| Alan Alda |
1994 Emmy Awards, Photo by Alan Light |
| Birth name |
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo |
| Born |
January 28 1936 (1936--) (age 71)
Bronx, New York, USA |
| Spouse(s) |
Arlene Alda (1957-present) |
|
|
Alan Alda (born January 28, 1936) is a five-time
Emmy Award-winning, six-time Golden
Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated American actor. He is perhaps most famous for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the television 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 which counter that image.
Biography
Family and early life
Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in the Bronx. His
Italian-American father, Robert Alda (1914-1986)
aka Alphonso Giovanni Giuseppe Roberto D'Abruzzo, was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Brown, was crowned Miss New York in a beauty
pageant. Their adopted surname "Alda" is a combination of ALfonso and D'Abruzzo. Alda's half-brother,
Antony Alda, was christened Antonio D'Abruzzo on 9
December 1956.
Alda contracted polio, aged 7, during an epidemic. His parents administered a painful
treatment, developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, where hot woolen blankets were applied
to the limbs and the muscles were stretched by massage.[1]
This treatment, though brutal, allowed Alda to recover much movement.
He attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York and later received his Bachelor's
degree from Fordham University in 1956. During his junior year, he studied in
Europe where he 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, and seven grandchildren. Arlene Alda is an
accomplished photographer, author, and musician.
Alda was a member of the Compass Players in the late 1950s. He has also been an activist for feminism for many years.
On Loose Women on October 5, 2007 he said he would still be working in a
theatre in St Louis if it wasn't for working on M*A*S*H.
Career
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, where he was nominated for the Tony award
as Best Actor in a Musical.
Hawkeye on 'the thumb' in the M*A*S*H episode
Hawkeye
From 1972 to 1983 he starred in the TV adaptation of the movie M*A*S*H, he was
nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, winning five. He took part in writing 20 episodes, and directed
30. 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 also was 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 a TV series. Alda is in fact the only
series regular to appear in each and every one of 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). 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.
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. 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 has been 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 or dementia. Alda
also had a co-starring role as Dr. Robert Gallo in the controversial 1993 TV movie
And the Band Played On.
During M*A*S*H's 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. 1990s
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
comedian in Crimes and Misdemeanors was widely seen as a self-parody,
although Alda denied this.
In 1995 he briefly considered running for the United States Senate in
New Jersey. About this time, he starred as the President in Michael Moore's Canadian Bacon. In 1996, Alda was in
"Camping With Henry and Tom", based on the book by Mark St. Germain. He played Henry Ford. 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.
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.[2] He is friends with Marlo Thomas, who is
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.
Alda also wrote several of the stories and poems that appeared in Marlo Thomas's
Free to Be... You and Me television show.
Throughout his career, he has been nominated for the Emmy Award 31 times and the Tony
Award twice, 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 acting career, that 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.
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.
It has become quite common for Alda in his later roles to have some reference to his early work in M*A*S*H. In a line
on ER, his character mentions that he uses a surgical technique that is "an old army trick." Alda's West Wing
character has also made at least one reference to Korea when he said, "I could take these people
to the DMZ and it still wouldn't take their minds off ethanol and abortion."
In 2005, Alda published his first round of memoirs, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned.[3] 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 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 how he came to his values and beliefs.
Work
Memoir
- Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (ISBN 0-0917-9652-0)
- Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (ISBN 1400066174)
Audio books
- World War Z (2006) (Voice of "Department of Strategic Resources" Director Arthur
Sinclair Jr.)
References
- ^ Smiley, Tavis. "Alan Alda", PBS,
2 December 2004. Retrieved on 2007-05-02.
- ^
Saint Jude Children's Hospital, Web Editor (December 1, 2005), Saint Jude TV - Fighting For Life, Saint Jude Web
Site, <http://www.stjude.tv/>. Retrieved on April 11, 2007
- ^ Alda,
Alan (2006). Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned. New York: Random House. ISBN
1-4000-6409-0.
Further reading
External links
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Alda, Alan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
D'Abruzzo, Alfonso Joseph |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
Actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
January 28 1936 (1936--) (age 71) |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
New York City, U.S. |
| DATE OF DEATH |
|
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
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