Ed Flanders


Edward Paul Flanders was an American actor. He is best known for playing Dr. Donald Westphall in the medical drama series St. Elsewhere. Flanders was nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards and won three times in 1976, 1977, and 1983.
He received a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his performance in the 1973 production of A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Early life

Flanders was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Bernice and Francis Michael Grey Flanders. His mother was killed in an automobile crash when he was 14. After graduating from Camden High School in 1952, he enlisted in the United States Army, where he served as an X-ray technician.

Early career

After his service with the United States Army ended, Flanders began his acting career on Broadway before moving on to guest parts in television series. From 1967 through 1975, Flanders appeared in more than a dozen American TV shows, including six appearances on Hawaii Five-O. During this time, he was also prolific in TV movies. He married actress Ellen Geer, with whom he had a son, Ian Geer Flanders, before they divorced.
In the late 1970s, Flanders moved away from small TV roles to take major credits in both TV and feature films, while continuing his stage career. In 1974, Flanders won a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Dramatic Presentation for A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill on Broadway. In 1975 Ed Flanders, played in an episode of “ The Mary Tyler Moore Show, as Fr. Terrance Brian. He also won an Emmy award in 1976 for the TV movie adaptation of A Moon for the Misbegotten.

''St. Elsewhere''

In 1982, he began his role in St. Elsewhere that earned him five Emmy Award nominations as Outstanding Lead Actor in a TV Series, winning the award in 1983. After a stormy departure from the series in 1987, he returned for two more episodes in 1988, including the series finale. During a scene in which Westphall addressed the staff, Flanders began speaking extemporaneously about the quality of art, which had to be edited for broadcast. Although he later returned for guest appearances, his exit on St. Elsewhere as a regular cast member was titled "Moon for the Misbegotten" after the play that won him a Tony Award. The episode gained much publicity as Westphall left the hospital after "mooning" his new boss, Dr. John Gideon. Flanders continued his working relationship with executive producer Bruce Paltrow in the short-lived 1994 CBS series The Road Home.

Notable roles

In addition to his six-year role as Dr. Donald Westphall, Flanders is noted as the actor who has played President Harry Truman more times, and in more separate productions, than any other. He portrayed Truman at the end of World War II and during the Korean War in Truman at Potsdam, Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking, and MacArthur. In MacArthur, Flanders had second billing to Gregory Peck's lead as General Douglas MacArthur.
In feature films, Flanders performed major roles in two dark movies based on novels by William Peter Blatty. In the first, The Ninth Configuration, he plays Col. Richard Fell, a self-effacing medic at a secret U.S. Army psychiatric facility who assists Marine psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane. The film was based on Blatty's 1978 novel of the same name, itself a reworking of his earlier, darkly satirical novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane. In 1990, Flanders played Father Dyer alongside star George C. Scott in Blatty's The Exorcist III based on the novel Legion.
Flanders was in the M*A*S*H first-season episode "Yankee Doodle Doctor", playing film director Lt. Duane William Bricker, who is making a documentary about M*A*S*H units and visits the 4077th. After Hawkeye and Trapper sabotage his effort, Bricker abandons the project and leaves.
Flanders also played nationally known journalist William Allen White in the 1977 made-for-TV movie Mary White. This movie was based on the famous eulogy White wrote about his daughter following her death in 1922 in a horseback-riding accident. He also appeared in the 1979 made-for-TV-horror-miniseries Salem's Lot as Dr. Bill Norton, and played news anchor John Woodley in the 1983 made-for-TV suspense drama Special Bulletin, about a group of environmentalists who threaten to detonate a nuclear weapon in Charleston, South Carolina.

Later life and death

After three divorces, chronic pain from a back injury sustained in an automobile crash in Salyer, California, on September 26, 1988, and lifelong depression, Flanders died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on February 22, 1995, in Denny, California, at the age of 60. No suicide note was found, and his remains were cremated.

