Alan Rachins has died. A veteran actor of stage and film best known for the many seasons he spent on TV, notably in L.A. Law and Dharma & Greg, Rachins had a deft gift for maintaining an all-important sliver of dignity in even the most absurd of situations. Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated for his work on L.A. Law—where he spent eight years inviting cosmic retribution on himself as the comically loathsome Douglas Brackman—Rachins died on Saturday morning of complications from heart failure. He was 82.
Born in Massachusetts in the 1940s, and briefly sent into a detour into the Wharton School for business by a domineering father, Rachins came up through the New York theater scene. (Including a notable early performance in infamous off-Broadway nude revue Oh! Calcutta!.) Although he took some time off from acting to work as a TV writer—including penning a Hill Street Blues script for Steven Bochco, who would one day be his boss, and who was already his brother-in-law—Rachins struck gold in 1986, when Bochco cast him in L.A. Law on the strength of a performance in independent film Always. As the oafish Brackman, Rachins often got to be the most obnoxious guy in a room full of high-power attorneys; if the show frequently punished him with humiliations for his transgressions, it was only because the writers and producers knew that Rachins could handle the silliness (including getting a memorable bit where he ended up with a painful boil on his ass, a bit directly imported from Bochco’s life). As a bonus, it meant a number of collaborations with Rachins’ wife, Joanna Frank; she played Brackman’s wife Sheila in 19 episodes of the series, and while the fictional pair would ultimately divorce, in real life Rachins and Frank stayed together until his death today.
After Law ended in 1994, Rachins wasted little time lining up his next gig: When Dharma & Greg kicked off in 1996, it was with Rachins playing Larry, the laid-back hippie father of Jenna Elfman’s Dharma. In interviews about his two biggest shows, Rachins emphasized the pleasures of filming in front of a live studio audience for the sitcom, describing the “huge kick” of landing a joke in front of the crowd. Rachins held no snobbery about the format, noting in 2010, “I wasn’t just on two hit shows, I was on two excellent hit shows. And being on a quality show, a show you are proud of, with a challenging character to play is much more important to me than the format; single camera or working in front of a live audience.”
In addition to his live-action work, Rachins also periodically worked as a voice actor; he had a memorable appearance in Batman: The Animated Series as the pathologically punctual Clock King, and appeared as Norman Osborn in the 2000s-era Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon. Per THR, his death was confirmed on Saturday by his wife.
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