Gavin MacLeod in his role as Murray Slaughter  in TV's "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

avin MacLeod has been making movies and stage appearances for half a century, with some of the biggest stars of all time. His numerous TV credits include the roles of Murray Slaughter on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Captain Merrill Stubing on “The Love Boat.” The walls in his home display numerous lifetime achievement awards, but he says that nothing in his acting career has been as rewarding as being a part of the movie, “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry” (to be released in theatres in mid-September). “I’ve already seen people give their lives to Christ because of this film,” he says. “I had something to do with that, because I played this man. It’s the most rewarding experience I could ever have as a human being and as an actor.”

Directed by Rich Christiano, the film tells the inspirational story of what happens when a 75-year-old widower, Jonathan Sperry, allows God to use him in the role of mentor. “It’s a movie about salvation and forgiveness,” MacLeod says. “You see this one person change the lives of everyone around him.”

Promotional poster for the movie, "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry," starring Gavin MacLeod.

The film takes place in the summer of 1970. When Dustin, a fatherless 12-year-old mows Mr. Sperry’s lawn, they begin to develop a bond. Soon, he shares his love for the Lord with Dustin (Jansen Panettiere) and his two best friends, Albert (Frankie Ryan Manriquez) and Mark (Allen Isaacson), as they face issues like first crushes and bullies. “He gives them lessons in ingenious ways,” MacLeod says. ‘It’s all about the Word of God, and how it can change lives. It’s very powerful.”

The boys at first resist when Mr. Sperry tries to teach them Bible lessons. “The first time I mention it, they say, ‘I don’t know where my Bible is.’ ‘I hear it’s old stuff.’ ‘You have to do things you don’t want to do.’ I say, ‘Everything that’s in the Bible is there to make our lives better.’”

One way he teaches biblical principals is by using examples the boys will understand. “If your enemy takes a piece of pizza, offer him two,” he says when Nick (Taylor Boggan), the bully who constantly harasses them, helps himself to their pizza.

One thing that attracted MacLeod to the film is the way the director, Rich Christiano, tackles the issues. “He doesn’t peddle around,” he says. “This is in-your-face Christianity. In one scene, I take the boys to the cemetery and I explain to them that everybody is going to die. You can’t escape it. However, you have a choice to go to heaven or to hell.”

In another scene, as Dustin is on his way to his mentor’s Bible study, Nick throws his Bible in a puddle. Sperry gives him a new one, telling him that many men have attacked the Bible to keep people from reading it and that it’s not easy to follow the Lord. “There will be many trying times ahead, but remember, the Lord is always with you,” he says. 

On the set of the movie, "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry." Left to right: Regina Christiano, Gavin MacLeod, Rich Christiano (director), Kevin Downes and Chad Gundersen (producer).

Since the film has already been a part of several Christian film festivals, MacLeod has seen its power working firsthand. During a festival in Boston, a couple expressed to him that they were bringing the woman’s 90-year-old mother to a showing the next day. “At the end of the movie, they had an altar call, and that woman went down, all by herself. She gave her life to Jesus.”

On another day, a young boy approached the actor, saying, “Mr. Sperry, can I talk to you?” When MacLeod asked him what was on his mind, he said, “You have just changed my life.”

MacLeod is hoping that the movie doesn’t just affect the lives of the audiences. His concern for the cast members prompted him to share Max Lucado books with them. “I autographed them so they would have something from me when the movie was over,” he says.

He knows that actor Frankie Ryan Manriquez shares his beliefs, but he said they might never know what affect the film had on the other boys. At least the seed was planted. “They heard the Word of God, they learned it and they spoke it.” 

The journey

In real life, Gavin MacLeod is as open about his Christianity as Jonathan Sperry is. He wears a Jesus ring, with the hopes that someone will ask him why. If you ask about the diamond in his left ear, he’ll tell you that it’s a symbol that he’s found his Master.

A montage of images of Gavin MacLeod in some of his many TV roles.

Although MacLeod says he’d always prayed to God, he didn’t give his life to Christ until September 1984, when he was 53 years old. By then, MacLeod had appeared in 80 roles, both in episodes of television series and in films. It was a diagnosis of a baseball-sized tumor in his mother’s brain that made him take a more serious look at his spiritual condition. “The doctor said they could operate, but they couldn’t promise what she was going to be like,” he recalls.

He had already lost one parent. His father, George See, had succumbed to colon cancer at the age of 38, when MacLeod was 13. “My brother and I decided to let them operate,” he recalls. “On the morning of the operation, I woke up and I talked to Jesus. I said, ‘If you would give my mom more time, I’ll turn my life over to you. I don’t care if I act anymore.’ My mom was 73 then. She lived to be 97 years old.”

Telling God he didn’t care if he acted anymore wasn’t something that anyone would have dreamed of MacLeod saying previously. The acting bug had bitten Allan See when he was in kindergarten in Pleasantville, N.Y. “I had the lead in a Mother’s Day play,” he remembers. “I heard the applause at the end, with my bow, and it blew me away. I said, ‘I want more of that.’”

