Harry Morgan, Colonel Potter on �M*A*S*H,� Dies at 96 By MICHAEL POLLAK Published: December 7, 2011 Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series �M*A*S*H,� died Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96. His son Charles confirmed his death.
Associated Press Harry Morgan as Col. Sherman T. Potter on "M*A*S*H." 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 with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb�s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated �Dragnet,� from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy �Pete and Gladys� (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 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 series� 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 and Lee J. Cobb.
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� (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.