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RIP David Ogden Stiers


Cassandra

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11 hours ago, Ternaugh said:

David Ogden Stiers was also conductor who worked with over thirty orchestras. As an actor, he always brought a depth and humanity to each role.

Classical music was one of his great passions. It is a shame I never saw or heard him lead an orchestra.

 

I met him once at a screening of the English dub of Miyazaki's Porco Rosso (he played the engineer the title character found to build him a new plane) and he was good company. He specifically asked at that Q&A that there be no questions about M*A*S*H -- seemingly not over any particular malice, but probably because he was sick and tired of answering such questions when he wanted to discuss his other work. On Porco Rosso, he told me he never even met the rest of the cast; that saddened me, as when I was doing theater in college the socializations after the shows were one of my favorite things about acting.

 

And yes, Charles Emerson Winchester was a remarkable character. The beauty of most of the characters in M*A*S*H -- the thing that made them heroic -- is that they had no particular desire to be where they were, and even despised the people who had put them there, but kept their devotion to saving lives and alleviating suffering. For Winchester, it was not just wounded pride; he seriously believed the skills that would make him respected and rich would be lost if he spent his time on "Meatball Surgery". At the same time, he was no misanthrope and he genuinely cared for the people who had been treated so cruelly by a war the producers of the series saw as pointless. Even his rivalry with Hawkeye Pierce, a fellow New Englander and yet his polar opposite, became much more friendly as time went on and he came to admire the younger surgeon''s dedication.

 

Then there is the voice work. None of his voices are instantly recognizable as Stiers. This was a good thing, much as the way Mark's Hamill's Joker is different enough from the other characters he had played in the past that you forget it's Hamill and focus on the character. which is a great talent and gift, one of which Stiers took full advantage.

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It is sad he was such a great actor who never really got the respect I think he deserved. His character basically saved M*A*S*H which was losing ratings.  He brought humor and gravity to every role.  He was even able to make good out of weak roles like in Creator (which also wasted the genius of Peter O' Toole) or Doc Hollywood into something memorable and worth seeing.

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