Part 1: Before The Love Boat
At birth, he was named Allan See. In later years he would be called Happy Haines and Murray Slaughter and Merrill Stubing and Jonathan Sperry, among other public personas.
More than any of them, he is Gavin MacLeod.
Changing his given name to his current name was one of many fascinating stories about an actor who is probably best known as Captain Merrill Stubing, who for nine years steered a cruise ship, The Love Boat, into the waters of television fame.
He became "Gavin MacLeod" in college.
"All my life, people had teased me — 'What do you See?' — that kind of thing," recalls MacLeod, whose adopted surname came from his theater teacher at Ithaca College in 
upstate New York. "I'd seen a show on TV…there was a dinner party, and the hosts were showing their guests trophies on the wall and all the things their son had done. The camera pans to a guy who's dragging his leg because he can't walk. He gets into an elevator and goes upstairs, opens the door and walks in and the dinner-party hosts say: 'Gavin, we didn't think you'd be coming home. What are you doing here?' To them, he was an embarrassment. The show was called Gavin."
Before long, so was he.
The trail of acting credits that would follow were rooted in his childhood. He was four.
"I was in a kindergarten play," laughs the much-loved veteran of his profession, now 81. "They gave me a Charming Child award."
Fourteen years later, he was bald and of course he still is today. He's also still charming.
"I was working as a cashier in a restaurant in New York, and I auditioned for a play (A Hatful of Rain) with Shelley Winters and Ben Gazzara," he recalls. "I got the part but I couldn't be bald, so I had the first second-hand hairpiece on stage because that's all I could afford. A new one was $560, the second-hand one was $125. My maternal grandfather was bald so I knew it was coming. Jessica Tandy always said: 'As an actor, you take what you think is your liability and it will be an asset.'"
Before baldness became his asset, MacLeod did time as an usher at Radio City Music Hall "for 36 dollars a week…then I ran the elevator and my pay went up, too — to 37 dollars." Among his elevator clients were Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Years later, the founders of Desilu Productions gave MacLeod the break he needed.
"I did everything at Desilu — five days a week, two plays a day," he says.
His climb led to 28 movies, 31 television series, more stage plays than he could have ever imagined and multiple night club shows. That chronology of credits included long-forgotten movies like Pork Chop Hill and TV shows like Hawaii Five-O (the first iteration), but a couple of bumps that led MacLeod to stardom appear to have come — ironically — from parts he played on the seas.
Like Operation Petticoat, in which he played a navy yeoman alongside Cary Grant and Tony Curtis, and McHale's Navy, in which he was Joseph "Happy" Haines for two seasons. After 
that he averaged two movies a year until adding The Mary Tyler Moore Show to his CV, as wise-cracking copy writer Murray Slaughter on the iconic weekly TV sitcom of the '70s.
It was an all-star cast that included Ed Asner, Ted Knight and Valerie Harper, but only Mary Tyler Moore and Gavin MacLeod were in all 168 episodes over seven years.
"Ted was the oldest, Ed was next and I was the kid," says MacLeod. "Ted Knight was my good friend…Tadius Konopka. We met in an agent's office. I didn't have an agent. He said you have to get one and I said I didn't have any money. He said: 'Neither do I and I have one.' He was one of the greatest dramatic actors of all time, and nobody would remember him like that. When he died, I was in Cape Cod in a play and his wife asked me to do the eulogy. I had to send it."
About that time, MacLeod received a health warning of his own. He remembers the conversation this way:
The doctor asked: "Do you have grandchildren?"
"No."
"Do you want to see grandchildren?"
"Yes."
"Then no smoking, no drinking, no coffee."
Since his MTM days, Gavin has had no cigarettes, no alcohol and no coffee.
To his little daughter, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the "Tiny Miley Moore Show." To her dad, it was his springboard to critical acclaim. He was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, yet this was just a preview of what was to come.
Monday: Gavin MacLeod as Captain Stubing
Carnival Miracle
8 nights
January 9, 2013
New York (return): Port Canaveral, Nassau, Freeport
Inside: $429
Cost per day: $53
www.carnival.com