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.[1]
Kiel Martin
December 28, 1990
Actor
1956–1990
1 (with Martin)
Early years[edit]
Martin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,[2] 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.[3]
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.[4] When he was 18, he made 90 dollars a day dubbing voices for "Mexican fairy-tale movies imported by K. Gordon Murray."[5]
Martin was a drama student at Miami-Dade Junior College, the University of Miami, and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas,[5][6] 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."[7] He briefly served in the army where he played the lead in a production of Neil Simon's Come Blow Your Horn.[7] He was discharged in 1964.[4]
Personal life[edit]
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.[28][29]
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.[23] Martin returned for the season finale, having achieved sobriety two years after his character. In 1986, Martin revealed that Steven Bochco had written LaRue's first season plotline with the goal of encouraging Martin to seek help for his real-life alcoholism. He explained that the episodes "Rites of Spring" and "Jungle Madness" where LaRue confronts his worsening addiction and eventually joins AA "were written as a message of love to me. Steven Bochco loved me and cared for me. It was a message I failed to heed."[30] Martin's friend Ron Herbinger later said that Bochco was responsible for Martin entering rehabilitation and emerging "super clean."[31]
Martin worked with charities, including the Better Hearing Institute[32] and United Cerebral Palsy, appearing in the latter's annual telethon.[33] He was also an avid golfer and took part in many celebrity golf tournaments for charitable causes.[34][35] Martin contributed a short essay to the Los Angeles Times about his lifelong love of fishing.[36][37] A guitarist and composer, he continued to play and write songs as a hobby.[38]
Death[edit]
In January of 1990, Martin was performing the role of Sgt. Merwin J. Toomey in a Calgary production of Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues[39] when he was forced to leave the play following chest pains.[40] A biopsy revealed that he was suffering from lung cancer and he soon began chemotherapy.[41] Friends would later describe him as displaying "courage" and "a positive attitude" during this time.[33]
Martin died of cardiovascular collapse caused by lung cancer, aged 46, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California.[2][42] 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."[31]