‘L.A. Law,’ ‘Dharma & Greg’ Actor Was 82

Alan Rachins, who spent 13 seasons on tv portraying the boorish legislation companion Douglas Brackman Jr. on L.A. Regulation and the hippie father of Jenna Elfman’s character on Dharma & Greg, died Saturday. He was 82. 

Rachins died in his sleep of coronary heart failure within the early morning hours at Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart in Los Angeles, his spouse, actress Joanna Frank, advised The Hollywood Reporter.

He and Frank married in 1978 after they met in an performing class. She recurred as Sheila Brackman, his feuding partner, on L.A. Regulation, they usually performed a married couple in All the time (1985), written and directed by indie auteur Henry Jaglom.

In what some would possibly name a kinky coincidence, Rachins was one of many disrobing castmembers within the authentic stage manufacturing of Oh! Calcutta and appeared as Tony Moss, the merciless, toupeed director of the topless dance revue on the Stardust On line casino, in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (1995).

Frank’s late youthful brother, the legendary TV writer-producer Steven Bochco, had his brother-in-law in thoughts for the a part of the McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak co-founder when he was placing collectively the forged of attorneys for NBC’s L.A. Regulation. (Bochco created the fashionable present with lawyer/novelist Terry Louise Fisher.)

Rachins went on to look in all however one of many 172 episodes of the twentieth Century Fox-produced collection, which aired for eight seasons (1986-94), and he acquired Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his work in 1988. The self-important Brackman usually was the butt of his colleagues’ jokes.

“Within the pilot episode, there was nothing of the extra flamboyant or weird facet of Douglas; he was going to be the hard-line workplace supervisor, the penny pincher,” Rachins recalled in a 1990 interview with The New York Instances. “It was sort of restricted, and I didn’t know the place it was going. However shortly it developed much more colour and flamboyance.”

After L.A. Regulation ended its acclaimed run — it gained 4 excellent drama collection Emmys — Rachins returned to primetime on Dharma & Greg as Larry Finkelstein, the wacky hippie dad of a yoga teacher (Elfman) married to a lawyer (Thomas Gibson). He was on all 199 episodes of that sitcom, which ran for 5 seasons, from 1997-2002.

The buttoned-up Brackman and the ’60s radical Finkelstein couldn’t have been extra completely different. The roles had been “like night time and day,” he mentioned.

An solely youngster, Alan Leonard Rachins was born on Oct. 3, 1942, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston. His father, Edward, ran a meals manufacturing enterprise that made merchandise together with ice cream toppings, flavored syrups and cake toppings. His mom, Ida, died when he was 11.

Rachins graduated from Brookline Excessive College and spent two years on the Wharton College at Penn earlier than shifting to New York to strive performing. He studied with the likes of Warren Robertson and Kim Stanley and made his Broadway debut in 1967 in After the Rain.

He appeared within the buff for about 18 months within the musical revue Oh! Calcutta, which debuted in June 1969 on the Eden Theater, as soon as a house for X-rated films. (Additionally within the forged: future Maude actor Invoice Macy.)

“We went by way of a really intense monthlong rehearsal earlier than that day got here once we truly took off the robes collectively,” he mentioned throughout a 2020 L.A. Regulation reunion put collectively by Stars within the Home.

When he was launched to somebody as an actor in Oh! Calcutta, he incessantly received the road, “I didn’t acknowledge you along with your garments on,” he mentioned. “That was the supposed joke I will need to have heard 30 instances, and I used to be getting much less and fewer and fewer nice about it [each time].”

In 1972, Rachins was accepted into the writing and directing applications at AFI in Los Angeles. He served because the AFI intern to director Arthur Penn on The Missouri Breaks (1976); wrote for such exhibits as Hill Avenue Blues, Hart to Hart and The Fall Man; and helmed an episode of the James Earl Jones-starring Paris. (Bochco created Hill Avenue Blues and Paris, too.)

His stint with Jaglom put his performing profession again on observe.

Rachins went on to look on the massive display in Coronary heart Situation (1990), North (1994), Meet Wally Sparks (1997), Go away It to Beaver (1997) and Graduation (2012), and he had a recurring position on TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles.

Survivors embrace his son, Robert.