F.Y.I., Charles Kimbrough Isn’t Jim Dial : In Reality Murphy Brown’s Sidekick is Anchored In The Theater

Had it not been for his Aunt Emily, Charles Kimbrough may never have become an actor. He probably would never have gotten the chance to play Jim Dial, the wonderfully stuffy and pompous news anchor of “F.Y.I.,” on “Murphy Brown,” CBS’ critically adored and popular comedy airing Mondays at 9 p.m.

Kimbrough, relaxing in his dressing room at Warner Brothers after a long day of rehearsal, comes across as friendly and accessible as his small-screen counterpart is stuffy and distant.

“I come from a wonderful family,” he said with a stretching of his arms. ‘My mother was a pianist and my father was a salesman. They were very middle-class, very middle-Western.”

But not his late aunt, Emily Kimbrough. She was the witty author of such best sellers as “When Our Hearts Were Young and Gay.” She traveled the world, was popular on the lecture circuit and spent time in Hollywood writing screenplays. She was larger than life to her young nephew.

“Her life was a series of anecdotes,” said Kimbrough with a warm smile. “ She would give dinner parties and have everyone on the floor laughing. She was an Auntie Mame-ish sort of person. She made the life she wanted to have and really that was a model for me.”

Kimbrough admitted he was never a particularly brave person; he played the part of the dutiful son. “I didn’t want to break with my family,” he said. “I wasn’t about to make waves. But I had this feeling I wanted to do something that I liked to do. Acting’s what I liked to do most. There must have been a moment when I felt, ‘Oh, my God, I like this and what am I going to do about it?’ ”

So Kimbrough majored in acting at Indiana University and earned a masters in directing from Yale Drama School.

He landed work in regional theaters. “I came out of school just at the time regional theater was first expanding,” he said. “All of a sudden, lots of new companies needed actors.”

After participating in a reading of John Guare’s “Cop-Out” at the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Festival more than 20 years ago, Guare asked him to do the play on Broadway. Though the play wasn’t a success, Kimbrough was. He caught the eye of producer/director Hal Prince, who was casting Stephen Sondheim’s landmark 1970 musical “Company.”

“He came backstage and said, ‘I want you to be in my new musical,’ ” Kimbrough said. “It was like a dream.”

Kimbrough received a Tony nomination for best featured actor for “Company” and over the next two decades appeared in countless plays on and off-Broadway. He teamed with Sondheim again six years ago for the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical, “Sunday in the Park With George.”

“It was hell to do,” said Kimbrough. “It is put together in such strange little pieces. It’s like one of those (Georges Seurat) paintings. When you stand back everything falls into place and you are moved. I was just astonished my wife came back in tears after previews.”

Until “Murphy Brown,” Kimbrough made his living primarily in the theater. “It’s funny because all through the ‘80s I didn’t do TV and movies very much,” he said. “I prided myself that I was making a living in the theater.”

Kimbrough had done many guest shots on East Coast-based TV shows during the ‘70s, but at auditions “you were asked what you had done on TV and film (by) bright, young casting directors who were teething when those shows were done.”

Getting “Murphy Brown,” said Kimbrough, was an accident. “I was doing commercials and looking for a play,” he recalled. “This pilot was sent to me and as usual, they were making a canvas of New York actors. They were going to put us all on tape and then fly us to the West Coast. The tape auditions never worked for me. I always felt dreadful.”

But he loved the pilot and loved Jim Dial. Kimbrough prepared a “pretty good” audition and, as luck would have it, was called to Los Angeles to meet with producers Diane English and Joel Shukovsky, director Barnet Kellman and CBS executives. The next day he got the job.

Kimbrough said said his life hasn’t changed much because of “Murphy Brown.” ’We go into this big airplane hangar here (the sound stage), work basically a 9-to-5 kind of day and we go straight home,” he said. “People in the supermarkets are too busy buying groceries to notice you. I think only Candice (Bergen) gets heads to turn.”

He’s stunned, though, when he is recognized outside of Los Angeles and New York. “I know we are being beamed to millions, but it’s too big a concept,” Kimbrough said. “I was in a parade in Minneapolis during the summer and they had a sign on the side of my car that said ‘Murphy Brown.’ All of a sudden, people were cheering and yelling and calling my name. I was bowled over.”