Alan Rachins, the actor, who has died aged 82, gained worldwide fame as the boorish, balding Douglas Brackman Jr in the acclaimed television legal drama LA Law – and frequently found his character the butt of his colleagues’ jokes.
He was cast in the role by his brother-in-law, the producer Steven Bochco, who created the series, which from 1986 to 1994, with Terry Louise Fisher. “We wanted a guy who was really sort of pompous and self-important, who we could make fun of,” said Bochco.
Being blown up on the lavatory – leaving him needing a skin graft – was one example, with Douglas lighting a cigar, not realising that turpentine had been put down it by someone repainting the office bathrooms.
As Rachins’s talent for comedy became apparent, he added a quirkiness and flamboyance to his portrayal of the cynical, money-pinching managing partner in the Los Angeles law firm McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak. The character’s recently deceased father had been a founder of it with Leland McKenzie (played by Richard Dysart).
Humour comes from Douglas mistakenly being arrested in a sushi bar, hiring a sex therapist and losing his toupée while trying to impress a young instructor in an aerobics class.
Rachins’s real-life wife, Joanna Frank (Bochco’s sister), played Douglas’s wife, Sheila. After they split up on screen, he has relationships with her sister and with his late father’s long-time lover – while Sheila has affairs with both of his half-brothers after their existence comes to light.
The programme followed the firm’s lawyers and junior staff, and tackled difficult subjects including racism, domestic violence, abortion, Aids and homophobia. It won 15 Emmy Awards. Other members of the ensemble cast included Harry Hamlin, Corbin Bernsen, Jill Eikenberry and Susan Dey.
LA Law’s success led to Rachins taking a leading role in another American series, the sitcom Dharma & Greg (1997-2002). He played Larry Finkelstein, the hippy father of a free-spirited yoga teacher (played by Jenna Elfman) married to a straitlaced lawyer (Thomas Gibson).
The character was a stereotypical 1960s radical, spouting conspiracy theories, usually surrounding Richard Nixon, and believing that he is wanted by the FBI. He dubs the girl scouts “a paramilitary organisation with cookies” and often walks around naked at home.
Alan Lewis Rachins was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on October 3 1942 to Ida, née Schindler, and Edward Rachins, who owned a food company manufacturing ice-cream toppings and cake decorations. His mother died of pancreatic cancer when he was 11.
While growing up in the Boston suburb of Brookline he performed in plays at a Maine summer camp and set his sights on an acting career after seeing James Dean in the film Rebel Without a Cause. Having a difficult relationship with his own father, he saw a chance to express his anger through drama.
On leaving Brookline High School, Rachins spent two years at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school with a view to taking over the family firm, but he dropped out to study acting in New York.
He made his Broadway debut in 1967 as a lecturer’s assistant in After the Rain, John Bowen’s play set in a university lecture hall. Two years later, he began an 18-month run in the original production of Oh! Calcutta! (1969-71), the erotic revue devised by the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan and featuring the entire cast in the nude.
“There were so many different elements to think about that the fact that you were standing naked on stage really receded into the background,” Rachins recalled. But he added: “I can’t tell you how many times I heard the joke, ‘I didn’t recognise you with your clothes on.’ ”
He stopped acting in 1972 to study writing at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles and subsequently worked as an intern on the 1976 Marlon Brando-Jack Nicholson Western The Missouri Breaks. Later, in between bit parts on TV, he wrote episodes of the dramas Hill Street Blues (1981), Hart to Hart (1982) and The Fall Guy (1983).
After fame came with LA Law, he had more prominent guest parts in series such as The Golden Girls (1991), North (1994) and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2005). He reprised the role of Douglas Brackman Jr in LA Law: The Movie in 2002 and appeared occasionally as a judge in the daytime soap General Hospital from 2016 to 2018.
He also played the toupée-wearing producer of the topless dance revue in Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 erotic film drama Showgirls.
Alan Rachins is survived by his wife Joanna, whom he married in 1978, and by their son.
Alan Rachins, born October 3 1942, died November 2 2024