Wayne Rogers

Wayne Rogers
Rogers as Trapper in M*A*S*H, 1972
Born	William Wayne McMillan Rogers III (1933-04-07)April 7, 1933 Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
Died	December 31, 2015(2015-12-31) (aged 82) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Princeton University, 1954
Military career
Allegiance	United States
Service / branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1954–1956
Rank	Ensign
Unit	USS Denebola, navigator
Battles / wars	Cold War
Occupations	Actor investor television personality
Years active	1959–2014
Spouses	Mitzi McWhorter ​ ​ (m. 1960; div. 1983)​ Amy Hirsh ​ (m. 1988)​
Children	2

William Wayne McMillan Rogers III (April 7, 1933 – December 31, 2015) was an American actor, known for playing the role of Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre in the CBS television series M*A*S*H and as Dr. Charley Michaels on House Calls (1979–1982).

He was a regular panel member on the Fox News Channel stock investment television program Cashin' In as a result of having built a career as an investor, investment strategist, adviser, and money manager. Rogers also studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City.

Early life

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Rogers attended Ramsay High School in Birmingham and was a graduate of the Webb School in Bell Buckle, Tennessee. He earned a history degree from Princeton University in 1954. He was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club and the eating club Tiger Inn. After college, Rogers served as an officer in the United States Navy, as a navigator on the USS Denebola, and planned to enter Harvard Law School before he became an actor.

Career

Early career

Rogers appeared on television in both dramas and sitcoms such as The Invaders, The F.B.I., Combat!, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Wanted Dead or Alive, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and The Fugitive, and had a small supporting role in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke. He also appeared on The Big Valley in 1968.

He played Slim Davis on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow in 1959. He also played a role in Odds Against Tomorrow, which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1960 as Best Film Promoting International Understanding. He guest starred on an episode of the CBS western Johnny Ringo.

Rogers co-starred with Robert Bray and Richard Eyer in the western series Stagecoach West on ABC from 1960 to 1961.

Rogers was cast as U.S. Army Lieutenant Richard Henry Pratt in 1965 in Death Valley Days.

He appeared on the Cannon episode "Call Unicorn" in 1971.

M*A*S*H (1972–1975)

When Rogers was approached for M*A*S*H, he planned to audition for the role of Hawkeye Pierce. He found the character too cynical, however, and asked to screen test as Trapper John, whose outlook was brighter. Rogers was told that Trapper and Hawkeye would have equal importance as characters. That changed after Alan Alda, whose acting career and résumé up to that point had outshone that of Rogers, was cast as Hawkeye and proved to be more popular with the audience. Rogers enjoyed working with Alda and the rest of the cast as a whole (Alda and Rogers quickly became close friends), but eventually chafed that the writers were devoting the show's best humorous and dramatic moments to Alda.

When the writers took the liberty of making Hawkeye a thoracic surgeon in the episode "Dear Dad" (December 17, 1972), even though Trapper was the unit's only thoracic surgeon in the movie and the novel, Rogers felt Trapper had been stripped of his credentials. He decided to leave the show between production of the third and fourth seasons, making his last on-screen appearance in the episode Abyssinia, Henry, which was also the final episode for fellow cast member McLean Stevenson who had portrayed Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake.

On the M*A*S*H 30th Anniversary Reunion Television Special aired by Fox-TV in 2002, Rogers spoke on the differences between the Hawkeye and Trapper characters, saying, "Alan [Alda] and I both used to discuss ways on how to distinguish the differences between the two characters as to where there would be a variance.... My character [Trapper John McIntyre] was a little more impulsive [than Hawkeye]." Rogers considerably reduced his Alabama accent for the character of Trapper.

He succeeded Elliott Gould, who had played the character in the Robert Altman movie MASH, and was himself succeeded by Pernell Roberts on the M*A*S*H spin-off Trapper John, M.D. After three seasons, Rogers left the show after a contract dispute with the producers.

Post-M*A*S*H work

After leaving M*A*S*H, Rogers appeared as an FBI agent in the 1975 NBC-TV movie Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan, as Michael Stone in the 1980 miniseries Top of the Hill, and as civil rights attorney Morris Dees in 1996's Ghosts of Mississippi. He also starred in the short-lived 1976 period detective series City of Angels and the 1979–1982 CBS series House Calls, first with Lynn Redgrave (both were nominated for Golden Globes in 1981, as best actor and best actress in TV comedy, but did not win) and then later with actress Sharon Gless. Rogers also appeared in the 1980s miniseries Chiefs.

Rogers then was a guest star five times in a recurring role on CBS's Murder, She Wrote. He has served as an executive producer and producer in both television and film, and as a screenwriter, and a director.

Rogers also starred in several other movies. In 1981, he played the role of an art forger in Roger Vadim's The Hot Touch. Then, in the movie The Gig (1985), alongside Cleavon Little, he was a jazz musician-hobbyist whose group has an opportunity to play a Catskills resort and must confront failure. Also in 1985, he starred opposite Barbara Eden in the televised reunion movie I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later based on the 1960s situation comedy I Dream of Jeannie. Rogers took on the role of Major Tony Nelson, which was originally portrayed by Larry Hagman in the television series when Hagman was unavailable to reprise the character he had originated. In 1986, Rogers hosted the short-lived CBS television series High Risk. He also starred as Walter Duncan in the 1987 movie Race Against the Harvest. In 1990, Rogers co-starred with Connie Selleca in the CBS made-for-television movie Miracle Landing based on the true story of the 1988 Aloha Airlines Flight 243 crash landing after an explosive cabin depressurization.

