Edward Paul Flanders (December 29, 1934 – February 22, 1995) was an American actor. He is best known for playing Dr. Donald Westphall in the medical drama series St. Elsewhere (1982–1988). 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.
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Early life
Ed Flanders was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of Bernice (née Brown) and Francis Michael Grey Flanders. His mother was killed in an automobile crash when he was 14.
After graduating from Camden High School in Minneapolis (where he played hockey) in 1952, Flanders enlisted in the United States Army, where he worked 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 (as five different characters). During this time, he was also prolific in TV movies. He married actress Ellen Geer, with whom he had a son, Ian Geer Flanders (born 1966), 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, Flanders began playing the part of the greatly esteemed senior Dr. Donald Westphall in St. Elsewhere. This was a role 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, Flanders' exit as a regular cast member on St. Elsewhere was titled "Moon for the Misbegotten", alluding to the play that had won him a Tony Award. The episode gained much publicity, as Dr. Westphall left the hospital after "mooning" his new boss, Dr. John Gideon, saying "You can kiss my ass, pal". Flanders continued his working relationship with executive producer Bruce Paltrow in the short-lived 1994 CBS series The Road Home.
Other notable roles
In addition to his six-year role as Dr. Donald Westphall, Flanders is noted as the person who has portrayed U.S. President Harry Truman more times, and in more separate productions, than any other actor. He played the role of Truman at the end of World War II and during the Korean War in the Hallmark episode Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking, and in the movies Truman at Potsdam 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 (1980), he plays Col. Richard Fell, a self-effacing medic at a secret U.S. Army psychiatric facility who assists Marine psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach). 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 (1966). In 1990, Flanders played Father Dyer alongside star George C. Scott in Blatty's The Exorcist III based on the novel Legion.
Flanders appeared 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 played the journalist William Allen White in the 1977 made-for-TV movie Mary White. The movie was based on the famous eulogy that White wrote about his daughter following her death in a horseback-riding accident in 1922. Flanders also appeared in the 1979 made-for-TV horror-miniseries Salem's Lot as Dr. Bill Norton. He then played television news anchor John Woodley in the 1983 made-for-TV suspense drama Special Bulletin, about a group of anti-nuclear activists who threaten to detonate a nuclear weapon in Charleston, South Carolina.
Personal life
Flanders was married three times: to Bennye Kelly, from 1954 to 1959; to actress Ellen Geer, from 1963 to 1968; and to Cody Lambert, from 1985 to 1992. He was the father to four children in total. His son with Ellen Geer, Ian Geer Flanders, who was born in 1966, was briefly a child actor.
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 (episode: "The Roarer") as Arliss Blynn
1969: Daniel Boone (episode: "The Traitor") as Lackland
1969: Hawaii Five-O (episode: "Up Tight") as Professor David Stone
1970: Hawaii Five-O (episode: "Three Dead Cows At Makapu") as Dr. Alexander Kline
1971: The Name of the Game (episode: "Beware of the Watchdog") as Lazlo Subich
1971: Travis Logan D.A. as Psychiatrist
1971: Bearcats! (episode: "The Hostage") as Ben Tillman
1971: Goodbye, Raggedy Ann (TV movie) as David Bevin
1971: McMillan & Wife (episode: "Husbands, Wives and Killers") as Tom Benton
1971: Mission Impossible (episode: "Blues") as Joe Belker
1972: Mannix (episode: "A Walk in the Shadows") as Tom Farnom
1972: Nichols a.k.a. James Garner as Nichols (episode: "Fight of the Century")
1972: Cade's County (episode: "The Fake") as Ben Crawford
1972: Ironside (episode: "Five days in the Death of Sgt. Brown: Part 1") as Phil McIver
1972: The Bold Ones: The New Doctors a.k.a. The New Doctors (episode: "Five Days in the Death of Sgt Brown: Part II") as Phil McIver
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 (TV Movie) as Milo Perkins
1973: Hunter (TV Movie) as Dr Miles
1974: Indict and Convict (TV Movie) as Timothy Fitzgerald
1974: Things in Their Season (TV Movie) as Carl Gerlach
1975: The Legend of Lizzie Borden (TV Movie) as Hosea Knowlton
1975: Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (TV Movie) as Ralph Paine
1975: A Moon for the Misbegotten (TV Movie) as Phil Hogan
1976: Eleanor and Franklin (TV Movie) as Louis Howe
1976: The Sad and Lonely Sundays (TV Movie) as Dr Frankman
1976: Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking (TV Movie) as President Harry S. Truman
1977: The Amazing Howard Hughes (TV Movie) as Noah Dietrich
1977: MacArthur as President Harry S. Truman
1977: Mary White (TV Movie) 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