Gavin MacLeod, 'Love Boat' captain, dies at 90

Gavin MacLeod, the veteran supporting actor who achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” before going on to even bigger fame as the cheerful Capt. Stubing on “The Love Boat,” has died. He was 90.

MacLeod died early Saturday, his nephew, Mark See, told Variety. MacLeod’s health had been poor recently but no cause of death was given, the trade publication reported.

In his 2013 memoir, “This Is Your Captain Speaking,” MacLeod acknowledged that he had struggled with alcoholism in the 1960s and ’70s. He also wrote that losing his hair at an early age made it hard for him to find work as an actor.

MacLeod had four children with his first wife, Joan Rootvik, whom he divorced in 1972. He was the son of an alcoholic and his drinking problems helped lead to a second divorce, to Patti Steele. But after MacLeod quit drinking, he and Steele remarried in 1985. The couple later hosted a Christian radio show called “Back on Course: A Ministry for Marriages.”

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