Alan Fudge

Alan Fudge (February 27, 1944 – October 10, 2011) was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television over several decades. Born in Wichita, Kansas, he relocated to Tucson, Arizona, at the age of five, where he began his performing life through Mary MacMurtrie's Children's Theater and the Tucson Little Theater. He went on to study theater at the University of Arizona, earning the institution's Best Actor Award in two separate seasons. During one summer while at university, he worked with the Globe Theater in San Diego.

Fudge's stage career brought him to some of the country's prominent regional theaters before his Broadway years. He performed at the Charles Playhouse in Boston and spent three years with the APA-Phoenix Theatre. His Broadway tenure ran from 1966 to 1969 and included a substantial number of productions. He was part of the original cast of War and Peace at the Lyceum Theatre in 1967. His additional Broadway credits included We, Comrades Three and The School for Scandal in 1966; You Can't Take It With You, The Wild Duck, and The Cherry Orchard in 1967; Pantagleize, The Show Off, and Hamlet, the last of which closed out his Broadway work in 1969.

On television, Fudge took on recurring and series-regular roles across multiple decades. He played C. W. Crawford in the adventure series Man from Atlantis, Jim Kimbrough in the crime drama Eischied, and Lou Dalton in the long-running family drama 7th Heaven. He also appeared in the series Paper Dolls and Bodies of Evidence. In 1975, Fudge was among the finalists — alongside Mike Farrell and James Cromwell — for the recurring role of B. J. Hunnicutt on M*A*S*H. Farrell was ultimately cast, but Fudge appeared in the show's fourth season in the episode "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", playing a wounded soldier who believes himself to be Jesus Christ. That episode received a Humanitas Prize nomination. He also appeared in television movies connected to established franchises, including Columbo: Columbo Goes to the Guillotine, Columbo: Columbo Goes to College, Matlock: The Witness Killings, and Murder, She Wrote: A Story to Die For.

Fudge's film work included Airport 1975 (1974), Bug (1975), Capricorn One (1978), Chapter Two (1979), The Border (1982), Brainstorm (1983), The Natural (1984), My Demon Lover (1987), and Edward Scissorhands (1990). He died in Los Angeles on October 10, 2011, at the age of 67, from lung and liver cancer.