He admits that the applause wasn’t the only thing that attracted him to plays. “Alcohol was rampant in my background,” he says. “I saw what a terrible thing it did to my dad, my grandfather, almost every male I knew in our immediate circle. One grandfather lost everything he had because of the alcohol. That affected my security as a little kid. I liked the play, because it had a beginning, a middle and an end. I felt very safe in that structure.”

He acted all the way through school, leading to a scholarship at Ithaca College, where he would begin going by his stage name, derived from the last name of a teaching coach and the first name of a character in a movie that had inspired him. In 1954, he moved to New York, supporting himself initially as an usher and elevator operator at Radio City Music Hall.

A role in “Androcles and the Lion,” an Off-Broadway children’s theatre production, led to a successful audition for the Broadway hit, “Hatful of Rain,” as Tony Franciosa’s understudy. After that, he moved to the West Coast, to break into films. His role of an intimidating police lieutenant in the 1958 film, “I Want to Live,” was his first of many he played as a heavy.

As the years went by, he moved back and forth between the stage and film. He had just returned from Yugoslavia, where he had been filming “Kelly’s Heroes,” and was rehearsing his part in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical comedy, “Carousel,” when he was asked to read for the part of Mary Tyler Moore’s boss, Lou Grant, in a pilot for CBS. ‘I had worked with Mary twice on ‘Dick Van Dyke,’ They sent me the pilot and another script. I thought the writing was incredible, but I couldn’t believe myself as Mary’s boss.”

“I read for that role, but as I had my hand on the door, I said, ‘This is a great part, but I really like this guy, Murray.’ They said, ‘You do? You want to read for him?’ I said yes. I went out, and there was Ed Asner pacing back and forth in the lobby. A few hours later, my agent comes in and says, ‘They want you to do the Mary Tyler Moore pilot.’ I said, ‘What part?’ He said, ‘Is a guy named Murray in that?’ That was a glorious seven years.”

In the month and a half after filming ended for the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1977, MacLeod had three offers to do different pilots, but he thought they were all too negative. He was interested, however, when he found out Aaron Spelling wanted him to do a pilot for “The Love Boat.” “The water has been important to my career,” he laughs, recalling, among other roles, that of Ernest Hunkle on “Operation Petticoat” and “Happy Hanes” on “McHale’s Navy.”

MacLeod was offered the part of Captain Merrill Stubing. As he waited to see if ABC would pick up the pilot, he starred in “Annie Get Your Gun” with Debbie Reynolds, which became an enormous success. “We found out that the pilot had been done twice before, but the networks didn’t want it,” he says. “Both of those captains were leading men – with a lot of hair and thin hips. But we did ours, and it went on the air. Every critic said, ‘You’re going to sink like the Titanic.’”

But they were wrong. Captain Stubing would be at the helm of “The Love Boat” for 10 seasons.

Off-stage marriage

Although he had finally met his goal of becoming a leading man, his personal life had seen several ups and downs by the mid-1980s. In 1955, he had married Joan Rootvik, a Rockette he met at an entertainment business communion breakfast in New York. They had four wonderful children together, but the marriage ended in 1972.

Patti and Gavin MacLeod.

The following year, he married Patti Steele, a dancer he had met through a theater group. That marriage also ended in a divorce, in 1981. Although he hadn’t been able to make either marriage work, in the early 1970s, he had successfully stopped smoking and drinking. His healthy lifestyle also helped him lose weight he’d put on over the years. He says, “I weighed almost 300 pounds when I played Big Chicken in ‘Hawaii Five O.’”

Patti had always felt they had a good marriage, but now her husband had become cold, indifferent, uncaring. He thought she’d stopped being fun and started being bossy. His work schedule didn’t help. “I traveled all over the world because of ‘Love Boat,’” MacLeod says. “My responsibility was pretty severe. Most hour shows were done in 10 days; we did ours in seven. Many of these stars hadn’t worked in 30, 35 years, and they were nervous. All that took a little bit of time. Consequently, I had to go to work when it was dark out and I’d come home when it was dark out. If it was 12 hours, it was a short day.”

“Even if I had little to do, I had to go all over the country doing press. I was busy constantly. I would come home from work wiped out. My dear wife would say, ‘So what happened today?’ I’d say, ‘I can’t tell you. I have to study for tomorrow. I have to be on top.’”

MacLeod said that after a while, he decided to put his career over their relationship. “Patti and I were both raised Catholic, but we never read the Bible,” he says. “We had gotten married in the New Age teaching. It was all about me. I just thought about myself and not her or the kids or anything. We got a divorce. I wanted it. She didn’t.”

MacLeod concentrated on his career as Patti tried to put her life back together. That included helping to form a group called L.A.D.I.E.S. (Life After Divorce is Eventually Sane) for Hollywood wives whose husbands had left them. She traveled around the country appearing on television and radio. She also became born again.

