Kiel Martin

Kiel Urban Mueller (July 26, 1944 – December 28, 1990), known professionally as Kiel Martin, was an American actor best known for his role as Detective John "J. D." LaRue on the 1980s television police drama Hill Street Blues.

Early years Martin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in the city of Hialeah, Florida, in Miami-Dade County. He was named after the city of Kiel, Germany, in honor of his family's German ancestry.

A 1962 graduate of Hialeah High School, Martin considered dropping out when he reached the age of 16. To prevent this, his father arranged for him to audition for a minor role in the school's production of the musical Finian's Rainbow. Martin was instead offered the lead. When he was 18, he made $90 a day dubbing voices for "Mexican fairy-tale movies imported by K. Gordon Murray."

Martin briefly served in the Army, where he played the leading role of Alan Baker in a production of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn. later saying, "I went to whatever college that was doing a play I wanted to be in. And I left whenever they ran out of plays. I was not a serious college-goer."

Career

Martin's debut as a professional actor came in repertory theatre in Florida. before becoming a client of the William Morris Agency. However, in August of that year, he broke 15 bones in a motorcycle accident after crashing into an oak tree. He spent four days in a coma and required two years of recuperation, during which he lost 40 pounds.

Following his recovery, Martin starred as the title character in the Blaxploitation film Trick Baby (1972) based on the novel by Iceberg Slim. He appeared in The Panic in Needle Park (1971) featuring Al Pacino and Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973) along with a young Jeff Bridges. He also costarred in the 1975 film Moonrunners, which was the basis for the television series The Dukes of Hazzard. He was, with Jon Voight and Michael Sarrazin, among the final three actors considered for the role of Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy.

Martin made guest appearances on various television shows throughout the late 1960s and the 1970s, including Dragnet, Ironside, The Virginian, and Gunsmoke. He was also a regular on the soap opera The Edge of Night, playing the part of Raney Cooper.

Martin was also cast in roles that required his musical skills. He wrote and performed the song "Not for Long" for the 1972 made-for-TV movie The Catcher, also co-writing the film's title track with Jackie DeShannon, who sang it. To prepare for the role, Martin rode the "Skid Row Beat" with cops in Los Angeles, and he later visited and honored officers injured in the line of duty or with a terminal illness. In 1985, he was made an honorary detective sergeant by the Macon, Georgia police department. and "a higher arrest tally than any clown in this room," his many vices often threaten to derail his police career. In the final episodes of the first season, "Rites of Spring" and "Jungle Madness," each two hours long, Hill Street precinct captain Frank Furillo (Daniel J. Travanti) gives LaRue an ultimatum to either face his drinking problem or leave the force. A later scene in which LaRue attends a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and is warmly greeted by Furillo, revealed also to be an alcoholic, is often cited as the most memorable of the series.

During the second season, he falls off the wagon and is reassigned to the motor pool by Furillo, who later forgives LaRue and reinstates him as a detective. LaRue remains sober for the remainder of the series. "Grin and Bear It," the last episode of the fifth season, and the final one that aired before Steven Bochco's firing from the show, ends with a callback to "Jungle Madness." In the closing scene, Furillo, having now slipped himself, attends an AA meeting where LaRue is already present.

Though LaRue, at last, conquers his addiction, for the rest of the series he remains a womanizer and a frequent orchestrator of scams, get-rich-quick schemes, and sometimes dangerous practical jokes. Martin believed that "J. D. is close to being the kind of person he arrests. He pulls back just at the brink." He objected to a storyline about LaRue having a sexual relationship with a teenage girl, believing it would make his character "unredeemable." In response to his concerns, the script was changed so that LaRue rejects her. He continued to be a frequent television guest star, appearing on The Love Boat, Father Dowling Mysteries, Miami Vice, Murder, She Wrote, and two episodes of Steven Bochco's LA Law. He also played Eckels in an episode of The Ray Bradbury Theatre in an adaptation of the science fiction short story "A Sound of Thunder." Martin starred in the short-lived 1987 Fox sitcom Second Chance with a young Matthew Perry until its revamping as Boys Will Be Boys resulted in his character being dropped.

Personal life

Martin was married three times. In 1969, he married Claudia Martin, who was actor and crooner Dean Martin's daughter. They had a daughter named Jesse. The marriage ended in 1971. He was married to Christina Montoya from 1978 to 1980. His final marriage was to Joanne La Pomaroa from 1982 to 1984.

Martin, like his character J. D. LaRue, struggled with an alcohol addiction that negatively affected his work. In 1984, at the insistence of Hill Street Blues''' producers, Martin completed an alcohol rehabilitation program. LaRue was written out of four episodes of the fourth season, the only of the series in which he did not appear.

Martin's friend Ron Herbinger later said that Bochco was responsible for Martin entering rehabilitation and emerging "super clean." Bochco himself would say on the audio commentary for the DVD release of Hill Street Blues that Martin, "an amazing guy," had been an addict since his teenage years and that "I basically sat him down and said you're going into rehab today" or he would ensure that the actor would never work in Hollywood again. However, Martin "came out two weeks later and he never had another drink or took another drug for the rest of his life," which he described as "tragically short." After Martin's death, Daniel J. Travanti said that, "He had tried to do himself in through liquor, but he recovered and had been on a honeymoon with life for the past five years."

Martin worked with charities, including the Better Hearing Institute and United Cerebral Palsy, appearing in the latter's annual telethon. He was also an avid golfer and took part in many celebrity golf tournaments for charitable causes. Martin contributed a short essay to the Los Angeles Times about his lifelong love of fishing. A guitarist and composer, he continued to play and write songs as a hobby.

Martin's Hill Street Blues co-star Travanti remembered him as a "dynamo" whom he assumed at their first meeting was also being considered for the lead role.

Death

In January 1990, Martin was performing the role of Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey in a Calgary production of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues when he was forced to leave the play following chest pains. A biopsy revealed that he was suffering from lung cancer and he soon began chemotherapy. Friends would later describe him as displaying "courage" and "a positive attitude" during this time. Though most obituaries reported that no funeral services were held for Martin, friend Ron Herbinger explained that "in Kiel's will he set aside some money for a party in some park in Palm Springs for close friends. He then was cremated and his ashes were flown over the gathering and spread from the sky."

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