MASH star David Ogden Stiers is dead at 75

(Image credit: Rob Loud/Getty Images)

last updated 5 March 2018

Actor David Ogden Stiers, most famous for starring in the last six seasons of MASH, died Saturday at his home in Newport, Oregon, a town on the central Oregon Coast. He was 75, and his agent said the cause of death was bladder cancer. Stiers stepped in to play Maj. Charles Emerson Winchester III, a snobby Bostonian with serious surgical skills and wit, in 1977, when MASH star Alan Alda's previous foil, Maj. Frank Burns (Larry Linville), left the show.

Stiers was born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1942, then moved with his family to Eugene, Oregon. He started his acting career as a stage actor in Santa Clara, California, then moved to New York, making his Broadway debut in 1973. He was in several films, including voicing the clock Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast (1991), the villain Jumba Jookiba in Lilo & Stitch (2002), and the announcer in George Lucas' first feature film, THX 1138 (1971). Stiers also served as resident conductor of the Newport Symphony Orchestra. He never married, and he came out as gay in 2009. "I wish to spend my life's twilight being just who I am," he said at the time. You can watch him in action as Maj. Winchester below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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