David Ogden Stiers, Emmy nominee from 'M*A*S*H,' dead at 75

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/david-ogden-stiers-emmy-nominee-005402748.html

Well doggone it.

That’s sad to hear. I thought that he had already died.

Whiskeytango Wrote:
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> That’s sad to hear. I thought that he had
> already died.


No.

But from the cast, only Alda, Swit, Burghoff, Farr, Farrell are left.

All the others are gone.

anybody Wrote:
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> n/t

He also did many voice overs, including Disney's blockbuster "Beauty and the Beast"....He was the clock

was he old ?

You know, I’ve never even seen one episode of Mash, just pieces when turning channels.
We were never allowed to watch it growing up.My dad hated it with a passion. I never understood why , until I got older.
He was in the Korean War ( that’s when he got drafted), front lines, artillery. He’d never talked about it. He just said that Mash was making light of the war, something like that.
He talked a little bit of Vietnam though.
I just remember one time when he got upset over something my mom said when I was still in grade school, he finally started yelling about bad guys( don’t know if it was Vietnam or Korea) sneaking in tents when the guys were sleeping and slashing their throats.
I just remember my mom and us girls running out the room , covering our ears.

Just a little clarity, Cabbie. MASH was set in the Korean war, but the political message was aimed at the inane policy of Vietnam. Yes?

The "political message" was a huge element, but my take is there were other thematic factors operating as well that contributed mightily to its artistic and commercial success. Americans were clearly "outsiders," and the human elements presented challenged "conventional wisdom" on a number of fronts.

I could probably go on for pages on this subject, as one can with meaningful art; as I was typing this I thought of Sidney Friedman, and I hope nobody missed the "message" offered by his initials.

I think another reason for its success was the fact that at that time you had a country with alot more military veterans who could appreciate alot of the humor. It also had very likeable characters.

What message was that?

e.e. cummings referenced him in this one...

https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/ee-cummings-told-him

One of "handbooks" that was popular when I was getting my English teach credential was "Teaching English as a Subversive Activity."

We managed to, even behind the Zion Curtain.

You should give it a look. IMO it's still the best comedy series on TV. I don't find the series disrespectful of the military. It portrays the work that the MASH units have done in a positive and compassionate light.

Here's an article about how the U.S. Army was still using a MASH unit as late as the Iraq War:

https://www.stripes.com/news/army-s-last-mash-unit-stretched-to-its-limits-in-iraq-1.4194

Evidently the last MASH unit was decommissioned in 2006.

You can find the TV series on cable (most recently MeTV,) and Hulu. I still watch it on occasion.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2018 12:34AM by summer.

summer Wrote:
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> You should give it a look. IMO it's still the best
> comedy series on TV. I don't find the series
> disrespectful of the military. It portrays the
> work that the MASH units have done in a positive
> and compassionate light.
>
> Here's an article about how the U.S. Army was
> still using a MASH unit as late as the Iraq War:
>
> https://www.stripes.com/news/army-s-last-mash-unit
> -stretched-to-its-limits-in-iraq-1.4194
>
> Evidently the last MASH unit was decommissioned in
> 2006.
>
> You can find the TV series on cable (most recently
> MeTV,) and Hulu. I still watch it on occasion.

It can be found on AMC, among other channels, too. TVLand may be one of them?
I have so many "fav" episodes, it would equal several seasons.

His character, Charles Emerson Winchester III was good. But nothing compared to Larry Linville's Major Frank Burn's. One of the most sniveling rat bastard characters since Eddie Haskell.

I loved MASH and as a kid watched every episode. It was really funny and definately thought provoking. Winchester was always great and Burns was so dislikeable. I record it all the time still and watch it.

One thing about it that is not like todays is the canned laugh track. That was one of the first shows I noticed that as being really obnoxious. Do I need fake laughter to rell me something is funny?

And yet...It was one of the first shows to fight the then-mandatory laugh track. The producers managed to win one small concession from CBS: they could ditch the laugh track for scenes in the O.R.

As the seasons went on, they were allowed to tone down the laugh track quite a bit.

David Ogden Stiers was one of my favorite documentary narrators. Some folks didn't recognize his voice without the Boston accent.

I think there was more real morality written into *any* half-hour episode of M*A*S*H than in a month's worth of LDS Sunday School "lessons". It did get a bit preachy sometimes, but the basic decency and intelligence of the show is why it has been in continuous syndication for over half the entire existence of television.

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> I think there was more real morality written into
> *any* half-hour episode of M*A*S*H than in a
> month's worth of LDS Sunday School "lessons". It
> did get a bit preachy sometimes, but the basic
> decency and intelligence of the show is why it has
> been in continuous syndication for over half the
> entire existence of television.


Agreed

This one hit me hard....