Filmography

Television

  • 1967: Cimarron Strip as Arliss Blynn
  • 1969: Daniel Boone as Lackland
  • 1969: Hawaii Five-O as Professor David Stone
  • 1971: The Name of the Game as Lazlo Subich
  • 1971: Travis Logan D.A. as Psychiatrist
  • 1971: Bearcats! as Ben Tillman
  • 1971: Goodbye, Raggedy Ann as David Bevin
  • 1971: McMillan & Wife as Tom Benton
  • 1971: Mission Impossible as Joe Belker
  • 1972: Mannix as Tom Farnom
  • 1972: Nichols a.k.a. James Garner as Nichols
  • 1972: Cade's County as Ben Crawford
  • 1972: Ironside as Phil McIver
  • 1972: The Bold Ones: The New Doctors a.k.a. The New Doctors as Phil McIver
  • 1972: M*A*S*H as Lt Dwayne Bricker
  • 1972: Banyon as Sergeant Randall
  • 1973: Kung Fu as Alonzo Davis
  • 1973: Marcus Welby, M.D. a.k.a. Robert Young, Family Doctor as Magruder
  • 1974: Barnaby Jones as "Doc" Fred Tucker
  • 1969–1975: Hawaii Five-O :
  • *1969 "Up Tight" as David Stone
  • *1970 "Three Dead Cows at Makapuu" as Dr Alexander Kline
  • *1970 "The Guarnerius Caper" as Dmitri Rostov
  • *1972 "While You're at It, Bring in the Moon" as Byers
  • *1974 "One Born Every Minute" as Joe Connors
  • *1975 "And the Horse Jumped Over the Moon" as Bernie Ross
  • 1975: The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Father Terrance Brian
  • 1975: The Legend of Lizzie Borden as Hosea Knowlton
  • 1975: Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan as Justice Department attorney Ralph Paine
  • 1976: Hallmark Hall of Fame as President Harry S Truman
  • 1979: Backstairs at the White House as President Calvin Coolidge
  • 1979: Blind Ambition as Charles Shaffer
  • 1979: Salem's Lot a.k.a. Blood Thirst as Dr Bill Norton
  • 1982–1988: St. Elsewhere - 120 episodes as Dr. Donald Westphall
  • 1993: Jack's Place as Marcus Toback
  • 1994: The Road Home as William Babineaux

    Films

  • 1970: The Grasshopper or Passions or The Passing of Evil as Jack Benton
  • 1972: The Trial of the Catonsville Nine as Father Daniel Berrigan
  • 1972: The Snoop Sisters or The Female Instinct as Milo Perkins
  • 1973: Hunter as Dr Miles
  • 1974: Indict and Convict as Timothy Fitzgerald
  • 1974: Things in Their Season as Carl Gerlach
  • 1975: The Legend of Lizzie Borden as Hosea Knowlton
  • 1975: Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan as Ralph Paine
  • 1975: A Moon for the Misbegotten as Phil Hogan
  • 1976: Eleanor and Franklin as Louis Howe
  • 1976: The Sad and Lonely Sundays as Dr Frankman
  • 1976: Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking as President Harry S. Truman
  • 1977: The Amazing Howard Hughes as Noah Dietrich
  • 1977: MacArthur as President Harry S. Truman
  • 1977: Mary White as William Allen White
  • 1979: Salem's Lot as Dr. Bill Norton
  • 1980: The Ninth Configuration or Twinkle, Twinkle, Killer Kane as Col. Richard Fell
  • 1981: Inchon as President Harry S. Truman
  • 1981: True Confessions as Dan T. Campion
  • 1981: The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper or Pursuit as Brigadier
  • 1981: Skokie or Once They Marched Through a Thousand Towns as Mayor Albert J. Smith
  • 1982: Tomorrow's Child as Anders Stenslund
  • 1983: Special Bulletin as John Woodley
  • 1989: The Final Days as Leonard Garment
  • 1990: The Exorcist III as Father Joseph Dyer
  • 1991: The Perfect Tribute as Warren
  • 1992: Citizen Cohn as Joseph N. Welch
  • 1993: Message from Nam as Ed Wilson
  • 1995: Bye Bye Love as Walter Sims

    Awards and nominations

Television

Theatre