December 7 (198th hit of 2011. There were 193 hits in all of 2010)

Heh, heh. You didn't really think Harry Morgan was going to escape this
crowd, did you? And you were right. A large crowd of 34 Gamesters gathered
in Los Angeles to collect their one-point tribute hit from American actor
Harry Morgan, whom we all remember best as Col. Potter on the television
series "M*A*S*H." Morgan is also well remembered for his role as Bill Gannon
on the TV series "Dragnet." Myself? I best remember his as Henry Fonda's
sidekick in "The Oxbow Incident." Morgan appeared in more than 100 films.

Pocketful of Posies (48 & 15) rose to 13th-place and was the only Gamester
in the Top 20 to score. Our rookie leader, Casket Chris improved to 27 &
11. Me & My Shadows, death.com and the Necromancers finally qualified for
their QPAs on the 341st day of the 41st Annual Game.

Milestone Watch: Both Lou Cypher and Me & My Shadows reached 50 career
points.

12.07 HARRY MORGAN ( 1 ) ACME Undertakers
Gashlycrumb Tinies Motel Styx Casket Chris Gomez Necromancers Dada Sisters
Great Beyond Necropolis Keepers Daisy Pusher Greyfriars Bobby Not
Dead Fred Dead Giveaway Hanuman Penguin Dead Wait Iron Maiden
Pocketful of Posies death.com Leroy Estmort Poll Doll Die Uretic Lou Cypher
Preserveit Dust To Dust Mac Rigor Mortals Fire Ants Me & My
Shadows Spurtofblood Flatliners M Hamilton Stonesdoug Women With
Spurs

IMDb: _http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604702/_
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0604702/)

Video:

Morgan & Jack Webb in "Appointment With Death." Notice Morgan gets
knocked out with a bronze baby shoe. Thanks to Mac for this...
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjZF-OJRp4_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XjZF-OJRp4)

Believe it not, "Pete & Gladys"
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-tDCZHF7jk_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-tDCZHF7jk)

"Dragnet" 1967 _http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnhj7z_EdUs_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnhj7z_EdUs)

Colonel Potter's Anti-War rant
_http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpIgQTeAD9c_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpIgQTeAD9c)


The Obituary (New York Times)


By _MICHAEL POLLAK_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/michael_pollak/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: December 7, 2011


Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the
acerbic but kindly_ Colonel Potter_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpIgQTeAD9c&feature=related) in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” died on
Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96.



_Enlarge This Image_
(javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/12/08/sports/08morgan-1323279597258.html','08morgan_1323279597258_ht
ml','width=461,height=630,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'))

(javascript:pop_me_up2('http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/12/08/sports/08morgan-1323279597258.html','08morgan_1323279597258_html','width=461,heig
ht=630,scrollbars=yes,toolbars=no,resizable=yes'))
Everett Collection
Harry Morgan, right, with Jack Webb in "Dragnet" in 1967.


