David Ogden Stiers dead

Actor David Ogden Stiers, best known for playing arrogant surgeon Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in the show "MASH", is no more.

His agent, Mitchell K. Stubbs, tweeted that he died of bladder cancer at his home in Newport, Oregon, on Saturday. He was 75, reports variety.com.

For his work on "MASH", Stiers was twice Emmy nominated for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy or variety or music series, in 1981 and 1982.

He earned a third Emmy nomination for his performance in the mini-series "The First Olympics: Athens 1896" as William Milligan Sloane, the founder of the US Olympic Committee.

He was also in demand for narration and voiceover work.

In addition to serving as narrator and as the voice of Cogsworth in "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991, he voiced Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins in Disney's 1995 animated effort "Pocahontas" and voiced the Archdeacon in Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".

Stiers was also known for the eight Perry Mason TV movies he made between 1986-88, and more recently he had recurred on the series "The Dead Zone" from 2002-07.

Stiers worked repeatedly for director Woody Allen, appearing in "Shadows and Fog", "Mighty Aphrodite", "Everybody Says I Love You" and "Curse of the Jade Scorpion".

In 2009, the actor revealed publicly that he was gay.

He told ABC News at the time that he had hidden his sexuality for a long time because so much of his income had been derived from family-friendly programming, and coming out thus might have had repercussions in the past.

--IANS

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