David Ogden Stiers (1942-2018)
David Ogden Stiers was born in Peoria on October 31, 1942 to Kenneth and Margaret Stiers at Saint Francis Hospital (the predecessor of the current OSF Medical Center). The Stiers family looked like any other in Peoria at this point in time - his mother, Margaret, worked as a secretary, while his father, Kenneth, worked at Pabst Blue Ribbon. They all lived in a home on Constantine Avenue in Peoria Heights that his father had built. As fate would have it, young Stiers’ path crossed with a pair of other Peoria stars - Fibber McGee and Molly. As Stiers told the Journal-Star back in 1988, “I vaguely recall meeting Jim and Marion Jordan when I was little, because my grandparents sang in a church choir with them.” The longtime husband and wife’s comedy show, which ran from 1935-1959, is considered to be one of the most popular and enduring radio shows of its time.
As he later recounted his time in Peoria to Bill Knight in his 1988 interview:
““It was the Great American Dream...I have terrific memories of this area. Picnics in Detweiller Park, the ritual of running through the sprinkler in the summer, catching my first fish in the Illinois River - where my father made me throw it back, causing me to suspect he wasn’t my real father.”
Stiers laughed and added that he remembers running away a lot. “There were a number of times I ran away - not out of anger, but to see what was on the other side of the river.”
What did he find? “Europe!” he said. “The world.””
And see the world, he did. The Stiers family moved several times - to Chillicothe, then Urbana, and then to Eugene, Oregon where David graduated from high school. He began attending the University of Oregon before leaving to pursue acting in San Francisco.
Eventually, Stiers was accepted into the Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York City to study drama. While there, he shared a makeup class with another student named William Hurt. Stiers and Hurt would later share the screen together in 1988’s The Accidental Tourist.
Stiers’ TV career started small, with roles in The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Charlie’s Angels, and Kojak, but that all changed in 1977, when he was cast in the CBS hit, M*A*S*H* as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. This role earned him widespread recognition, landing him two Emmy nominations in 1981 and 1982. M*A*S*H* wrapped on February 28, 1983, with over 105.97 million people tuning in to watch the series finale - more than any other scripted show to date. One would think that moving on from such a megahit of a show would be difficult, but according to Stiers, this was not the case for him. He later told the Journal Star that he had no regrets. “M*A*S*H* was great while it lasted…but then you let go. Things fade.” Being known for such an iconic role can be incredibly rewarding, but it can also be a bit of a double-edged sword. In 2002, he remarked, “Even today, people call out the name of my character from that show, and I cringe. That's why I walk so fast and kind of disguise myself. I just can’t have the same conversation 85 times a day.”
But Stiers’ TV career did not end with M*A*S*H*. In the years that followed, he was a prominent guest star on a variety of television shows, including eight appearances in the Perry Mason television films as District Attorney Michael Reston. Stiers also received an Emmy nomination for his role in the 1984 miniseries, The First Olympics: Athens 1896. Many might also recognize the Peoria-born actor from his voice work, in addition to his live-action performances. While his audio credits are too numerous to list here, some of Stiers’ most prominent roles include Cogsworth in 1991's Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Piccolo in 1992’s Porco Rosso, and as Jumba Jookiba in 2002’s Lilo & Stitch.
Despite all of his acting credits and awards, there was another aspect to the arts that was close to Stiers’ heart - classical music. When he had attended Juilliard, he admitted to frequently cutting class to see Hungarian conductor Georg Solti’s master classes. But in addition to being a gifted musician, Stiers also had the passion and the confidence for conducting. This is quite remarkable considering, as he put it, “it’s a field into which I totally BS’d my way.” After numerous conducting stints with orchestras in Chicago, San Diego, Honolulu, Portland, Eugene, Tucson, Dallas, and Fort Wayne, Stiers became the resident conductor of the Newport Symphony. At the time of his death, he had guest conducted for more than 70 orchestras across the globe.
In 1989, Stiers’ passion for conducting would bring him back home as the guest conductor for the Peoria Symphony Orchestra. The $100 ticket affair was to raise money for the PSO to perform in the prestigious Bodensee Festival in Peoria’ sister city Friedrichshafen, (West) Germany. Beforehand, Stiers remarked that the all-Mozart program “scares the beegeebers out of me, because Mozart’s works are close to perfection. There’s nothing for a conductor to do except to make sure what one sees on paper emerges from the sections.” During rehearsals for the concert, Stiers spent some time with Bradley University fine arts students discussing life as an actor. One piece of advice that he gave the audience was, “You owe always the best performance you are capable of giving.”
But those words applied to more than just Stiers’ on-screen performances. One might say that his most personal “performance” was hiding his sexuality from the rest of the world. But on May 6, 2009, Stiers felt like he could no longer be afraid, and publicly stated in an interview for the first time, “I am [gay]. Very proud to be so". As ABC News reported at the time:
“The actor said he kept his homosexuality under wraps for years because he feared coming out would hurt his career. But being that he has not experienced any anti-gay discrimination in the movie industry recently, Ogden Stiers is reconsidering what exactly made him stay in the closet for so long.
"I haven't witnessed such things occurring in a long, long time," he said about anti-gay discrimination, adding that his personal concerns may have clouded his views. "I should say in regards to this that many of my fears were in modern times self-invented. I've been working internally on whether they were the problem, or if I just continued using them as an excuse."
He said he thought staying quiet about his sexuality would keep his income secure.
"I enjoy working, and even though many have this idealistic belief that the entertainment industry and studios like Walt Disney are gay friendly," they weren't always, he said. "For the most part they are, but that doesn't mean for them that business does not come first. It's a matter of economics…A lot of my income has been derived from voicing Disney and family programming."
Ogden Stiers also added that the flamboyant nature of some of his animated roles contributed to his decision to hide his sexuality.
"Cogsworth, the character I did on 'Beauty and the Beast,' could be a bit flamboyant onscreen, because basically, he is a cartoon," he said. "But they didn't want Cogsworth to become Disney's gay character, because it got around a gay man was playing him."
Disney is the parent company of ABC News. Asked to respond to Ogden Stiers' comments, a Disney Studio spokesperson said, "Casting decisions are made solely on the basis of who is the best actor or actress for any given role."
What's Odgen Stiers' impetus for coming out now? He's hoping to settle down with someone and make their romance public.
"I wish to spend my life's twilight being just who I am," he said. "I could claim noble reasons as coming out in order to move gay rights forward, but I must admit it is for far more selfish reasons. Now is the time I wish to find someone, and I do not desire to force any potential partner to live a life of extreme discretion with me.””
Sadly, the hometown reaction to this news was not entirely positive. Local columnist Phil Luciano published an editorial in the Journal Star on May 8, 2009 entitled, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Care.” In it, Luciano stated: “Frankly, I don't care to think about the sexcapades of many people, certainly not those of a 66-year-old,” while adding, “if Ogden Stiers feels the need to declare his sexuality, maybe I should be prudent and do likewise: I am heterosexual. There you have it: I like babes. Always have. My burden is lifted.” Some decried Luciano’s editorial as intolerant and ignorant. One response, published several days later, concluded by stating, “Hopefully there will come a day when a public figure can come out of the closet without a local-yokel, knee-jerk columnist feeling the need to sarcastically laugh, jeer or write a thinly veiled homophobic piece about it.”
Stiers continued acting for several more years, both on and off camera, until 2015. On March 3, 2018, David Ogden Stiers died peacefully in his Newport home, having succumbed to the bladder cancer that he had been battling.
