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Biography
Harry Morgan as Colonel Sherman T. Potter
Harry Morgan (born Henry Bratsburg on April 10, 1915 in Detroit, Michigan) is an American television actor of Norwegian extraction. He graduated from Muskegon High School in Muskegon, Michigan..
He is best known as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on M*A*S*H.
Family
Morgan has been married twice, first to Eileen Detchon from 1940 until her death in 1985, and then to Barbara Bushman Quine (granddaughter of silent film star Francis X. Bushman) from 1988 to the present. He had four sons with his first wife, Christopher, Charles, Paul and Daniel (who died in 1982).
Career
Morgan made his debut, originally using the name Henry Morgan, in the 1942 movie To the Shores of Tripoli. His screen name later would become Henry "Harry" Morgan and eventually Harry Morgan, to avoid confusion with the then-popular comedian of the same name on radio and TV.
Morgan continued to play a number of significant roles on the big screen in such films as Dragonwyck (1946), The Glenn Miller Story (1953), Inherit the Wind (1960), How The West Was Won (1962), Frankie and Johnny (1966), and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969).
On TV he played Pete in Pete and Gladys (1960-1962), a spin off of his character in December Bride starring Spring Byington. He is more widely-recognized as Officer Bill Gannon, Joe Friday's partner in the revived version of Dragnet (1967-1970). Morgan had also appeared with Dragnet star Jack Webb in two film noir movies, Dark City (1950) and Appointment with Danger (1951).
In a third-season episode of the television series M*A*S*H, The General Flipped At Dawn, Morgan played a crazed general who wanted to move the 4077th closer to the front line. In the following season, he joined the show's cast as the beloved Colonel Sherman T. Potter. Morgan replaced McLean Stevenson who had left the show at the end of the previous season. Colonel Potter was a career Army officer who was tough yet caring. He was almost like a father figure to the people under his command.
In 1980, Morgan won an Emmy award for his performance on M*A*S*H. Morgan reprised the Potter role in a shortlived spin-off series, After M*A*S*H.
In 1987, Morgan also reprised his Bill Gannon character for a supporting role in the film version of Dragnet, a comedy starring and written by Dan Aykroyd, and co-starring Tom Hanks and Christopher Plummer. On the old TV show, Morgan had usually played Gannon fairly light and comedic, in keeping with his general acting style in those days, and contrasting well with Jack Webb's no-nonsense portrayal of Joe Friday. Curiously, or perhaps purposely, in the film version, he played Gannon as a brusque, authoritarian captain of police, quite different from his Detective Gannon in the 1967 TV show, and rather closer to his characterization of Colonel Potter.
In the 1990s, he played the role of "Judge Stoddard Bell" on the series of The Incident TV movies.
He was on an episode of The Simpsons as Officer Bill Gannon from Dragnet in the 7th season
Morgan also directed episodes for several TV series, including 2 episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and 9 episodes of M*A*S*H.
In 2006, Harry Morgan was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
Harry Morgan also had a guest role on The Jeff Foxworthy Show as Raymond.
