Background and career
René Marie Murat Auberjonois ( rə-NAY oh-BAIR-zhən-WAH; June 1, 1940 – December 8, 2019) was an American actor. He was a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award winner, and a three-time Emmy Award (two Primetime, one Daytime) nominee, among other accolades. He first achieved fame as a stage actor, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1970 for his portrayal of Sebastian Baye opposite Katharine Hepburn in the André Previn–Alan Jay Lerner musical Coco. He went on to earn three more Tony nominations for performances in Neil Simon's The Good Doctor (1973), Roger Miller's Big River (1985), and Cy Coleman's City of Angels (1989); he won a Drama Desk Award for Big River. In 2018, Auberjonois was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. A screen actor with more than 200 credits, Auberjonois was most famous for portraying characters in the main casts of several long-running television series, including Clayton Endicott III on Benson (1980–86), for which he was an Emmy nominee; Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993–99), and Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal (2004–08). In films, Auberjonois appeared in several Robert Altman productions, notably Father John Mulcahy in the film version of M*A*S*H (1970); the expedition scientist Roy Bagley in King Kong (1976); Chef Louis in The Little Mermaid (1989), in which he sang "Les Poissons"; and Reverend Oliver in The Patriot (2000). Auberjonois also performed as a voice actor in several video games, most notable being his role as Mr. Robert Edwin House, the reclusive Las Vegas casino owner in Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
René Marie Murat Auberjonois was born June 1, 1940, in Manhattan, New York City. His father, Swiss-born Fernand Auberjonois, was a Cold War–era foreign correspondent and Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer. Auberjonois' mother, Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline Murat, was a great-great-granddaughter of Joachim Murat (one of Napoleon's marshals and King of Naples during the First French Empire), and his wife—Napoleon's youngest sister—Caroline Bonaparte. Auberjonois had a sister and a brother, and two half-sisters from his mother's first marriage. Auberjonois wrote that his French family name, an uncommon one in the United States, means "armorer." Auberjonois' grandfather, also named René Auberjonois, was a Swiss post-Impressionist painter. His maternal grandmother, Hélène Macdonald Stallo, was an American from Cincinnati, Ohio; his maternal grandfather's mother was a Russian noblewoman, Eudoxia Michailovna Somova, and his maternal grandfather's paternal grandmother, Caroline Georgina Fraser, who was the wife of Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, was a Scottish American from Charleston, South Carolina. Auberjonois' family moved to Paris after World War II. After a few years in France, the family moved back to the United States and joined the South Mountain Road artists' colony in Rockland County, New York, whose residents included Burgess Meredith, John Houseman, and Lotte Lenya. The Auberjonois family also lived for a time in London, where Auberjonois completed high school while studying theater. To complete his education, he attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts in 1962.
