Harry…my very dear, close friend…the best colleague you could hope for…an accomplished, committed actor, humble to the extreme, possessed of a brilliant mind, a dazzling sense of humor coupled with impeccable timing… the quintessential colleague, able to lift your spirits with laughter during those long, late hours on the set…often my ­father figure…ever a mensch… always my ”comrade-in-arms.”…

How blessed I am to have had you in my life all this time.

And now, I find myself using the words from the ”Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen” finale of M*A*S*H. Harry and I needed more than just a few takes during our goodbye scene. We could not stop the tears. ”Goodbye, Margaret,” Colonel Potter says. ”Don’t forget to have a happy life.” Margaret says: ”You dear, sweet man…I’ll never forget you.”

Even more so from me, dear Harry, dear friend. I take comfort in knowing that you knew how very much I loved you.

Harry was a wonderful man, a fabulous actor and a dear and close friend since the first day we worked together. As Alan said, “He did not have an unadorable bone in his body.”

He was a treasure as a person, an imp at times, and always a true professional. He had worked with the greats and never saw himself as one of them. But he was. He was the rock everyone depended on and yet he could cut up like a kid when the situation warranted it.

He was the apotheosis, the finest example of what people call a ‘character actor.’ What he brought to the work made everyone better. He made those who are thought of as ‘stars’ shine even more brightly.

The love and admiration we all felt for him were returned tenfold in many, many ways. And the greatest and most selfless tribute to the experience we enjoyed was paid by Harry at the press conference when our show ended. He remarked that someone had asked him if working on M*A*S*H had made him a better actor. He responded by saying, “I don’t know about that, but it made me a better human being.”

It’s hard to imagine a better one.

I’ve tried to find the original source for the statement. RumorFix calls it an “exclusive” while the Washington Post’s Celebritology blog says it was “released to the press.”

NPR is reporting that Farrell was, according to Jamie Farr, “a huge presence in Morgan’s last days,” helping to keep members of the cast updated.

As for TV Land, based on the cable channel’s online schedule, the tribute episodes actually begin tomorrow at 6:12PM with “The General Flipped at Dawn” following by “Welcome to Korea, Part 1″ at 6:52PM and “Welcome to Korea, Part 2″ at 7:24PM (the episode originally aired as a one-hour special). On Saturday, the tribute continues with same three episodes will air beginning at 2:20PM, followed by another five episodes from 4:06PM to 7PM. And on Sunday, “Change of Command” kicks of the remainder of the tribute at 2:20PM. It runs through 7PM, with additional episodes airing from 7-8:30PM that do not appear to be part of the tribute.

Perhaps the single best performance given by Harry Morgan as Colonel Potter — “Old Soldiers” from Season Eight — will air as part of the Me-TV tribute on Wednesday, December 14th at 7PM. To find out if you get Me-TV (a specialty network found primarily on digital subchannels) in your area, click here and type in your zip code. If you don’t get Me-TV or TV Land, break out your DVDs and have your own marathon, uncut and commercial free.

Harry Morgan (1915-2011)

Morgan followed up Dragnet with a recurring role in Hec Ramsey from 1972-1974. Then, on September 10th, 1974, he made a memorable guest appearance on the third season premiere of M*A*S*H. When McLean Stevenson (Colonel Blake) left the series at the end of that season, Morgan was brought in to replace him the following year as commanding officer of the 4077th. Morgan’s Colonel Potter was a very different CO, stricter in many ways than Blake, but fit in well with the other characters. For his role on M*A*S*H, Morgan was nominated for ten Emmy Awards (nine for acting and one for directing) and won once in 1980 for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Variety or Music Series. He also was nominated for a DGA Award in 1982.

Scriptwriter Ken Levine has posted a few memories of working with Harry Morgan. MSNBC.com has a list of seven great Colonel Potter moments. TV Land has put together the following brief video and has announced it will be airing special episodes of M*A*S*H to honor Harry Morgan this weekend:

In 2004, Morgan was interviewed for three-and-a-half hours for the Archive of American Television. Here’s an excerpt in which he discusses his famous role of Colonel Potter:

Here’s Alan Alda talking about Harry Morgan, from his own Archive of American Television interview:

Obituaries can be found at The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NPR.com and Variety.com.

Some excerpts:

Alan Alda on heroic images of war:
“I was a boy during the Second World War and pretty much what you saw during the movies was the heroics. It simply would not be done: show an image of the day to day suffering that goes into it.”

Alda on Hawkeye’s conservatism:
“Some people think it he was very liberal. But he was also a traditional conservative. I mean, he wanted nothing more than to have people leave him alone so he could enjoy his martini, you know? The government should get out of his liquor cabinet.”

Alda on “Preventive Medicine:”
“Well, at the rehearsal for this, Mike Farrell said ‘I’m playing a doctor who takes this seriously and I will not operate on a patient who doesn’t need the operation. That’s mutilation.’ And we started an argument that lasted about an hour that day. And at a certain point we said, you know what? This is what we ought to be doing on camera because this is a serious conflict.”

Alda’s closing comment:
“We openly dealt with all the sides of war. And we were exploring things that were not neat. There was no right and there was no wrong. But it came out of passion and disgust and anger and upset at being where they were and going through what they were going through. And that’s, I think, more useful to know than to see what I saw as a kid, when they would shoot down an enemy plane and they’d would all laugh and cheer. There’s more interest, human interest, in looking at the real cause than there is in just skimming across the surface.”

Judd Apatow (executive producer, Freaks and Geeks) on watching M*A*S*H as a kid:
“On some level I knew, ‘Oh, this is someone who is speaking out against hypocrisy and that it’s wrong to hurt people.’ I assume it just wired my brain for almost a compassionate way of looking at the world that seems king of full of crap. But it is true. When you’re watching M*A*S*H two times a day from the time your like five years old for ten or twelve years you know what you’re soaking in is the humanity of Larry Gelbart and his way of looking at the world.”

Hugh Laurie (actor, House) on the laugh track:
“When the BBC showed M*A*S*H, they showed it without laughter. There was no laugh track on it. So, I suppose an English audience, we tended to look at it in a rather more dramatic way.”

Tom Fontana (executive producer, Homicide: Life on the Street), Linda Wallen (co-creator, Nurse Jackie) and Steven Bocho (co-creator, NYPD Blue) also share their thoughts on the character of Hawkeye and M*A*S*H.