His son Charles confirmed his death, saying Mr. Morgan had been treated for
pneumonia recently.
In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters
with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers,
thugs and police chiefs.
On television, he played _Officer Bill Gannon_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDaz_jNLeRk) with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb’s
always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated_ “Dragnet,”_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnhj7z_EdUs&feature=related) from 1967 to 1970. He starred as
Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy_ “Pete and Gladys”
_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pySmFTZZqus) (1960-62), reprising a role
he had played on “December Bride” (1954-59). He was also a regular on “
The Richard Boone Show” (1963-64), “Kentucky Jones” (1964-65), “The D.A.”
(1971-72), “Hec Ramsey” (1972-74) and “Blacke’s Magic” (1986).
But to many fans he was first and foremost Col. Sherman T. Potter,
commander of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in Korea. With a wry
smile, flat voice and sharp humor, Mr. Morgan played Colonel Potter from 1975
to 1983, when “M*A*S*H” went off the air. He replaced McLean Stevenson ,
who had quit the series, moving into the role on the strength of his
performance as a crazed major general in an early episode.
In _an interview_
(http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/harry-morgan) for the Archive of American Television, Mr. Morgan said of his “
M*A*S*H” 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.”
Colonel Potter’s office had several personal touches. The picture on his
desk was of Mr. Morgan’s wife, Eileen Detchon. To relax, the colonel liked to
paint and look after his horse, Sophie — a sort of inside joke, since the
real Harry Morgan raised quarter horses on a ranch in Santa Rosa. Sophie,
to whom Colonel Potter says goodbye in the final episode, was Mr. Morgan’s
own horse.
In 1980 his Colonel Potter earned him an Emmy Award as best supporting
actor in a comedy series. During the shooting of the final episode, he was
asked about his feelings. “Sadness and an aching heart,” he replied.
Harry Morgan was born Harry Bratsburg on April 10, 1915, in Detroit. His
parents were Norwegian immigrants. After graduating from Muskegon High
School, where he played varsity football and was senior class president, he
intended to become a lawyer, but debating classes in his pre-law major at the
University of Chicago stimulated his interest in the theater.
He made his professional acting debut in a summer stock production of “At
Mrs. Beam’s” in Mount Kisco, N.Y., and his Broadway debut in 1937 in the
original production of “Golden Boy,” starring Luther Adler, in a cast that
also included Karl Malden.
After moving to California in 1942, he was spotted by a talent scout in a
Santa Barbara stock company’s production of William Saroyan’s one-act play
“Hello Out There.” Signing a contract with 20th Century Fox, he originally
used the screen name Henry Morgan, but changed Henry to Harry in the 1950s
to avoid confusion with the radio and television humorist Henry Morgan.
Mr. Morgan attracted attention almost immediately. In _“The Ox-Bow Incident
”_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lljIrAfBzYs) (1943), which starred
Henry Fonda, he was praised for his portrayal of a drifter caught up in a
lynching in a Western town. Reviewing “A Bell for Adano” (1945), based on John
Hersey’s novel about the Army in a liberated Italian town, Bosley Crowther
wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Morgan was “crude and amusing as the
captain of M.P.’s.”
He went on to appear in “All My Sons” (1948), based on the Arthur Miller
play, with Edward G. Robinson and Burt Lancaster; “The Big Clock” (1948),
in which he played a silent, menacing bodyguard to Charles Laughton; “Yellow
Sky” (1949), with Gregory Peck and Anne Baxter; and the critically praised
western “High Noon” (1952), with Gary Cooper. Among his other notable
films were_ “The Teahouse of the August Moon”_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X41ODChkWkU) (1956), with Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford, and “Inherit the
Wind” (1960), with Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, in which he played a
small-town Tennessee judge hearing arguments about evolution in the
fictionalized version of the Scopes “monkey trial.” In _“How the West Was Won”_
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQbcUP8PO0) (1962) he played Gen. Ulysses
S. Grant.
After a personable performance as Glenn Miller’s pianist, Chummy MacGregor,
in “The Glenn Miller Story” (1954), starring James Stewart, he often
played softer characters as well as his trademark hard-bitten tough guys. There
were eventually a number of comedies on his résumé, among them “John
Goldfarb, Please Come Home” (1965), with Shirley MacLaine and Peter Ustinov; “
The Flim-Flam Man” (1967), with George C. Scott; “Support Your Local
Sheriff!” (1969), with James Garner and Walter Brennan; and “The Apple Dumpling
Gang” (1975), a Disney movie with Tim Conway and Don Knotts.
He returned as Bill Gannon, by now promoted to captain, in the 1987 movie_
“Dragnet,”_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrrnHV8ov_A) a comedy remake
of the series starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks.
Mr. Morgan’s television credits were prodigious. He once estimated that in
one show or another, he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years.
Regarded as one of the busiest actors in the medium, he had continuing roles in
at least 10 series, which, combined with his guest appearances, amounted to
hundreds of episodes. He reprised the role of Sherman Potter in_ “
AfterMASH”_ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPy5gHQqXKI) (1983-85), a short-lived
spinoff.
Among the later shows on which he appeared as a guest star were “The Love
Boat,” “3rd Rock From the Sun,” “You Can’t Take It With You,” “Murder,
She Wrote” and “The Jeff Foxworthy Show.”
Mr. Morgan’s first wife, Eileen Detchon, died in 1985 after 45 years of
marriage. He is survived by his wife, Barbara Bushman, whom he married in
1986; three sons from his first marriage, Christopher, Charles and Paul; and
eight grandchildren. A fourth son, Daniel, died in 1989. Mr. Morgan lived in
the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.
His son Charles, a lawyer in Los Angeles, said in a telephone interview
that he would marvel at his father’s photographic memory. “My dad would read
a script the way somebody else would read Time magazine and put it down and
be on the set the next day,” he said.
But Harry Morgan never sat as a guest on a talk show, Charles Morgan said;
it did not seem appropriate or necessary. “Appearing on a talk show to
focus on himself because he was Harry Morgan,” he said, “was not nearly as
natural as appearing in a role as Pete Porter or Bill Gannon or Colonel
Potter, or as the cowboy drifter who wandered into town with Henry Fonda and got
wrapped up in a vigilante brigade in ‘Ox-Bow Incident.’ ”







A version of this article appeared in print on December 8, 2011, on page
A37 of the New York edition with the headline: Harry Morgan, Colonel Potter
on ‘M*A*S*H,’ Dies at 96.

_« Prev_ (http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2703799040/nm0604702) _Next »_
(http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2428219904/nm0604702)