Author: Carmel Dagan / Source: HuffPost
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – David Ogden Stiers, best known for his role as the arrogant surgeon Major Charles Emerson Winchester III on “MASH,” died Saturday. He was 75.
His agent, Mitchell K. Stubbs, tweeted that he died of bladder cancer at his home in Newport, Ore.
For his work on “MASH,” Stiers was twice Emmy nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy or variety or music series, in 1981 and 1982, and he earned a third Emmy nomination for his performance in NBC miniseries “The First Olympics: Athens 1896″ as William Milligan Sloane, the founder of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
The actor, with his educated, resonant intonations ― though he did not share Major Winchester’s Boston Brahmin accent ― was much in demand for narration and voiceover work, and for efforts as the narrator and as of Disney’s enormous hit animated film “Beauty and the Beast,” he shared a Grammy win for best recording for children and another nomination for album of the year.
He voiced Dr. Jumba Jookiba, the evil genius who created Stitch, in 2002′s “Lilo & Stitch” and various spinoffs; once he became part of the Disney family, Stiers went on to do voicework on a large number of movies, made for TV or video content and videogames.
In addition to serving as narrator and as the voice of Cogsworth in “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991, he voiced Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Disney’s 1995 animated effort “Pocahontas” and voiced the Archdeacon in Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He also contributed the voice of the grandfather for the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1992 animation “Porco Rosso” and of Kamaji in Miyazki’s classic “Spirited Away” in 2001. From 2011-15 he recurred on Cartoon Network’s “Regular Show.”
Indeed, it was his voice that earned him his first screen credit ― as the announcer in George Lucas’ 1971 film “THX 1138.”
Stiers was also known for the eight Perry Mason TV movies he made between 1986-88 in which his prosecuting attorney invariably lost to Raymond Burr’s Mason, and more recently he had recurred on the USA Network series “The Dead Zone” from 2002-07 as the Rev. Eugene Purdy, the chief antagonist to star Anthony Michael Hall’s Johnny Smith.
In addition Stiers worked repeatedly for director Woody Allen, appearing in “Shadows and Fog,” “Mighty Aphrodite,” “Everybody Says I Love You” and “Curse of the Jade Scorpion” (in which he played a mysterious hypnotist).
On “MASH” Stiers’ Major Winchester was witty where Frank Burns had been vapid ― with his Harvard education, a match for Alan Alda’s Hawkeye in the operating room and, unlike Frank, a worthy adversary in the ongoing battle of the pranks in the Swamp. So it was always poignant when an emotional crack opened in his self-satisfied mien.
In the season eight episode “Morale Victory,” Winchester is proud of saving a wounded soldier’s leg, only to learn that the minor injury to the young man’s hand is all that matters to him, as he is a concert pianist. The soldier feels he has no reason for living,…
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