Background

Robert Guillaume was born on November 30, 1927 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States as Robert Peter Williams. He and three siblings were the children of an alcoholic mother who was unable to care for them and a father who abandoned the family. The children were raised by their maternal grandmother, a cleaning woman and laundress. She taught them to read and enrolled them in a Catholic school.

Education

In 1945, after completing his schooling, Robert joined the Army. He was discharged 15 months later. Taking on a number of menial jobs, the future actor enrolled at St. Louis University where he studied business administration. However, the appeal of a career in music drew him to Washington University, where he was encouraged by opera singer Leslie Cha- bay, who helped him obtain a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival.

Career

Before his acting career started, Robert had worked in a department store, the post office and as St. Louis’s first black streetcar motorman. When Guillaume received a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival, he was spotted by Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, founders of the Karamu Theater in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the oldest interracial theaters in the country. He debuted in Carousel, then toured Europe in a revival of The St. Louis Blues, titled Free and Easy. He had parts in other shows, including Finian's Rainbow, Golden Boy, and Porgy and Bess, and was offered the lead in Purlie, a musical adaptation of the Ossie Davis play Purlie Victorious.

Then, Guillaume moved to New York City, where he took voice lessons and found steady work. Although he was limited in the roles, he was offered because of his color. After a dry spell, he landed the lead role of Nathan Detroit in the all-black revival of Guys and Dolls. His outstanding portrayal earned Guillaume an Antoinette Perry (Tony) award nomination, and guest spots in televison series followed. As the cantankerous butler of the white Tate family in the sexually explicit Soap, he earned an Emmy award, and Benson moved to the governor’s mansion in the show named for the title character. He began by managing the household but rose to become lieutenant governor, demonstrating the kind of upward mobility he wanted minorities to aspire to.

Benson ran on ABC for seven years until 1986. The show brought Guillaume an Emmy in 1985 for lead actor in a comedy. In the late ’90s he took on the role of Isaac Jaffe, executive producer of a cable sports show on the ABC sitcom Sports Night.

In 1992, Robert and his wife Donna Brown founded the Confetti Entertainment Company.

After Benson, Guillaume directed and appeared in an all-black production of A Christmas Carol called John Grin’s Christmas and played a marriage counselor on the short-lived The Robert Guillaume Show and a detective on the early Nineties sitcom Pacific Station. He found work on the stage and in movies like Big Fish and Meteor Man, and voiced the character Rafiki in Disney’s The Lion King. Robert subsequently won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children in 1999 for The Lion King Read-Along. He also recorded three albums of music, spanning standards to Phantom of the Opera.

On January 14, 1999, Guillaume suffered a stroke in his dressing room and was away from the set for four months while he underwent intensive therapy. When Guillaume took the stage as a presenter for the Emmy Awards with the help of a cane, he received a standing ovation. In a People interview, Guillaume said, "I've tried to be positive and not get in a funk about things. To me, my whole life has been spent trying to overcome limitations, to take what I have and make it better. This stroke has given me the same kind of chance to improve. I get a lot of satisfaction out of getting a little better each day."

After the stroke, Guillaume traveled as a new spokesman for the American Stroke Association and also made appearances for the American Heart Association.

Achievements

• Robert Guillaume's performance led to many nominations, and two Emmy awards wins in 1979 and 1985. He left his mark onstage and in front of the cameras starring as Nathan Detroit in the first all-black version of Guys and Dolls and as the first African-American to sing the lead role in Phantom of the Opera with an all-white cast in Los Angeles.
  
  The theatrical performance in Guys and Dolls also earned him a Tony nomination in 1977.

Works

More photos

• movie

  • The Meteor Man 1993
  • The Lion King II: Simba's Pride 1998
  • Merlin of the Crystal Cave 1996

• TV series

  • Benson: Season 1 1977

Views

Although Guillaume rose to stardom and had many years of success throughout his career, he never forgot his humble beginnings. During a 1972 interview with the Chicago Tribune, he shed light on his personal struggles with self-esteem and his internal battle with racism. But despite the problems he faced, those humble beginnings molded him into the man fans still love to this day. "As a black man, I’d been in a kind of wilderness. I did not know I did not like being black. I thought I had the whole thing together." He also told Parade magazine, "It gets me crazy, the assumption that being black and poor is our own fault. I’ll never forget where I came from and how I got here."

Quotations: "To assuage bitterness requires more than human effort. Relief comes from a source we cannot see but can only feel. I am content to call that source love."

"As a television performer on Soap, Benson, The Robert Guillaume Show and Pacific Station, I sought consciously to avoid the stereotypical sociological traps. I always wanted kids of any background to understand the characters I’ve portrayed were real, that the solutions they found were true and possible. It has always been important to me to stress that there was no diminution of power or universality just because my characters are African-Americans."

Membership

• The American Stroke Association

• The American Heart Association

• The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Screen Actors Guild

Interests

• Music & Bands

  Classical music

Connections

Robert Guillaume was married twice. The marriage with his first wife, Marlene, lasted nearly 30 years, from 1955 until their divorce in 1984. They welcomed two sons – Kevin and Jacques, who tragically died in 1990, aged 33 due to complications from AIDS.

In 1986 Robert Guillaume married Donna Brown. They had a daughter. The relationship also ended in divorce after nearly 20 years in 2005.

Guillaume also had two other children outside of marriage.

Spouse:

Donna Brown Guillaume

ex-wife:

Marlene Patricia Scott

Son:

Kevin Guillaume

Son:

Jacques Guillaume

Daughter:

Rachel Guillaume

Daughter:

Patricia Guillaume

Daughter:

Melissa Guillaume

colleague:

David Ritz

References

• Guillaume: A Life Guillaume: A Life is the autobiography of esteemed Broadway, Hollywood, and television star Robert Guillaume. The book goes beyond the recounting of a long and successful career to examine the forces that shaped the man: family, religion, race, and class. Startlingly candid and disarmingly self-aware, Guillaume seeks to know and understand himself, his treatment of the women in his life, and the choices he made along the way.
  2002