Financial career

Rogers began to test the stock and real estate markets during his tenure as a M*A*S*H cast member and became a successful money manager and investor. In 1988 and 1990, he appeared before the United States House Committee on the Judiciary as an expert witness, testifying in favor of retaining the banking laws enacted under the Glass–Steagall Legislation act of 1933. He appeared regularly as a panel member on the Fox Business Network cable TV stocks investment/stocks news program Cashin' In, hosted since 2013 by Fox News anchor Eric Bolling. In August 2006, Rogers was elected to the board of directors of Vishay Intertechnology, Inc., a Fortune 1000 manufacturer of semiconductors and electronic components. He was also the head of Wayne Rogers & Co., a stock trading investment corporation.

On April 23, 2012, Rogers signed as the new spokesman for Senior Home Loans, a direct reverse mortgage lender headquartered in Long Island, New York.

Awards

Rogers received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005.

Personal life and death

As a young actor, Rogers met actress Mitzi McWhorter in New York in the late 1950s. They married in 1960, had two children, and divorced in 1983. They had been separated for almost four years prior to the divorce. Rogers married his second wife, Amy Hirsh, in 1988.

In 2001, Rogers and his wife moved to Destin, Florida.

Rogers died on December 31, 2015, from complications of pneumonia in Los Angeles at the age of 82. He died exactly one year before fellow M*A*S*H cast member William Christopher.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1959	Odds Against Tomorrow	Soldier In Bar
1959	Gunsmoke	Tom	Season 5 Episode 14: "False Witness"
1960	Death Valley Days	George Schmidtlein	Season 8 Episode 36: "Mission to the Mountains"
1960	The Millionaire	Allan Merrick	Season 6 Episode 17: "The Story of Sylvia Merrick"
1960	Wanted Dead or Alive	Ash Langford	Season 2 Episode 18: "Angela
1960	Stagecoach West	Luke Perry	Main cast; 38 Episodes
1962	Alfred Hitchcock Presents	Kenneth	Season 7 Episode 37: "The Big Kick"
1962	Gunsmoke	Brack	Season 7 Episode 17: "Cody's Code"
1963	Have Gun Will Travel	Daniel	Season 6 Episode 19: "The Debutante"
1964	Dr. Sex	Raincoat Man	Uncredited
1964	Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.	Captain	Season 1 Episode 10: "A Date for the Colonel's Daughter"
1965	Gunsmoke	Stretch Morgan	Season 11 Episode 5: "Taps for Old Jeb"
1965	Death Valley Days	Lieutenant Richard H. Pratt	Season 13 Episode 24: "The Journey"
1965	The Glory Guys	Lieutenant Mike Moran
1965	Honey West	Jerry, the Photographer (villain)	Season 1 Episode 14: "Invitation to Limbo"
1966	Chamber of Horrors	Sergeant Jim Albertson
1966	Combat!	Reiser	Season 5 Episode 1: "The Gun"
1966	The Fugitive	Sergeant Fred Bragin	Season 3 Episode 23: "The Chinese Sunset"
1967	Cool Hand Luke	"Gambler"
1967	The Invaders	Lieutenant Matteson	Season 2 Episode 7: "The Spores"
1968	The Big Valley	Don Jarvis	Season 4 Episode 6: "The Jonah"
1970	WUSA	Minter
1971	Cannon	Steve	Season 1 Episode 3: "Call Unicorn"
1972	Pocket Money	"Stretch" Russell
1972–1975	M*A*S*H	Captain "Trapper" John McIntyre	Main cast; Seasons 1 through 3
1973	Barnaby Jones	Gil Atkens	Season 2 Episode 3: "Echo of a Murder"
1975	Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan	FBI Special Agent Don Foster
1976	City of Angels	Jake Axminster	13 episodes
1977	It Happened One Christmas	George Hatch	TV movie
1978	Once in Paris...	Michael Moore
1979–1982	House Calls	Dr. Charley Michaels	57 episodes
1981	The Hot Touch	Danny Fairchild
1983	Chiefs	Will Henry Lee	TV miniseries
1985	I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later	Colonel Tony Nelson	TV movie
1985	The Gig	Marty Flynn
1987	The Killing Time	Jake Winslow
1987	Race Against the Harvest	Walter Duncan	TV Movie
1989	Passion and Paradise	Raymond Schindler	TV movie
1990	Miracle Landing	Bob Schornstheimer	TV movie
1993	The Goodbye Bird	Ray Whitney
1993	Murder, She Wrote	Charlie Garrett	Season 9 Episode 13: "Dead Eye"
1994	Murder, She Wrote	Charlie Garrett	Season 10 Episode 14: "Deadly Assets"
1994	Murder, She Wrote	Charlie Garrett	Season 11 Episode 7: "Fatal Paradise"
1995	Murder, She Wrote	Charlie Garrett	Season 12 Episode 2: "A Quaking in Aspen"
1995	Murder, She Wrote	Charlie Garrett	Season 12 Episode 9: "Dedaly Bidding"
1996	Ghosts of Mississippi	Morris Dees
1997	Diagnosis: Murder	Dr. Ken Morrisay	Season 4 Episode 22: "Physician, Murder Thyself"
1999	Love Lies Bleeding	Inspector Abberline
2000	Coo Coo Cafe
2001	Frozen with Fear	Charles Sullivan
2002	Three Days of Rain	Business Man
2003	Nobody Knows Anything!	Gun Schnook	(final film role)

External links

• Wayne Rogers at IMDb
• Wayne Rogers at the Internet Broadway Database