Ed Flanders

Edward Paul Flanders was born on December 29, 1934, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Bernice and Francis Michael Grey Flanders. His mother died in an automobile crash when Flanders was fourteen years old. He attended Camden High School in Minneapolis, where he played hockey, and graduated in 1952. Following graduation, he enlisted in the United States Army, serving as a technician before beginning his professional acting career.

Flanders made his Broadway debut in 1967 and remained active on the New York stage through 1979. His Broadway credits include The Birthday Party, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Last Licks. His performance in the 1973 Broadway production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, Eugene O'Neill's drama, earned him both a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance, both in 1974. He later reprised his role in the 1975 television film adaptation of the same play, winning a Primetime Emmy Award in 1976 for that performance.

Alongside his stage work, Flanders built an extensive television career beginning in the late 1960s. Between 1967 and 1975, he appeared in more than a dozen American television series, including six episodes of Hawaii Five-O, in which he portrayed five different characters across those appearances. His television credits from this period include Cimarron Strip, Daniel Boone, The Name of the Game, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, Ironside, Kung Fu, Marcus Welby M.D., and Barnaby Jones, among others. In 1972, he appeared in the first-season M*A*S*H episode "Yankee Doodle Doctor" as Lt. Duane William Bricker, a film director visiting the 4077th to make a documentary. He also appeared in a 1975 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as Father Terrance Brian.

Flanders became particularly associated with the role of President Harry S. Truman, portraying him in more separate productions than any other actor. He played Truman in the 1976 television film Truman at Potsdam, as well as in Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking and in the 1977 theatrical film MacArthur, in which he received second billing to Gregory Peck, who starred as General Douglas MacArthur. In 1977, Flanders also played nationally known journalist William Allen White in the television film Mary White, based on the eulogy White wrote following his daughter's death in a horseback-riding accident in 1922. He appeared in the 1979 television miniseries Salem's Lot as Dr. Bill Norton, and in the 1983 television drama Special Bulletin as news anchor John Woodley, in a story centered on a group of environmentalists threatening to detonate a nuclear weapon in Charleston, South Carolina.

In feature films, Flanders took on significant roles in two productions based on novels by William Peter Blatty. In The Ninth Configuration (1980), he played Col. Richard Fell, a self-effacing medic at a secret U.S. Army psychiatric facility, opposite Stacy Keach. A decade later, he appeared alongside George C. Scott in The Exorcist III (1990), playing Father Dyer, based on Blatty's novel Legion.

In 1982, Flanders began his most prominent role, that of Dr. Donald Westphall in the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere, a part he held through 1988 across 120 episodes. The role earned him five Primetime Emmy Award nominations as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and he won the award in 1983. After a contentious departure from the series in 1987, he returned for two additional episodes in 1988, including the series finale. His exit episode as a regular cast member was titled "Moon for the Misbegotten," a reference to the O'Neill play that had brought him his Tony Award. Following St. Elsewhere, Flanders worked again with executive producer Bruce Paltrow on the short-lived 1994 CBS series The Road Home.

Flanders was nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards in total over the course of his career, winning three times: in 1976, 1977, and 1983. He had been married to actress Ellen Geer, with whom he had a son, Ian Geer Flanders, born in 1966; the couple later divorced. In September 1988, Flanders sustained chronic back injuries in an automobile crash in Salyer, California. He died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on February 22, 1995, in Denny, California, at the age of sixty.