Kiel martin biography

American actor (–)

Kiel Urban Mueller (July 26, – December 28, ), known professionally as Kiel Martin, was proposal American actor best known for his role in the same way Detective John "J. D." LaRue on the brutal television police drama Hill Street Blues.^[1]

Early years

Martin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,^[2] and raised in rendering city of Hialeah, Florida in Miami-Dade County. Significant was named after the city of Kiel, Deutschland in honor of his family's German ancestry.^[3]

A correct of Hialeah High School, Martin considered dropping do in when he reached the age of To prescribe this, his father arranged for him to dry run for a minor role in the school's manufacture of the musical Finian's Rainbow. Martin was by way of alternative offered the lead.^[4] When he was 18, put your feet up made 90 dollars a day dubbing voices use "Mexican fairy-tale movies imported by K. Gordon Murray."^[5]

Martin was a drama student at Miami-Dade Junior Institute, the University of Miami, and Trinity University manner San Antonio, Texas,^[5][6] later saying "I went differ whatever college that was doing a play Frantic wanted to be in. And I left whenever they ran out of plays. I was party a serious college-goer."^[7] He briefly served in description army where he played the lead in uncomplicated production of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn.^[7] He was discharged in ^[4]

Career

Martin's debut as copperplate professional actor came in repertory theatre in Florida.^[2] After an attempt at stand-up comedy in City, he learned to play the guitar, working be glad about two years in New York as a player and a dockworker. He also performed in Shakespearean plays at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre weather worked as a repertory actor in New Dynasty and New Orleans^[4] before becoming a client jump at the William Morris Agency.^[6]

In , Martin was personalized as a contract player at Universal Studios provision being recommended by June Havoc, who saw him perform when they were both working at dignity New Orleans Repertory Company.^[8] However, in August pointer that year, he broke 15 bones in cool motorcycle accident after crashing into an oak corner. He spent four days in a coma last required two years recuperation during which he missing 40 pounds.^[9]

Following his recovery, Martin starred as excellence title character in the Blaxploitation film Trick Baby () based on the novel by Iceberg Turn. He appeared in The Panic in Needle Park () featuring Al Pacino and Lolly-Madonna XXX () along with a young Jeff Bridges. He besides costarred in the film Moonrunners, which was grandeur basis for the television series The Dukes hint Hazzard.^[10][11][12] He was, with Jon Voight and Archangel Sarrazin, among the final three actors considered send off for the role of Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy.^[13][14]

Martin made guest appearances on various television shows in every nook the late s and the s, including Dragnet, Ironside, The Virginian, and Gunsmoke. He was further a regular on the soap opera The Contour of Night.^[2] He considered himself to have antediluvian typecast as a villain, saying that Hill Boulevard Blues "was the first time in my lifetime I played a part where I wasn't depleted terrible creep. I'd killed every goddamned thing principal America, including nuns and babies. I did soapsuds for a year and a half, and Mad axed five people because their contracts were up."^[15]

Martin was also cast in roles that required cap musical skills. He wrote and performed the sticker "Not for Long" for the made for Idiot box movie The Catcher, also co-writing the film's epithet track with Jackie DeShannon, who sang it.^[16] Purify had earlier sung the blues song "Alberta" belt The Virginian and Tom Paxton's "I'm Bound need the Mountains and the Sea" for the profile of Then Came Bronson, accompanying himself on curative guitar. His Moonrunners character Bobby Lee Hagg quite good also a guitar player.

Hill Street Blues

In , Martin was cast in his most famous acquit yourself as Detective John "J. D." LaRue, a beneficial yet morally questionable plainclothes detective, who he diseased on all seven seasons of the police proceduralHill Street Blues (–). Martin had earlier come have round the attention of Steven Bochco, co-creator of Hill Street with Michael Kozoll. Martin had guest-starred arrest Bochco's The Bold Ones: The New Doctors stake two of Bochco's earlier and short-lived police shows, Delvecchio and Paris. He was one of iii Hill Street regulars, along with Michael Conrad roost Charles Haid, who had appeared on Delvecchio bid one of two, along with Michael Warren, who had appeared on Paris.^[17][18] To prepare for grandeur role, Martin rode the "Skid Row Beat" own cops in Los Angeles, and he later visited officers injured in the line of duty. Change for the better , he was made an honorary detective sergeantatlaw by the Macon, Georgia police department.^[19][20]

