Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, Col. Potter!

This week the world lost a wonderful character actor. Harry Morgan passed away at his home in California at age 96. Harry Morgan played countless roles in film and television, but my all time favorite was his run as Col. Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H from 1975-1983. M*A*S*H ranks as one of my favorite TV shows right up there with The Golden Girls, The Andy Griffith Show,  and The Dick Van Dyke Show. What made all of these shows great was their wonderful ensemble casts. M*A*S*H faced a unique challenge, however, as their ensemble changed several times. Other shows who dealt with actors who played principle roles leaving the show rarely survived, but M*A*S*H seemed to thrive on it and beautifully evolve. Harry Morgan stepped into the cast as Col. Potter after a beloved character on the show, Col. Henry Blake got his discharge to go home, but there was a twist after the bittersweet sendoff. In one of the most shocking surprise endings in television history, Radar stumbles into the operating room without a mask to tell the surgeons that Henry's plane was shot down and crashed into the Sea of Japan with no survivors.

How do you follow that? The writing staff had a gift when it came to introducing new characters as others left. Granted, the setting of war helped as, realistically, people come and go all the time, but I think their strength was in the fact that they never tried to write the character who came in to be just like the one that left. They were always completely different. So was the case when actor, Harry Morgan, came onto the scene as the new commanding officer of the rag tag group of doctors and nurses. Morgan's character, Sherman Potter, was a 360 degree turn around from Henry Blake. He was regular army, something the camp wasn't used to, but by the end of the first episode, the viewer loves him just as much. One of my very favorite scenes involves all the staff giving the new Colonel welcome gifts. Radar, the beloved company clerk, who thought of Blake as a father, leads the last gift into the office. It's a horse. The look on Harry Morgan's face is one I never will forget. He is instantly moved, and thinking about it right now as I type, I am getting teary eyed. He had many moments like that as he stayed with the cast until the last episode aired in 1983. The following is a clip that I think is a particularly appropriate farewell. There will be no more long night. The long, long trail is over. Rest in Peace.