ALAN ALDA

'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
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Contents

Biography

Family and early life

Career

After ''M ★ A ★ S ★ H''

Work

Filmography

Television

Memoir

Audio books

References

External links

Biography

Family and early life

Alda was born 'Alfonso Joseph D'Abruzzo' in New York City. 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 'AL'fonso and 'D'A'bruzzo. 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, NY 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.

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.

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
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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
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After ''M
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Alda's prominence in the enormously successful ''M
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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
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★ A
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★ 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''. 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
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★ 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
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★ 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 Overhead 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

Filmography ★ ''Gone Are the Days!'' (1963) ★ ''Paper Lion'' (1968) ★ ''The Extraordinary Seaman'' (1969) ★ ''Jenny'' (1970) ★ ''The Moonshine War'' (1970) ★ ''The Mephisto Waltz'' (1971) ★ ''To Kill a Clown'' (1972) ★ "Kill Me If You Can" (1977) ★ ''Same Time, Next Year'' (1978) ★ ''California Suite'' (1978) ★ ''The Seduction of Joe Tynan'' (1979) ★ ''The Four Seasons'' (1981) ★ ''Sweet Liberty'' (1986) ★ ''A New Life'' (1988) ★ ''Crimes and Misdemeanors'' (1989) ★ ''Betsy's Wedding'' (1990) ★ ''Whispers in the Dark'' (1992) ★ ''Manhattan Murder Mystery'' (1993) ★ ''Canadian Bacon'' (1995) ★ ''Flirting with Disaster'' (1996) ★ ''Everyone Says I Love You'' (1996) ★ ''Murder at 1600'' (1997) ★ ''Mad City'' (1997) ★ ''The Object of My Affection'' (1998) ★ ''Keepers of the Frame'' (1999) ★ ''What Women Want'' (2000) ★ ''The Aviator'' (2004) ★ ''Resurrecting the Champ'' (2007) ★ ''Family Guy (2006) Voice of Victor ★ ''Diminished Capacity'' (2008)

Television ★ ''That Was The Week That Was'' (1964-1965) ★ ''Where's Everett'' (1966) (pilot) ★ ''The Glass House'' (1972) ★ ''M ★ A ★ S ★ H'' (1972-1983) ★ ''Playmates'' (1972) ★ ''Isn't It Shocking?'' (1973) ★ ''Free to Be… You and Me'' (1974) ★ ''6 Rms Riv Vu'' (1974) ★ ''Kill Me If You Can'' (1977) ★ ''And the Band Played On'' (1993) ★ ''Scientific American Frontiers'' (1993-present) ★ ''White Mile'' (1994) ★ ''Jake's Women'' (1996) ★ ''ER'' (1999) ★ ''Club Land'' (2001) ★ ''The Killing Yard'' (2001) ★ ''The West Wing'' (2004-2006)

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

1. Alan Alda Tavis Smiley
2.
3. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned, , Alan, Alda, Random House, 2006,

External links

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★ Bio on ''Scientific American Frontiers''

★ Comprehensive bio

★ InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse: Alan Alda (TV Interview)

★ Archive of American Television interview

★ Military Service

★ GeoCities fan site page

★ Interview with Alda on NPR's ''Fresh Air'' (September 21 2005)

★ Alan Alda's Charity Work

★ Performance ''Working in the Theatre'' seminar video at American Theatre Wing.org, April 1992

★ Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned (Chapter 1)