After college, Auberjonois worked with several different theater companies, beginning with three years at the prestigious Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. Auberjonois later stated that the school was his unofficial graduate school. He traveled between Los Angeles, California, and New York, working in numerous theater productions. He helped found Bill Ball's American Conservatory Theater in Pittsburgh, playing the title roles in both "Tartuffe" and "King Lear," before moving with the company to San Francisco. Then came the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music Repertory Company in New York City. He was a member of the Peninsula Players summer theater program during the 1962 season. Auberjonois was a member of the original faculty of the Juilliard School's Drama Division when it opened in 1968 under John Houseman. In 1968, Auberjonois landed a role on Broadway, and appeared in three plays that season: as Fool to Lee J. Cobb's King Lear (the longest running production of the play in Broadway history), as Ned in A Cry of Players (which played in repertory with King Lear) opposite Frank Langella, and as Marco in Fire! In 1969, he earned a Tony Award for his performance as Sebastian Baye alongside Katharine Hepburn in Coco. He received Tony nominations for his roles in Neil Simon's The Good Doctor (1973) opposite Christopher Plummer; as the Duke in Big River (1984), winning a Drama Desk Award; and, memorably, as Buddy Fidler/Irwin S. Irving in City of Angels (1989), written by Larry Gelbart and Cy Coleman. Auberjonois' other Broadway appearances included Malvolio in Twelfth Night (1972); Scapin in Tricks (1973); Mr. Samsa in Metamorphosis (1989); Professor Abronsius in Dance of the Vampires, the English-language version of Jim Steinman's musical adaptation of Tanz der Vampire; and Jethro Crouch in Sly Fox (2004), for which he was nominated for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play, an Outer Critics Circle Award. Auberjonois appeared many times at the Mark Taper Forum, notably as Malvolio in Twelfth Night and as Stanislavski in Chekhov in Yalta. As a member of the Second Drama Quartet, he toured with Ed Asner, Dianne Wiest, and Harris Yulin. He appeared in the Tom Stoppard and André Previn work, Every Good Boy Deserves Favor, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He directed many theatrical productions, and starred in the Washington, D.C. production of 12 Angry Men (2004), where he portrayed "Juror #5" to Roy Scheider's "#8" and Robert Prosky's "#3". He made his debut at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., in 2008 as the titular character in Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. He was on the advisory board of Sci-Fest LA, the first annual Los Angeles Science Fiction One-Act Play Festival, held in May 2014. In 2018, Auberjonois was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Auberjonois played Father Mulcahy in the original film version of M*A*S*H. His subsequent film roles included the gangster Tony in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988), and Reverend Oliver in The Patriot (2000). He made cameo appearances in a number of films, including a mental asylum doctor patterned after Tim Burton, in Batman Forever (1995), and a bird expert who gradually transforms into a bird in Robert Altman's 1970 film Brewster McCloud. He appeared as Colonel West, a minor role in the 1991 Star Trek film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, but his part was cut from the theatrical release. His other notable film appearances include: McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Images (1972), Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), The Hindenburg (1975), King Kong (1976), The Big Bus (1976), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Where the Buffalo Roam (1980), Walker (1987), My Best Friend Is a Vampire (1987), The Feud (1989), Inspector Gadget (1999), and Eulogy (2004). Auberjonois portrayed the character of Straight Hollander in the 1993 Miramax film The Ballad of Little Jo. He voiced Professor Genius in Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, Louis the Chef in The Little Mermaid franchise, Flanagan in Cats Don't Dance, the Butler in Joseph: King of Dreams, and André in Planes: Fire & Rescue. In 2019, Auberjonois portrayed the title role in Raising Buchanan as U.S. president James Buchanan.
In addition to having been a regular actor on three television shows (Benson, a situation comedy; Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in science fiction; and Boston Legal, a legal comedy drama), Auberjonois guest starred on many television series, including; Nash Bridges, Ellery Queen, Family, Grey's Anatomy, The Rockford Files, Charlie's Angels, Starsky & Hutch, Wonder Woman, Harry O, The Jeffersons, The Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Hart to Hart, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, The Bionic Woman, Frasier, Judging Amy, Chicago Hope, The Bob Newhart Show, Star Trek: Enterprise, Stargate SG-1, Warehouse 13, Archer, L.A. Law, The Practice (for which he received an Emmy nomination, playing a different character than the one he played on The Practice spinoff Boston Legal), Saving Grace, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Criminal Minds, NCIS, The Good Wife, The Librarians, and Madam Secretary. His television film credits include The Rhinemann Exchange, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, Disney's Geppetto, Gore Vidal's Billy The Kid, the remake of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and the Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000) miniseries. He portrayed the character Fortunato in an episode of American Masters entitled "Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul" (1995). He received a third Emmy Award nomination for his performance in ABC's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. He played NASA scientist Dr. Felix Blackwell in the NCIS episode "Phoenix".
Auberjonois directed television shows, including Marblehead Manor, and various episodes of Deep Space Nine.
