Rene Auberjonois, who has
died aged 79, was a beloved character actor who compiled a prolific number of
stage and screen credits across his fifty-year career. Of these, he remains
best known for his television work, settling comfortably into ensemble casts in
a way that reflected his theatrical background.
Between 1980 and 1986, Auberjonois
appeared in the hit US sitcom Benson as Clayton Runnymede Endicott III,
the snooty chief of staff at a governor’s mansion. The role formed a primetime demonstration
of his ability to humanise characters who might otherwise present as unsympathetic:
within each half-hour episode, Auberjonois slyly attributed Endicott’s
loftiness to a deep-seated insecurity.
Globally, Auberjonois
would become celebrated for a part that streamlined his distinctive features (bulbous
nose; kindly, inquisitive eyes) beneath layers of latex. A chameleonic security
chief who sleeps in a bucket, Constable Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space 9
(1993-99) was an unusual role to assume, yet Auberjonois’ wryly philosophical
responses to cosmic turmoil made him a firm fans’ favourite.
Over his career, he was
unapologetic about his own shapeshifting, and unfussed by the prospect of not becoming
an instantly recognisable face. In a 2011 interview, he shrugged: “I’m all of
those characters, and I love that… I also run into people, and they think I’m
their cousin or their dry cleaner. I love that, too.”
He was born René Murat
Auberjonois in New York on June 1, 1940 to a wildly illustrious family. His
father Fernand was a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who served as
an advisor to Generals Patton and Eisenhower; his mother, Princess Laure Murat,
was a painter who descended from the Bonaparte lineage. (His
great-great-great-grandmother was Napoleon’s youngest sister.)
The family split their
time between the US and France, where aged six, the young Rene underwent a
Eureka moment while leading his classmates in a rendition of “Do You Know the
Muffin Man?”. According to his website: “When the performance was over, Rene
took a bow and, knowing he wasn’t the real conductor, imagined that he had been
acting. He decided then and there that he wanted to be an actor.”
His parents relocated to
an artists’ colony in upstate New York during his adolescence, where the
producer John Houseman recommended him for an apprenticeship at a small
playhouse in Stratford, Connecticut. During this period, Auberjonois flirted
with the idea of changing his surname (pronounced oh-bear-zhon-wah, the
French for armour-bearer) to the simpler Aubert, only to find his peers found
that no less tongue-twisting.
Yet however theatregoers
read it, the Auberjonois name soon began appearing on playbills with regularity.
He joined the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco in 1965, starring
in its inaugural production of Tartuffe, turned to directing with the
British comedy hit Beyond the Fringe in 1967, and made his Broadway
debut in 1968 as the Fool opposite Lee J. Cobb as King Lear. Two years
later, he won his first Tony for playing the flamboyantly gay designer Sebastian
Baye in the Chanel musical Coco.
Like many unconventional
performers, he received a profile boost from the New American Cinema of the
1970s. After uncredited appearances in Lilith (1964) and Petunia
(1968), he fell into director Robert Altman’s ensemble of oddballs, essaying
the exasperated Father Mulcahy in M*A*S*H (1970), a twitcher who
transforms into a bird during Brewster McCloud (1970), the saloonkeeper
Sheehan in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) and one of the men closing in
on Susannah York in Images (1972).
He chalked up TV guest
spots in everything from The Mod Squad (1971) to Wonder Woman
(1979), but movie credits kept betraying his position in the Hollywood pecking
order: he was fourth-billed as the obligatory priest in disaster spoof The
Big Bus (1976), fifth-billed in the King Kong remake (1976), before
returning to fourth for The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Where the
Buffalo Roam (1980).
In the 1980s, he juggled Benson
with stage work, earning Tony nominations for playing the con artist Duke in Big
River (1985) and for his dual role in Tinseltown satire City of Angels
(1989), and voice work, lending his professorial tones to such animations as The
Smurfs Christmas Special (1982) and Duck Tales (1987). His most
prominent vocal performance came at the end of the decade, as the
French-accented chef Louis in Disney’s animated comeback The Little Mermaid
(1989).
On screen, he’d become
one of those hallowed “you know the face” actors, playing a mobster in Police
Academy 5 (1988), dipping an uncredited toe into a soon-to-be-familiar
universe in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country (1991), reteaming with
Altman as one of those playing themselves amid The Player (1992), and
showing up as the knowingly named Dr. Burton in Batman Forever (1995).
On TV, he played Frasier
Crane’s mentor Dr. William Tewksbury in Frasier (2001), and earned a prime
recurring part as the veteran lawyer Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal
(2004-08); on stage, he was Professor Abronsius in the musical of Dance of
the Vampires (2002-03) and directed himself alongside Roy Scheider in 12
Angry Men (2004); and he was often seen at Star Trek conventions,
selling his own artwork and photographs for his favourite charity Doctors Without
Borders.
Auberjonois drew no
distinction between his prestige projects – forming a late-life alliance with
emergent indie talent Kelly Reichardt on Certain Women (2016) and First
Cow (2019) – and voicing 49 episodes of kids’ animation Pound Puppies
(2010-13); to him, it was all just work, a way to continue exercising his gift.
“I’m never going to retire,” he told one interviewer. “I’ll die with my boots
on.”
He is survived by his
wife Judith, whom he married in 1963, and two children, both actors: a son,
Remy-Luc and a daughter, Tessa.
Rene Auberjonois, born June 1, 1940, died December 8, 2019.
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