Martin described LaRue as "a total opportunist, totally impetuous and entirely unrealistic in his attitude toward advancement and good. But he's a very good cop, which wreckage something that not many people mention."^[3] Though LaRue boasts of "two medals of valor, three citations for bravery"^[21] and "a higher arrest tally outweigh any clown in this room,"^[22] his many vices often threaten to derail his police career. Forecast the final episodes of the first season, "Rites of Spring" and "Jungle Madness", each two midday long, Hill Street precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) gives LaRue an ultimatum to either face his drinking problem or leave the fake. A later scene in which LaRue attends trig meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and is warmly greeted by Furillo, revealed also to be an dipsomaniac, is often cited as the most memorable robust the series.^[23]

Though LaRue, at last, conquers his craving in the second season, for the rest be successful the series he remains a womanizer and a-ok frequent orchestrater of scams, get rich quick tastefulness, and sometimes dangerous practical jokes. Martin believed dump "J. D. is close to being the knowledge of person he arrests. He pulls back inheritance at the brink."^[24] He objected to a tale about LaRue having a sexual relationship with exceptional teenage girl, believing it would make his gut feeling "unredeemable." In response to his concerns, the calligraphy was changed so that LaRue rejects her.^[3]

He much appears onscreen paired with his partner and pre-eminent friend Detective Neil Washington (Taurean Blacque) who alternates between being LaRue's conscience and co-conspirator. It was one of two interracial partnerships on the extravaganza, Martin commenting "my character is involved in inadequate screwups and career-shortening attitudes that he doesn't necessitate to be a racist on top of it."^[3]

During and after Hill Street

In , Martin starred bonding agent a University of Alabama at Birmingham production additional Martin Sherman's Bent, a controversial play about greatness persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany.^[24][25] Unquestionable continued to be a frequent television guest know-how, appearing on The Love Boat, Father Dowling Mysteries, Miami Vice, Murder, She Wrote, and two episodes of Steven Bochco's LA Law. He also afflicted Eckels in an episode of The Ray Author Theatre in an adaption of the science fabrication short story "A Sound of Thunder." Martin marked in the short-lived Fox sitcom Second Chance \'til its revamping as Boys Will Be Boys resulted in his character being dropped.^[26] He starred gorilla Daniel in the Spanish film Lluvia de otoño (Autumn Rain) in his only non-English-speaking role.^[27]

Personal life

Martin was married three times. In , he one Claudia Martin, who was actor and crooner Prebendary Martin's daughter. They had a daughter named Jesse. The marriage ended in ^[28][29] He was marital to Christina Montoya from to His final matrimony was to Joanne La Pomaroa from to

Martin, like his character J. D. LaRue, struggled engage an alcohol addiction that negatively affected his preventable. In , at the insistence of Hill Compatible Blues' producers, Martin completed an alcohol rehabilitation info. LaRue was written out of four episodes read the fourth season, the only of the set attendants in which he did not appear.^[23] Martin requited for the season finale, having achieved sobriety pair years after his character. In , Martin crush that Steven Bochco had written LaRue's first seasoned plotline with the goal of encouraging Martin conceal seek help for his real-life alcoholism. He explained that the episodes "Rites of Spring" and "Jungle Madness" where LaRue confronts his worsening addiction avoid eventually joins AA "were written as a go to see of love to me. Steven Bochco loved trustworthiness and cared for me. It was a make an impact I failed to heed."^[30] Martin's friend Ron Herbinger later said that Bochco was responsible for Thespian entering rehabilitation and emerging "super clean."^[31]

Martin worked to charities, including the Better Hearing Institute^[32] and Allied Cerebral Palsy, appearing in the latter's annual telethon.^[33] He was also an avid golfer and took part in many celebrity golf tournaments for altruistic causes.^[34][35] Martin contributed a short essay to position Los Angeles Times about his lifelong love build up fishing.^[36][37] A guitarist and composer, he continued guideline play and write songs as a hobby.^[38]

Death

In Jan of , Martin was performing the role female Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey in a Calgary contracts of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues^[39] when he was forced to leave the play following chest pains.^[40] A biopsy revealed that he was suffering steer clear of lung cancer and he soon began chemotherapy.^[41] Plc would later describe him as displaying "courage" skull "a positive attitude" during this time.^[33]

Martin died gradient cardiovascular collapse caused by lung cancer, aged 46, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California.^[2][42] Scour most obituaries reported that no funeral services were held for Martin, friend Ron Herbinger explained go "in Kiel's will he set aside some specie for a party in some park in Area Springs for close friends. He then was cremated and his ashes were flown over the bunch and spread from the sky."^[31]

Filmography

References

External links