WAYNE ROGERS

(7 April 1933 - 31 December 2015)

US actor who took up drama while in the Navy, first appearing off-Broadway and in regional theatre. Eventually a daytime TV soap and bit parts in films got him noticed and he wrote and appeared in a sci-fi spoof, The Astro-Zombies (1968). When M*A*S*H came along on TV in 1972 he was cast as Trapper John and his fame was sealed for evermore. After that he appeared in more TV movies and mini-series and some unremarkable films and the likes of House Calls, Once Upon a Murder and Murder, She Wrote, which never repeated Rogers’s success as Trapper John. He made his last film in 2003 – Nobody Knows Anything, a ‘comedy’ about Hollywood, which he also produced.

MICHAEL DARVELL