M*A*S*H Star Harry Morgan dies

http://www.etonline.com/news/116562_MASH_Star_Harry_Morgan_Dies/index.html

A prolific character actor, Morgan appeared in a number of TV shows and more than 100 movies in a variety of roles, from Western bad guys to sheriffs and police chiefs. He earned a best supporting actor in a comedy series Emmy in 1980 for his role as Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H, and told the Archive of American Television of his character, "He was firm. He was a good officer and he had a good sense of humor. I think it's the best part I ever had."

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He was 96 years old! Good long life. Great actor. Loved him in both MASH and Dragnet.

I did too.

I loved Harry Morgan! In M*A*S*H*, he's an example of a replacement actor who actually elevated the level of the show when he came in. Usually when a mainstay actor departs, the show goes down in quality, but in M*A*S*H* the opposite was true almost every time (David Ogden Stiers as Charles Emerson Winchester is another example), and Morgan was a big reason for Colonel Potter's excellence. The character was beautifully written, but how he portrayed and delivered him really hit it out of the park. One of my favorite lines, in a minor sequence: he was telephoning to get something done, and he called some general or other. The man picked up the phone himself and listened to Potter's request. When Potter hung up, he gave a catlike smile of satisfaction and remarked in brightly singsong delivery, "A man who answers his own phone. Must be a Unitarian." After all these decades, the eccentric particularity of that comment still tickles me.

I think the character of Potter might have been loosely based on Harry Truman (maybe I even read this somewhere), who served in the cavalry in World War I. Morgan actually played Truman (and wonderfully) in a TV miniseries called something like Backstairs at the White House, which showed Presidents and First Ladies of several administrations from the perspective of a young woman who worked on the White House staff from I think the Taft years to Eisenhower. Morgan made Truman stand out as a man of quiet principle. He was always a great addition to any film or TV program. I'm glad he seems to have been a nice man in real life and that he had a good, long life.