Dennis Olson
New member
Larry Linville, Maj. Burns of TV's M+A+S+H, Dies
April 11, 2000 3:50 am EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Larry Linville, who played the whining surgeon Maj. Frank Burns on the hit television comedy M+A+S+H, died late on Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the hospital said early Tuesday.
He was 60 years old.
Linville, who had a cancerous lung removed two years ago, was readmitted to the hospital Sunday suffering from complications from pneumonia, according to CBS radio news.
Burns was best known for his extramarital affair with head nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, played by Loretta Swit, in the comedy about a field hospital unit in Korea during the early-1950s war.
"My scenes with Loretta were quite extraordinary because we were a team," he said in a taped interview aired on CBS radio. "We were Mutt and Jeff, Roadrunner and Coyote, whatever, we were a proper pair."
He was the foil of the show's stars, Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers, the hospital unit's best doctors who used gallows humor, practical jokes and sexual hijinks to heap fun on their hapless colleague, and to retain their sanity while working close to the front lines.
Linville was an original member for the first five years of the long-running series, which aired on CBS-TV from 1972 to 1983, or nearly four times the duration of the war it depicted.
A spokeswoman at Sloan-Kettering could not provide additional information.
April 11, 2000 3:50 am EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Larry Linville, who played the whining surgeon Maj. Frank Burns on the hit television comedy M+A+S+H, died late on Monday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the hospital said early Tuesday.
He was 60 years old.
Linville, who had a cancerous lung removed two years ago, was readmitted to the hospital Sunday suffering from complications from pneumonia, according to CBS radio news.
Burns was best known for his extramarital affair with head nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, played by Loretta Swit, in the comedy about a field hospital unit in Korea during the early-1950s war.
"My scenes with Loretta were quite extraordinary because we were a team," he said in a taped interview aired on CBS radio. "We were Mutt and Jeff, Roadrunner and Coyote, whatever, we were a proper pair."
He was the foil of the show's stars, Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers, the hospital unit's best doctors who used gallows humor, practical jokes and sexual hijinks to heap fun on their hapless colleague, and to retain their sanity while working close to the front lines.
Linville was an original member for the first five years of the long-running series, which aired on CBS-TV from 1972 to 1983, or nearly four times the duration of the war it depicted.
A spokeswoman at Sloan-Kettering could not provide additional information.
