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David Ogden Stiers
(October 31, 1942 - March 3, 2018) U.S.A.

David Ogden Stiers

Actor, conductor, director, narrator, voice actor

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David was born in Peoria, Illinois, and wasn't much of a student while growing up in Eugene, Oregon. Like many another "underachiever", David excelled at the things he was truly interested in, such as music (he played piano and french horn) and acting. After flunking out of the University of Oregon, David stepped up his amateur-theatrical activities, and at age 20 was hired by the California Shakespeare Festival at Santa Clara, where he spent the next seven years performing the Classics.

After briefly working with the famous San Francisco improv group The Committee, and acting in the Actor's Workshop and California Shakespeare Festival, David moved to New York, where he studied drama at Julliard, in hopes of improving his vocal delivery. Evidently his training paid off: in 1974, Stiers co-starred with Zero Mostel in the Broadway production Ulysses in Nighttown, then went on to appear opposite Doug Henning in the long-running musical The Magic Show.

Despite his success, David detested New York, and at the first opportunity he "ran screaming" back to the West Coast. He was cast in the short-lived sitcom Doc in 1975, and the following year played an important role in the 90-minute pilot for Charlie's Angels, though he passed when offered a regular assignment in the Angels series proper.

David's performance as a stuttering TV executive in a 1976 Mary Tyler Moore Show episode led to his being cast as the overbearing Major Charles Emerson Winchester on the ever-popular M*A*S*H; at first signed to a two-year contract, Stiers remained with the series until its final episode in February of 1983.

David Ogden StiersBefore, during and after his tenure on M*A*S*H, David kept busy in made-for-TV films, lending his patented authoritativeness to such real-life characters as Dr. Charles Mayo (in 1977's A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story), critic and social arbiter Cleveland Amory (1984's Anatomy of an Illness) and President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1987's J. Edgar Hoover).

A three-time Emmy-award nominated actor, on the big screen, David's list of credits also includes The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, The Cheap Detective, Oh God, Magic, Doc Hollywood, Everyone Says I Love You, Mighty Aphrodite, Harry's War, Creator, Better Off Dead, The Accidental Tourist, and The Majestic.

He was also seen as Michael Reston in several of the Perry Mason TV-movies of the late 1980s. Disney animation devotees will remember David for his voice over work as in Beauty and the Beast, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pocahontas, and Lilo and Stitch.

Parlaying his lifelong love of classical music into a second career, David has served as guest conductor for over 70 major symphony orchestras, in both the United States and Canada. He maintains a repertoire of 50 orchestral works including concertos, and occupies Associate Conductor posts with both The Yaguina Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival..

David died at his home in Newport, Oregon, at the age of 75, from complications related to bladder cancer.

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Source: an article by Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide - et alii

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