” he adds, modestly. “I went to New York and worked in a show
called Free and Easy. That was my first paying job [as a performer]. I
worked with Quincy Jones and a lot of the old jazz greats. He put together a
jazz band, and we were doing Free and Easy which was a rehash of an old
Broadway show called St. Louis Woman that [had] starred Pearl Bailey in
1946.”
“We
did that story in Europe, and our intention was to tour Europe, come back to
London, and Sammy Davis was going to join us at the Palladium, then we were
going to come into New York. That was the intention, but the producer and the
director got into serious difficulties, and the tour was aborted. So we were
kind of stranded in Paris. But Equity came and bailed us out, and we all got
back to New York. I had worked long enough at that time to [receive]
unemployment compensation, and it enabled me to hang on in New York until I got
some other work.”
He
also did two cross-country tours of Purlie and is the only
African-American to perform the lead in The Phantom of the Opera. He is
especially proud of his work on stage in Guys and Dolls, which showcased
an all African-American cast, and for which he was nominated for a Tony Award
for his portrayal of Nathan Detroit. That was his last Broadway appearance, in
1976, “and a year later I got Soap, and I was in Soap from ’77
to ’79.”
To many, he is known for his breakout, strong-willed character Benson
DuBois which he created in TV’s Soap and later in the spin-off Benson.
But how much of the character’s ascorbic wit and self-assuredness was his
interpretation of the role and how much was the writing? Modestly, he protests,
“Well, I think most of it was in the writing,” pointing out that the
character was “written against type, meaning that the character was written to
defy the type,” or stereotype, that the audience might expect in an
African-American butler in the 1970’s. However, many feel that it took an
assertive, self-assured performer like Guillaume to pull off the part
successfully, a role for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Emmy for Soap
and a Best Lead Actor Emmy for Benson — probably the only performer in
the history of television to win both awards for playing the same character.
Before
Soap, Guillaume was practically a television novice. “I had done an All
in the Family, Marcus Welby, and an episode of Julia — but those
were just guest shots,” he points out. In the last three decades, however, he
has come to like the medium, having performed in many television productions as
well as motion pictures such as Lean on Me, Fire and Rain, Pandora’s Clock,
Superfly TNT, and as the voice of the mystical baboon Rafiki in Disney’s
animated blockbuster The Lion King. “I think I prefer [performing]
before the camera,” he declares.
Guillaume
has also tried his hand working behind the camera. With his wife Donna, he
produced You Must Remember This for PBS and also Happily Ever After, a
group of ethnically diverse fairy tales which he narrated, for HBO.
In 1999, Robert Guillaume suffered a stroke while in his dressing room
between takes for the sitcom Sports Night in which he was one of the
stars; however, he wasn’t away from work for long. He returned in a matter of
weeks, portraying a stroke survivor. But who’s idea was that? “It was my
wife’s,” he proclaims. “She thought of it and suggested the idea to the
executive producer that we might incorporate the stroke into the role, and,
indeed, Aaron Sorkin did that, so I came back to the show as a real survivor of
a stroke.”
He believes that because he received attention soon after suffering the
stroke, its effects may have been minimized or that the quick action may have
actually saved his life. “I was taken to the hospital pretty quickly. I had
been at work, and St. Joseph’s Hospital was nearby, and they administered
clot-dissolving drugs immediately.”
Has surviving the stroke been a life-changing experience for him? “I
haven’t really been able to assess what my real damage was with my stroke,”
he replies. “It was a stroke; there’s no doubt about that. But I’m not
sure if it was a major stoke in the sense that I’ve seen other people struggle
with stroke. I’m not trying to say that I didn’t suffer a stroke of
significant proportion. My left side is reduced, but I’ve been doing therapy,
and things that I thought might occur didn’t. I do my exercises and I keep
active, and I feel that it has had minimal effect on me.” Still, some claim
that in a person of lesser fortitude, the effect of a stroke like Guillaume
suffered could have been much more debilitating. Doctors tend to agree that
individual willpower is a major factor in recovering from a stroke, and
Guillaume is known as a person of strong will and determination. Currently, he
is under medication to help alleviate some of the problems and to help cut down
on a future recurrence.
Robert Guillaume has had many major accomplishments in his professional
career including his powerful character Benson who took on racial stereotypes
without flinching. Perhaps it has been his strong force of will and
self-assuredness which has minimized the effect of racism in his life. “I’ve
certainly experienced racism, but it has not made a great impact on me. I have
always thought, as I got older and older, I was more in charge of who I was.
What someone thought about me or said about me made less of an impression on me
at very vulnerable times. And I was lucky in the sense that I survived some of
the onslaught of racism without it ruining my life, and I think that was kind of
unusual, certainly for me, so I always looked at
racism as the other person’s problem — the racist’s problem — not
mine. I’m not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting,
but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered
it more of a manifestation of humanity’s problem rather than my personal
problem.”
“But racism may be as systemic as it always was. It is the great
problem of America. It’s the one stumbling block that I don’t believe was
ever smoothed over.”
As the first African-American to play the lead in of The Phantom of
the Opera, he experienced some resentment, but, Guillaume says, “I
expected that. You see, that’s the way I’ve always treated racism. In other
words, racism never caught me off guard, I don’t think, and it was my reaction
to the possibility that was the secret of any success I would have. It was not
going to make such an impact on me that I was going to become obsessed with
eradicating it. Remember, I didn’t consider it my problem, after all.”
Recently,
Guillaume returned to St. Louis to take part in the Langston Hughes Poetry
Festival, and, while he was here, he talked about his local connections to those
in attendance, one of whom was his nephew, Charles Ingram, who is following in
his uncle’s footsteps to a certain degree and is the host of his own local
radio show.
At
age 74, has Robert Guillaume slowed his pace and has his life changed very much
as he’s gotten older? “I really don’t know,” he replies with as much
charm as he is known for exhibiting. “I’ve always been a positive person. I
haven’t noticed a real reduction in my sense of humor or my interest in
things. There’s a part of me that still holds on to what I thought was
youthful in me, and sometimes I find myself daydreaming about youthful pursuits.
Then I come to my senses and tell myself: ‘You’re not supposed to be
thinking about those things.’ Before I suffered the stroke, I thought I would
go on forever because I’d never felt sick or anything like that before. And
after the stroke, I found that part of my thinking still pretty much intact.”
There are things that he actually enjoys more as he has gotten older, he
says. “I’ve gotten a better perception of the craft I’m in — you know,
in acting, I’ve gotten a better perception of that, and I do think I’ve
learned more about singing. These things sort of come to you as you get
older.”
“The thing that I’ve enjoyed most is that I’m able to accept age
— I’m able to accept the aging phenomena, and I don’t worry as much about
what the outcome is going to be on this, that, or the other. It’s pretty clear
that I didn’t do all the things that I said I was going to do, and I’m able
to put things in a better perspective — to look at them.”
Guillaume i
s often called upon to speak to others about performing and the theater, but he
tries to be guided by humility in what he has to say. “I try to be modest when
I suggest to people how to seek a career in show business because many people
really want to know how you do that, but if there was an easy answer, then all
of us would make money. I try to be modest in terms of giving out some kind of
general advice, but I talk to young people quite often, and I notice that their
ideas about what they want to do are always so ‘fuzzy.’ There’s no focus
in their i
In Robert Guillaume’s case, his successful career on stage and in
television and the movies has demonstrated both his desire
and his talent.