Former ‘Magnum, P.I.’ Star Lands His Dream Role on Broadway

The audience first glimpses him barefoot, wearing boxers and a T-shirt. Even without his familiar mustache, there’s applause for the guy the world knows best as Thomas Sullivan Magnum, private investigator.

And, there’s a smattering of sighs: Tom Selleck, at 56 and a bit more craggy-faced than in his ‘80s hit TV series, has great legs--an OK observation because “A Thousand Clowns,” the play in which the actor is making his theatrical debut at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre, makes no pretensions about being politically correct.

The time is 1962, when playwright Herb Gardner wrote his story about that lovable, maddening iconoclast Murray Burns, an unemployed (by choice) television writer and informal guardian of his precocious nephew, a “middle-aged kid” who, at 10, often appears to have more grasp of reality than his uncle. The play and subsequent movie, which became an icon to nonconformists everywhere, starred Jason Robards Jr.

“It’s not dated,” Selleck observed the other morning over the type of breakfast that itself might be termed dated--two fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, a muffin and a side of buttered toast--but maybe not surprising: Magnum burned a lot of energy, what with all the babes and the bungles--in his seat-of-the-pants detective work, as well as his love life.

“It’s a reflection of those times,” Selleck is saying about the play, one he says he’s dreamed of doing since he switched his college major from business to drama. “And in terms of emotional content, a lot of people need to see it,” because, among other things, “there’s that great all-American dilemma of balancing the free spirit with the sense of responsibility.”

“Magnum, P.I.” lovers may be observing that this was also the laid-back detective’s dilemma, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising that Selleck says it was the role of Murray that informed Magnum.

“This play had more than a little to do with honing those instincts of who I am,” Selleck says. He relays the by-now familiar tale of how he’d loved the movie of “A Thousand Clowns,” often choosing to do scenes from it in acting classes, against the advice of instructors who saw him as the more macho type--never someone who would have ended up playing, say, that gay tabloid journalist who smooches with Kevin Kline in 1997’s “In & Out,” the first time Selleck shaved off his mustache for a role.

Murray, the actor says, “taught me a lot about my appetite in roles. It had a whole lot to do with the way Magnum turned out.”

When the “Magnum” series was assigned to this veteran of six failed pilots, “he was a perfect private eye, a stewardess on each arm, driving a Ferrari,” Selleck recalls of the James Bond-ish role. In part because of Murray, “I knew by this time I didn’t want to play that kind of guy,” he says.

So, “I got into a big war with them. If I’d lost, that probably would have been the end of my career.” Instead, “somebody listened and they assigned a new writer who wrote Magnum as a flawed, more vulnerable guy.” The flashy car would remain, but his goofier image was definitely off-sync from the original concept. Magnum may not have been as eccentric as Murray, but he’s in training.

In the play, Murray is eventually forced to opt for conformity--or at least a steady job. After all the laughs, “this can be melancholy for the audience,” Selleck says. “I see my job as an actor to convince the audience that in spite of this, Murray is going to be OK.

“I don’t know if he capitulates or grows up,” Selleck says. “What I strive to do is make them think Murray is still Murray--except he’s come to terms with things.”

It might seem this is something the actor hasn’t had to do himself. Aside from the fact that “I certainly never, ever intended to be an actor,” Selleck has pretty much been able to carve out his own career--after a slow start (“for 15 years, I was basically unemployed”) and an occasional bump along the way (CBS refused to let him out of his “Magnum” contract to play Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” one of the roles that made Harrison Ford’s career).

As a boy growing up in Southern California, Selleck says he had three fantasies: “to be a cowboy, a baseball player and a fireman--and I’ve done all three.” (In films: a series of westerns for cable TV, including “Crossfire Trail,” aired earlier this year; 1992’s “Mr. Baseball”; and 1999’s “The Love Letter,” in which “I played George, the friendly fireman.”)

And, now, after all those years as a film star, he is cheekily, although with charming self-deprecation, making his stage debut--starting at the top, on Broadway, in the role of his dreams.

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Blake Green is a reporter for Newsday, a Tribune company.