David Ogden Stiers dies

Actor played Maj. Winchester on ‘M*A*S*H’

David Ogden Stiers, the tall, balding, baritone-voiced actor who brought articulate, somewhat snobbish comic dignity to six seasons of the acclaimed television series “M*A*S*H,” died Saturday at his home in Newport, Ore., a small coastal city southwest of Salem. He was 75.

His death was announced on Twitter by his agent, Mitchell K. Stubbs, who said the cause was bladder cancer.

Stiers joined the cast of “M*A*S*H” in 1977, when Larry Linville, who had played the pompous and inept Maj. Frank Burns, left the show. The series, a comedy-drama set in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, required a foil for its raucous, irreverent, martini-guzzling leads, Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and B.J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell), and Stiers’ imperious Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III seemed to fit the bill.

Winchester’s upperclass Boston priggishness, however, turned out to be balanced by impressive medical skills, a heartfelt appreciation of the arts, real wit and a surprising level of compassionate humanity. Winchester was, unlike Frank Burns, a worthy adversary.

The role earned Stiers two Emmy nominations (in 1981 and 1982). He was nominated a third time, in 1984, for his lead role in “The First Olympics: Athens in 1896,” a dramatic miniseries.

Loretta Swit, who played Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on “M*A*S*H,” called Stiers “my sweet, dear shy friend,” adding, “Working with him was an adventure.”