Gregory Harrison is about more than the ol' razzle dazzle.
Sure, he's currently starring as the Teflon-coated lawyer Billy Flynn in the production of Chicago that begins performances at the Canon Theatre next Tuesday, but don't confuse the man with the role.
On stage, he may currently be dispensing the glib cynicism that has made this Kander & Ebb musical a box-office marvel of the past decade, but the guy behind the glitter was once so idealistic that he dared to take on the whole U.S. Army.
It's ironic to consider that an actor who became famous playing Vietnam vet medic "Gonzo" Gates on TV's Trapper John, M.D. was in actuality a conscientious objector during that same conflict.

Talking on the phone from his hotel room in Chicago 35 years later, Harrison is unrepentant about his past.
"Oh yeah, I'd do it again. It was the right thing to do. Sure, it was painful at the time and even then I wished I could have just gone along with the program. But I couldn't."
It was a brave decision for an 18-year-old kid to make, especially one who had spent most of a carefree youth surfing on California's Catalina island, where he was born on May 31, 1950.
"The draft was breathing down my neck, but somehow I knew I didn't want to kill people, so I enlisted as a medic," he recalls. "I thought that would take care of it."
There's a pause as Harrison goes back in time. "But from the very first day, I knew I didn't belong there. They shaved our heads and lined us up in the latrine, 40 of us, staring in this giant mirror and I couldn't tell which face was mine. We all looked the same.
"That was the first big slap. I thought `Man, they're trying to make me disappear,' and I didn't want that to happen."
Harrison actually sounds 18 as he remembers what happened next.
"Then we started rifle training. You're aiming at targets that look like human beings. They go down, never make a sound, and then pop up again. You get used to shooting at little human silhouettes and not feeling anything."
"All of a sudden, I saw the intent of it. I understood how it all worked and I knew I couldn't be a part of it."
For the next 30 months, Harrison battled with the army, insisting on his right to be a conscientious objector on purely moral grounds, without claiming religious status.
"I was in the army and I dared to disagree. Not a popular stance," he says wryly. "I was isolated and ridiculed. My courage, my masculinity, everything. It went on every day, every hour, every minute for 2 1/2 years. They kept trying to break me."
Finally, Harrison won and was given an honourable discharge.
"I look back now and realize that was the building block for my future, being able to withstand pressure and disappointment, while holding out for what you believed in."

Harrison bounced back to his roots on Catalina and was working as a doorman in "this crazy little bar where the whole staff would put on a musical every night — the bartenders, the waitresses, everyone. We were doing The Fantasticks and I was El Gallo."
Enter Jason Robards, who was shooting a film on the island called The War Between Men And Women.
"He told me I had talent and if I worked hard, I could make it as an actor." You can almost hear Harrison grin at the memory.
He headed off for Hollywood the next day and quickly found work, mainly in an assortment of roles that capitalized on his good looks. "Yeah, it was frustrating to be shoved into those pretty-boy parts, but everybody has a niche and that was mine. Hey, it was a foothold for me. If they thought I was a sex symbol, great, but believe me, I never felt that way."
Things really began happening for Harrison in the late '70s with TV series like Centennial and Logan's Run, but it was Trapper John, M.D. in 1979 that made him a household name.
Still, after all he had been through with the army, how did he feel about playing a Vietnam vet?
"Well, actually I was relieved — as an actor — to be offered something that I understood a bit. I had trained as a medic and I knew doctors, patients, bedside manner. As for the rest, my character never politicized his history. They really should have used it — only I don't know how that would have made me feel about it."
Harrison stayed with the popular series until halfway through its seventh season and even though the program has been off the air for nearly 20 years, he still finds people remember him from it.
"Sometimes I like it," he admits, "and sometimes I don't. When people shout out `Hey, Gonzo!' I feel a twinge of resistance, but when people come up and want to share fond memories of watching the show, that's a different story. There's a difference between someone appreciating your work and locking you into it."

Harrison married former CHIPS star Randi Oaks in 1980. They've been together ever since, have four children and live far away from the insanity of La La Land on the Oregon coast.
He works as often as he likes on TV, but lately, he's chosen to do musical theatre "to remind myself why I got into this business in the first place."
He's appeared in the original New York production of Kander & Ebb's Steel Pier as well as the 2001 revival of Follies, and he recently played his current role of Billy Flynn on Broadway as well.
He's not surprised at the success Chicago has enjoyed on both stage and screen, because he feels that "in the aftermath of the O.J. (Simpson) trial, it just resonates with truth.
It's so accurate about the American psyche, about people willing to do anything to get their 15 minutes of fame and a public that takes even the darkest villains and turns them into heroes."
Or, as he'll sing at the Canon Theatre next week: "Though you are stiffer than a girder,/ They'll let you get away with murder./ Razzle dazzle `em and you've got a romance."

©   September, 20 2003 Toronto Star