American actor Gavin MacLeod has died at the age of 90, his family has announced. He was best known as Captain Stubing from the TV series The Love Boat, which aired from 1977 to 1986. MacLeod, whose real name was Allan George See, has recently been in serious decline.
Before MacLeod rose to fame in 1970 with a role in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, he had starred in dozens of movies and TV shows for over a decade. The Mary Tyler Moore Show, a sitcom about a fictional news program, became a hit and ran for seven seasons.
The series was groundbreaking because the story revolved around the unmarried career woman Mary Richards, played by Mary Tyler Moore. Until then, a woman in such a role was a rarity. That changed in part due to the series, which is seen as a product of the second wave of feminism in the United States. MacLeod starred from start to finish in the role of Murray Slaughter, a friend and colleague of the main character.
Love Boat
In 1977 he got the lead role in The Love Boat. He became internationally famous as Merrill Stubing, captain of the cruise ship. The series was not taken seriously by critics, but was extremely popular. The Love Boat was on TV for eleven seasons and it resulted in some TV movies, in which MacLeod also starred.
MacLeod went on to act in more than a hundred series and films. He was candid about his private life in his memoirs This Is Your Captain Speaking from 2013. In it, he admits to having struggled with an alcohol addiction in the 60s and 70s. This resulted in a second divorce. He later stopped drinking and in 1985 he married again. He leaves behind a wife and four children.