At a prayer meeting she attended with Patti Lewis, Jerry Lewis’ first wife, Patti MacLeod asked for prayer for her husband, and then began crying. As the women around her prayed, she felt better. She began praying daily for the restoration of her marriage. She also became involved with a group called Born Again Marriages, regularly attending Shirley Boone’s Bible study in Beverly Hills.

When MacLeod found out that his mother was ill, he called Patti. He asked if he could come and see her, but she was going to be on the road with L.A.D.I.E.S. They agreed to meet the following Monday. “I went there, where I used to live, and I knocked,” he recalls. “There was no answer. I knocked again. There was no answer. I said, ‘She’s standing me up. I don’t blame her.’ I tried once more and the door opened. I gave her a hug, and we looked at each other. She said, ‘I’m sorry, Gavin. Your dinner’s cold. It’s been waiting for three years.’ I said, “Well, OK. I see you still have your sense of humor.”

That night, Patti gave him an engraved Bible and explained to him what it meant to be born again. She also told him about Born Again Marriages. He agreed to go to a meeting the following week. “I had seen her change quite a bit. The next week, I went to that meeting and made sure I gave my life to the Lord,” he says.

Back on course

It didn’t take long for MacLeod to realize that God had already started changing him. “When you become a new man through Christ, you see with different eyes and hear with different ears,” he says.

He also came to a realization one day about a key role that God wanted to play, which had been missing in his life and his wife’s. “Neither of us was really used to having someone there to help, since my father died when I was young and Patti’s father left them when she was 9,” he says. “I was praying one day, and he said, ‘Your search is over. I’m your real father. I’m going to put my arms around you two and walk you through life.’ He’s been doing that.”

“I’ve been in those valleys of desperation,” he continues. “Sometimes it takes people to be in the pit, way down there in the gutter, to get us to reach up to him. Then, he creates a new person. We stumble and fall sometimes, but what a forgiving God! No matter how many mistakes we make, he’s still there and he’s forgiven us and given us a new beginning. That’s why every morning I get out of bed, get on my knees and thank him for another day. I’m grateful for so much.”

Talking about his rebirth, he recalls an incident that happened in the mid-1960s, when he was in Taiwan filming “Sand Pebbles.” He and a friend had gone in search of a fortuneteller. “He threw out some numbers and letters. I couldn’t understand a lot that he was saying. Then, he got to my head and started to try to heal my baldness,” he laughs. After that, he said, ‘You are very spiritual.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘Yes, you are.’ I had my hand on the door, and he said, ‘You be like Jesus.’ I’ve never forgotten that moment. That’s why we’re here — to be a little like Jesus.”

Gavin and Patti remarried in June 1985, at a Born Again Marriages convention in Omaha, Neb., with Pat and Shirley Boone standing up for them as best man and matron of honor. The following year, Paul and Jan Crouch spoke to them about doing a program about marriage on Trinity Broadcasting Network. He said, “I don’t think I’m equipped to tell anybody anything,” thinking that divorce disqualified them.

Cover of "Back on Course," a book about the marriage of Gavin and Patti MacLeod.

Crouch disagreed, since they had allowed God to heal their marriage. In 1986, the same year MacLeod became the spokesperson for Princess Cruises, the couple began shooting “Back on Course.” Over the next 14 years, they would interview well-known couples about the different facets of marriage, including how they overcame problems utilizing the principles in the Bible. “Probably about the tenth year, Jan had the idea of going out on a boat in Newport Harbor,” he says. The couple also told their story in a book of the same name.

MacLeod says eternity took on a different meaning as he went through a heart attack in 1991 and a massive one about five years ago. “I really started thinking, what are the real values? Who do I want to spend time with? Do I want to do some of these shows on television, just to make a living? I don’t want to embarrass the Lord.”

He had a chance to play a role he says he could be proud of when he worked with Rich Christiano on “Time Changer” in 2002. In the film, which begins in the year 1890, MacLeod plays a seminary professor named Norris Anderson. When he reads a manuscript written by another professor claiming that morals can be taught independent of Christ’s teachings, he knows it will negatively affect future generations. With the other seminary board members preparing to endorse it, he sends the author, Russell Carlisle, into the 20th century in a time machine. After Carlisle discovers the horrible impact on the future, he returns to the past and rewrites the manuscript.

His great experience with that film led to his role as Jonathan Sperry. His parts in movies like these and his outspokenness about his Christianity led to many opportunities for MacLeod to share his testimony and the Gospel. He says it’s also helped that he wore the captain’s uniform for a decade on “The Love Boat.” “I’m the honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades,” he says. “I was at a meeting recently, and they kept calling me captain. It’s a symbol of authority. God had his hands on all of that.”

MacLeod says he has been blessed by allowing God to use him. One of the sweetest victories was leading his best friend, Ted Knight (also on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show"), to the Lord in 1986, shortly before his death.

“We have a responsibility to bring people to Christ,” MacLeod says. “That’s why we’re here. When you become born again, you now become an ambassador for him. It’s so humbling to think about where I’ve come from and that I can be an ambassador for Christ.”