On December 7, 2011, Harry Morgan died of pneumonia in Los Angeles at the age of ninety-six. He had spent more than seven decades on stage and screen, building a career that carried him from the experimental theaters of New York to the living rooms of millions through two of the most beloved shows in American television history. Yet the actor who would become famous as a gruff but beloved military doctor and a hard-nosed police detective began his life far from Hollywood. He was born on April 10, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan, to Henry Bratsburg, a mechanic who had immigrated from Norway, and Anna Olson, a homemaker from Sweden.
After graduating from high school in 1933, he enrolled at the University of Chicago. It was during his third year that he became involved in theater productions, and the experience quickly consumed him. He decided that acting was what he wanted to do with his life, and so, lacking the money to continue his education, he left the university and headed to New York City. There he joined the Group Theatre, the celebrated company run by Lee Strasberg and other major figures of American theater.
Over the following years, Morgan immersed himself completely in the craft, performing in a number of notable plays and Broadway productions before moving to Los Angeles in the early 1940s. He made his screen debut in 1942 with a role in To the Shores of Tripoli, a film that received mixed reviews and middling box office results. The same year, he appeared in supporting roles in The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, The Omaha Trail, and Orchestra Wives. Throughout the 1940s, Morgan continued to build his resume steadily.
He appeared in films such as Happy Land, Wing and a Prayer, and Dragonwyck, and by the late decade he was part of critically respected productions like Red Light and All My Sons. The 1950s saw him take on supporting roles in well-known films including Dark City, Outside the Wall, High Noon, and Strategic Air Command. These were steady, respectable parts, but his first major breakthrough came in 1954. That year, Morgan was cast in The Glenn Miller Story, a biographical film about the famous bandleader, played by Hollywood icon James Stewart.
Morgan was chosen to portray Chummy MacGregor, Miller’s friend. It was a fitting piece of casting. Morgan had actually met Glenn Miller on the set of Orchestra Wives in 1942, and the two had remained friends until Miller’s death in 1944. The Glenn Miller Story was both a critical and commercial success, earning three Academy Award nominations, and it raised Morgan’s profile considerably.
Television soon became his primary domain. In 1962, he began playing the recurring guest role of Al Everett on the drama series Going My Way. He also took small roles in programs such as The Untouchables and Have Gun Will Travel, the latter created by Richard Boone. Boone was so impressed with Morgan’s work that he offered him a major part in The Richard Boone Show, which proved highly successful.
Through the mid-1960s, Morgan’s television career continued to climb with a series of successful projects. In 1964, he played Selden Jackson, a principal role in the comedy-drama Kentucky Jones. But nothing he had done before prepared him for the success of Dragnet. The crime series, produced by Jack Webb, ran from 1967 to 1970 and became enormously popular with audiences.
Morgan starred as Detective Bill Gannon, and it was one of several successful collaborations between the actor and Webb, whose earlier joint work included films from 1950 such as Dark City, Appointment with Danger, and The Petty Girl Blues. Then came the role that would define his legacy. In 1974, Morgan joined the cast of MASH, the hit comedy series about the Korean War. He played General Bartford Hamilton, a character who gained great popularity almost immediately.
His work on the show earned him an Emmy Award, and although he was less active in film and television during the 1970s, he still appeared in projects like the 1972 film Snowball Express, the 1979 miniseries The Bastard, and the 1979 television series The Baxters at the White House. By the 1980s, his appearances had become less frequent but still notable. He appeared in the 1987 film Dragnet, a revival of the classic series, and lent his voice to the animated production The Flight of Dragons in 1982. In his later years, he continued to work in television, appearing in The Incident in 1990, Third Rock from the Sun from 1993 to 1996, and episodes of The Love Boat and other series.
Morgan married Eileen Didi in 1940, and the couple remained together until her death in 1985. They had four sons: Christopher, Charles, Daniel, and Paul. In 1986, a year after his first wife died, he remarried. His second wife was Barbara Bushman Koin.
In July 1996, the actor, then eighty-one years old, was charged with domestic violence after an incident involving his seventy-year-old wife. The charges were dropped after he completed a six-month program focused on anger management and domestic violence counseling. When he died in 2011, the entertainment world lost an actor who had worked steadily for decades, moving effortlessly between drama and comedy, film and television.
From the New York stage to Broadway, from Hollywood features to some of the most watched shows in American television history, Harry Morgan left behind a body of work that spanned nearly the entire history of the medium he helped define.