Harry Morgan, 1915–2011

last updated 8 January 2015

To millions of TV viewers, Harry Morgan will always be remembered as Col. Sherman T. Potter, commander of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit in Korea. With a wry smile and a dry wit, Morgan played Potter from 1975 to 1983, when M*A*S*H went off the air. But he hadn’t been the first choice to head the show’s field hospital. When M*A*S*H debuted, in 1972, McLean Stevenson was cast as camp commander Lt. Col. Henry Blake. Morgan appeared as a crazed general in an episode in 1974, and so impressed producers that they hired him when Stevenson unexpectedly quit the next year. He was always thankful for the opportunity. “I think it’s the best part I ever had,” Morgan said in 2004.

Morgan was born Harry Bratsburg in 1915 in Detroit, where his Norwegian father worked in the auto industry. He left high school with dreams of becoming a lawyer, but after taking debating classes at the University of Chicago, he changed his mind and plunged into the theater, said Variety. Assuming the name Morgan—which he found more mellifluous than Bratsburg—he joined a repertory company in Westport, Conn. “One early part cast him opposite a young Henry Fonda in a stage production of The Virginian,” said the London Telegraph. Morgan made his way to California in 1942, and was spotted by a talent scout. He went on to play in more than 100 films and showed remarkable versatility, appearing as a drifter caught up in a lynching in 1943’s The Ox-Bow Incident, a menacing bodyguard in 1948’s The Big Clock, and a small-town Tennessee judge in 1960’s Inherit the Wind.

His television credits were just as prodigious, including leading roles in detective drama Dragnet and the comedies December Bride and Pete and Gladys. “He once estimated that in one show or another he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years,” said The New York Times. Despite his fame, Morgan never sat as a guest on a talk show. “Appearing on a talk show to focus on himself because he was Harry Morgan was not nearly as natural as appearing in a role,” said his son Charles.