Suicide is Painless, but Pneumonia Hurts Like a Bitch

Or
In Potter’s Field

Or
Potted

Or
M*A*S*Hed
Harry Morgan, barely remembered for playing Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele, on M*A*S*H, has died of pneumonia at the age of 96. At least M*A*S*H’s producers were banking that he would be barely remembered when they brought back Morgan less than a year after his guest appearance as a batty general to replace Lt. Col. Henry Blake as the commander of the 4077th. Morgan won an Emmy for his portrayal of the acerbicly homespun Col. Sherman T. Potter, the lone regular Army officer in a camp full of oddballs. But then Morgan was experienced as a replacement character, having filled in for Ben Alexander’s Frank Smith and what passed for comic relief as Bill Gannon on the reboot of Dragnet, a role he reprised on The Simpsons and the 1987 Dragnet movie. Before those roles, he was a classic “hey, it’s that guy” in more than 100 movie roles, including the hanging-happy illiterate in The Ox-Bow Incident, one of Will Kane’s cowardly “friends” in High Noon, the Darwin-denying judge in Inherit the Wind, the blustering sheriff watching over J.B. Books’ last days in The Shootist and an interstellar feline-chasing general in The Cat From Outer Space.