MASH actor David Ogden Stiers no more

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. For his work on MASH, Stiers was twice Emmy nominated. 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. 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 had said at the time that he hid 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. –IANS