Alan Alda (born January 28, 1936) is an American
actor,
director and
screenwriter. He is known for his role as
Hawkeye Pierce in the
TV series M*A*S*H. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was viewed as the
archetypal sympathetic male, though in recent years, he has appeared in roles that counter that image.
Family and early life
Alda was born
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in
The Bronx,
New York City. His father,
Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was an actor and singer, and his mother,
Joan Brown, was a former
Miss New York. Alda is of
Italian and
Irish descent.
His adopted surname, "Alda," is a
portmanteau of
ALphonso and
D'Abruzzo. When Alda was seven years old he contracted
polio. To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by
Sister Elizabeth Kenny that consisted of applying hot woolen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles.
This allowed him to recover from most effects of the disease. Later, Alda attended
Archbishop Stepinac High School in
White Plains, New York. In 1956 he received his
bachelor's degree from Fordham College of
Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its
FM radio station,
WFUV. During his junior year, he studied in
Paris, acted in a play in
Rome and performed with his father on television in
Amsterdam. After graduation, he joined the
U.S. Army Reserve and served a six-month tour of duty as a
gunnery officer in
Korea following the
Korean War. A year after graduation, he married
Arlene Weiss, with whom he has three daughters, Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. He also has seven grandchildren, two of whom are aspiring actors. The Aldas have been longtime residents of
Leonia, New Jersey.
Career
Early acting
Alda began his career in the 1950s as a member of the
Compass Players comedy revue. In 1966, he starred in the musical
The Apple Tree on
Broadway; he was nominated for the
Tony award as Best Actor in a Musical for that role.
Alda made his Hollywood acting debut as a supporting player in
Gone are the Days!—a film version of the highly successful Broadway play
Purlie Victorious, which co-starred veteran actors
Ruby Dee and her husband
Ossie Davis. Other film roles would follow, such as his portrayal of author, humorist, and actor
George Plimpton in the film
Paper Lion as well as
The Extraordinary Seaman (1969) and the occult-murder-suspense thriller
The Mephisto Waltz, with actress
Jacqueline Bisset. During this time, Alda frequently appeared as a panelist on the 1968 revival of
What's My Line?. He also appeared as a panelist on
I've Got a Secret during its 1972 syndication revival.
M*A*S*H Series (1972–1983)
In early 1972 Alda auditioned for and was selected to play the role of "Hawkeye Pierce" in the TV adaptation of the 1970 film
MASH. He was nominated for 21
Emmy Awards, and won five. He took part in writing 19 episodes, including the finale, and directed 32. When he won his first Emmy Award for writing, he was so happy that he performed a
cartwheel before running up to the stage to accept the award. He was also the first person to win Emmy Awards for acting, writing and directing for the same series.
Richard Hooker, who wrote the novel on which
M*A*S*H was based, did not like Alan Alda's portrayal of Hawkeye Pierce (Hooker, a
Republican, had based Hawkeye on himself, whereas Alda took the character in a more left-wing direction). Alda also directed the show's 1983 2½ hour series finale "
Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" which remains
the single most-watched episode of any TV series. Alda is the only series regular to appear in all 251 episodes.
As more and more of the original series writers left the series, Alda gained more control and by the final seasons he had become project and creative consultant. Under his watch,
M*A*S*H more openly addressed political issues. As a result, the 11 years of
M*A*S*H are generally split into two eras: the
Larry Gelbart/
Gene Reynolds "comedy" years (1972-1977), and the Alan Alda "dramatic" years (1977-1983).
After M*A*S*H
Alda's prominence in the enormously successful
M*A*S*H gave him a platform to speak out on political topics, and he has been a strong and vocal supporter of
women's rights and the
Feminist Movement. He co-chaired, with former
First Lady Betty Ford, the ERA Countdown campaign. In 1976, the
Boston Globe dubbed him "the quintessential Honorary Woman: a feminist icon" for his activism on behalf of the
Equal Rights Amendment. As a
liberal activist he has been a target for some
political and
social conservatives.
Alan Alda has also played
Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Richard Feynman in the play
QED, which has only one other character. Although
Peter Parnell wrote the play, Alda both produced and inspired it. Alda has also appeared frequently in the films of
Woody Allen, and he was a guest star five times on
ER, playing Dr.
Kerry Weaver's mentor,
Gabriel Lawrence. During the later episodes, it was revealed that Dr. Lawrence was suffering from the early stages of
Alzheimer's disease. Alda also had a co-starring role as
Dr. Robert Gallo in the 1993 TV movie
And the Band Played On.
