Alan Rachins, who spent 13 seasons on television portraying the boorish law partner Douglas Brackman Jr. on L.A. Law and the hippie father of Jenna Elfman’s character on Dharma & Greg, died Saturday. He was 82.
Rachins died in his sleep of heart failure in the early morning hours at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his wife, actress Joanna Frank, told The Hollywood Reporter.
He and Frank married in 1978 after they met in an acting class. She recurred as Sheila Brackman, his feuding spouse, on L.A. Law, and they played a married couple in Always (1985), written and directed by indie auteur Henry Jaglom.
In what some might call a kinky coincidence, Rachins was one of the disrobing castmembers in the original stage production of Oh! Calcutta and appeared as Tony Moss, the cruel, toupeed director of the topless dance revue at the Stardust Casino, in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls (1995).
Frank’s late younger brother, the legendary TV writer-producer Steven Bochco, had his brother-in-law in mind for the part of the McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney & Kuzak co-founder when he was putting together the cast of attorneys for NBC’s L.A. Law. (Bochco created the stylish show with lawyer/novelist Terry Louise Fisher.)
Rachins went on to appear in all but one of the 172 episodes of the 20th Century Fox-produced series, which aired for eight seasons (1986-94), and he received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his work in 1988. The self-important Brackman often was the butt of his colleagues’ jokes.
“In the pilot episode, there was nothing of the more flamboyant or bizarre side of Douglas; he was going to be the hard-line office manager, the penny pincher,” Rachins recalled in a 1990 interview with The New York Times. “It was kind of limited, and I didn’t know where it was going. But quickly it developed a lot more color and flamboyance.”
After L.A. Law ended its acclaimed run — it won four outstanding drama series Emmys — Rachins returned to primetime on Dharma & Greg as Larry Finkelstein, the wacky hippie dad of a yoga instructor (Elfman) married to a lawyer (Thomas Gibson). He was on all 199 episodes of that sitcom, which ran for five seasons, from 1997-2002.
The buttoned-up Brackman and the ’60s radical Finkelstein couldn’t have been more different. The roles were “like night and day,” he said.
An only child, Alan Leonard Rachins was born on Oct. 3, 1942, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and raised in Boston. His father, Edward, ran a food manufacturing business that made products including ice cream toppings, flavored syrups and cake toppings. His mother, Ida, died when he was 11.
Rachins graduated from Brookline High School and spent two years at the Wharton School at Penn before moving to New York to try acting. He studied with the likes of Warren Robertson and Kim Stanley and made his Broadway debut in 1967 in After the Rain.
He appeared in the buff for about 18 months in the musical revue Oh! Calcutta, which debuted in June 1969 at the Eden Theater, once a home for X-rated movies. (Also in the cast: future Maude actor Bill Macy.)
“We went through a very intense monthlong rehearsal before that day came when we actually took off the robes together,” he said during a 2020 L.A. Law reunion put together by Stars in the House.
When he was introduced to someone as an actor in Oh! Calcutta, he frequently got the line, “I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on,” he said. “That was the supposed joke I must have heard 30 times, and I was getting less and less and less pleasant about it [each time].”
In 1972, Rachins was accepted into the writing and directing programs at AFI in Los Angeles. He served as the AFI intern to director Arthur Penn on The Missouri Breaks (1976); wrote for such shows as Hill Street Blues, Hart to Hart and The Fall Guy; and helmed an episode of the James Earl Jones-starring Paris. (Bochco created Hill Street Blues and Paris, too.)
His stint with Jaglom put his acting career back on track.
Rachins went on to appear on the big screen in Heart Condition (1990), North (1994), Meet Wally Sparks (1997), Leave It to Beaver (1997) and Commencement (2012), and he had a recurring role on TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles.
Survivors include his son, Robert.