Home   >   Movie Stars   >   S   >   David Ogden Stiers
David Ogden Stiers

David Ogden Stiers

David Ogden Stiers created one of television's most indelible characters -- Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, the pompous, outspoken wartime surgeon on the hit sitcom, M*A*S*H. His six-year run on the award-winning program netted him a pair of Emmy nominations for a character he once described as lovably unlovable. He also collected a third nomination a few years later for his supporting role of William Sloane in the NBC miniseries, The First Olympics: Athens, 1896.

Stiers won a scholarship (at the age of 27) to New York's prestigious Juilliard School of Drama, studying under the legendary John Houseman.

He made his Broadway bow in Ulysses in Nighttown and followed that with the hit musical, The Magic Show and also narrated Broadway's hit musical, Beauty and the Beast.

Stiers also performed with the San Francisco Actors Workshop, the improvisational Committee Review and the Old Globe Theatre Shakespeare Festival in San Diego. There, he appeared in Richard III, Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, Comedy of Errors, Hamlet, London Assurance, The Rivals, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing and Billy Bishop Goes to War. He also directed the Globe's award-winning staging of Scapino, which won the DramaLogue Award and was nominated for the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle and Bay Area Critics Circle Awards.

Early guest-starring appearances on Kojak and Rhoda in the mid-70s led to his recurring role as the stuttering TV station manager Mel Price on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. That part landed him the role of Major Winchester on M*A*S*H. He has also logged roles in several episodic series, telefilms and miniseries including North and South, Books I and II, PBS-TV's Innocents Abroad, The Day My Bubble Burst, Anatomy of An Illness, A Circle of Children, Final Notice, The Pedestrian, The Kissing Place, Without A Kiss Goodbye, HBO's The Final Days and The Last of His Tribe, The Bad Seed, Justice League of America, Day One, To Face Her Past, Past Tense and, more recently, a guest stint on Ally McBeal.

Stiers made his motion picture debut in Bob Rafelson's acclaimed drama, Drive, He Said. He co-starred in such films as Magic, The Cheap Detective, Oh, God!, Harry's War, Creator, The Accidental Tourist, Doc Hollywood, Steal Big, Steal Little, Bad Company, Iron Will, Krippendorf's Tribe, Jungle 2 Jungle and Food for Thought. He's also a favorite of director Woody Allen, having co-starred in five of his films including Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You, Shadows and Fog, Another Woman and Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

He actually began his movie career in the off-camera role of the Announcer on George Lucas' directorial debut, THX-1138. In more recent years, he has delighted moviegoers by lending those vocal talents to several Disney animated features such as Beauty and the Beast (the Narrator and Cogsworth the Clock, the latter which he reprised in the home video sequels, Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, Belle's Magical World and House of Mouse). He vocalized the roles of Gov. Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Pocahontas (again, recreating the voice of Ratcliffe in the video Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World) and played the Archdeacon in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The multifaceted Stiers is also a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and the International Horn Society, has conducted over 40 symphony orchestras around the country and is associate conductor of the Yaquina Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival.


Note: This profile was written in or before 2003.

David Ogden Stiers Facts

OccupationActor
BirthdayOctober 31, 1942 (81)
SignScorpio
BirthplacePeoria, Illinois, USA
Height6' 4" (1m93)  How tall is David Ogden Stiers compared to you?

Selected Filmography

Commanding Heights (2002)
Lilo & Stitch (2002)
New York (1999)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Better Off Dead (1985)
M*A*S*H (1972) as Charles Emerson Winchester III
More ...