During
M*A*S*Hs run and continuing through the 1980s, Alda embarked on a successful career as a writer and director, with the ensemble dramedy The Four Seasons
being perhaps his most notable hit. Betsy's Wedding is his last directing credit to date. After M*A*S*H
, Alda took on a series of roles that either parodied or directly contradicted his "nice guy" image. His role as a pompous celebrity television producer in Crimes and Misdemeanors was widely seen as a self-parody, although Alda denied this.
Later roles
In 1995, he starred as the President in
Michael Moore's
political satire/
comedy film
Canadian Bacon. Around this time, rumours circulated that Alda was considering running for the
United States Senate in
New Jersey, but he denied this. In 1996, Alda played
Henry Ford in
Camping With Henry and Tom, based on the book by Mark St. Germain. Beginning in 2004, Alda was a regular cast member on the
NBC program
The West Wing, portraying
Republican U.S. Senator and presidential hopeful
Arnold Vinick, until the show's conclusion in May 2006. He made his premiere in the sixth season's eighth episode, "In The Room," and was added to the opening credits with the thirteenth episode, "King Corn." In August 2006, Alda won an
Emmy for his portrayal of Arnold Vinick in the final season of
The West Wing.
In 2004, Alda portrayed conservative Maine Senator
Owen Brewster in
Martin Scorsese's Academy-Award winning film
The Aviator, in which he co-starred with
Leonardo DiCaprio.
Throughout his career, Alda has received 31 Emmy Award nominations and two
Tony Award nominations, and has won seven
People's Choice Awards, six
Golden Globe awards, and three
Directors Guild of America awards. However, it was not until 2004, after a long distinguished acting career, that Alda received his first Academy Award nomination, for his role in
The Aviator.
Alda also wrote several of the stories and poems that appeared in
Marlo Thomas's
Free to Be... You and Me television show.
Alda starred in the original Broadway production of the play 'Art', which opened on March 1, 1998, at the Royale Theatre. The play won the Tony Award for best original play.
In the spring of 2005, Alda starred as Shelly Levene in the
Tony Award-winning
Broadway revival of
David Mamet's
Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he received a
Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Charitable work, other interests
Alda has done extensive charity work. He helped narrate a 2005
St. Jude's Children's Hospital produced one-hour special TV show
Fighting for Life.
He and his wife, Arlene, are also close friends of
Marlo Thomas, who is very active in fund raising for the hospital her father founded. The special featured
Ben Bowen as one of six patients being treated for childhood
cancer at Saint Jude.
In 2005, Alda published his first round of memoirs,
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned.
Among other stories, he recalls his
intestines becoming strangulated while on location in
Chile for his PBS show
Scientific American Frontiers, during which he mildly surprised a young doctor with his understanding of medical procedures, which he had learned from
M*A*S*H. He also talks about his mother's battle with
schizophrenia. The title comes from an incident in his childhood, when Alda was distraught about his dog dying and his well-meaning father had the animal
stuffed. Alda was horrified by the results, and took from this that sometimes we have to accept things as they are, rather than desperately and fruitlessly trying to change them.
In 2006, Alda contributed his voice to a part in the audio book of
Max Brooks'
World War Z. In this book, he voiced Arthur Sinclair Jr., the director of the United States Government's fictional "Department of Strategic Resources (DeStRes)".
His second memoir,
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, weaves together advice from public speeches he has given with personal recollections about his life and beliefs.
Alda also has an avid interest in
cosmology, and participated in
BBC coverage of the opening of the
Large Hadron Collider, at
CERN,
Geneva, in September 2008.
Alda has been an activist for
feminism for many years.
Personal beliefs and other views
In the above-mentioned memoir,
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, Alda candidly describes how briefly, at one time in his life he realized that he had begun thinking like an
agnostic or
atheist, although he had been raised as a
Catholic:
Speaking further on
agnosticism, Alda goes on to say: Alda made these comments in an interview for the 2008 question section of the
Edge Foundation website.
Awards and nominations
[
] at
Walt Disney World's
Disney's Hollywood Studios]] theme park.
- Awards
- Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series in 2006, for his portrayal of Senator & Presidential candidate Arnold Vinick in The West Wing
- Emmy Award for "Outstanding writing in a comedy" in 1979.
- Tony Award for "Best Play" in 1998 for Art.
- Tony Award for "Best Featured Actor" in 2005 for Glengarry Glen Ross.
- For contributions to the television industries, Alan Alda was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Nominations
- Alda received his first nomination for an Academy Award for his supporting role as Senator Ralph Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator.
Filmography
col-begin
Film
col-break
Television
Stage
- The Apple Tree (1966)
- Art (1998)
- Glengarry Glen Ross (2005)
Voice acting
- World War Z (2006) (voice of Director Arthur Sinclair Jr.)
col-end
Bibliography
