R.I.P. Trapper John, M.D. actor Charles Siebert
Siebert, who played Stanley Riverside II for over 150 episodes, was 84.
Aux News John
Charles Siebert, a prolific TV actor with tons of roles in the ‘70s and ‘80s—most famously on Trapper John, M.D.—has died. This comes from Deadline, which says a statement from Santa Rosa, California’s 6th Street Playhouse confirmed that Siebert died earlier this month from COVID-related pneumonia. He was 84.
Siebert was born in Wisconsin in 1938 and studied acting at Milwaukee’s Marquette University and the London Academy Of Music And Dramatic Art. He worked as a theater actor in the ‘60s throughout the U.S. and eventually settled in New York, making his onscreen debut in soap operas like Search For Tomorrow.
In the ‘70s, he moved to Los Angeles and started working more regularly on TV, with appearances on shows like Another World, Hawk, N.Y.P.D., and The Rockford Files. In 1977, he appeared in a handful of episodes of Norman Lear’s Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, setting up a run of Norman Lear roles on All In The Family, Good Times, Maude, and One Day At A Time. Though he had a few notable appearances past the ‘80s, like a few roles on The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, and Xena: Warrior Princess (where he had his final TV role), he had retired from onscreen acting by the mid-‘90s.
But before all of that, Siebert got 151 episodes on M*A*S*H spin-off Trapper John, M.D. playing the stuffy, self-important Dr. Stanley Riverside II. The show, starring Pernell Roberts as the eponymous Trapper John (replacing Wayne Rogers from the M*A*S*H TV show and Elliott Gould from the movie), ran for seven seasons, from 1979 to 1986. Siebert also directed several episodes of Trapper John, M.D., as well as episodes of Xena, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Pacific Blue, Knots Landing, and The Pretender.
Deadline says Siebert is survived by his wife and several children and stepchildren.
20 Comments
I remember him from Trapper John. He took a one dimensional, comic relief character and made him sympathetic, even when the writing didn’t fully support that. Eventually the writers saw what he brought and made the character more rounded and sympathetic. He will be missed.
I don’t know if any other of the old folk up in here watch 70s & 80s game show reruns on BUZZR, but Siebert was on the episodes of Super Password they were showing a couple weeks ago. He was the very model of “where do I know him from?” after Trapper John, M.D. ended.
I thought spin-offs were usually spun because people loved the actor playing the character (like Bea Arthur as Maude, Bill Kirchenbauer as Coach Lottakidz). But with Trapper John, you had different guys playing him in MASH the film, MASH the series and then in the spin-off. Were people just so into the character?
It’s also weird the show never really tried to make any connections back to M*A*S*H or its characters. I kept waiting for Alan Alda’s dad – Robert? – to cameo as an aged Hawkeye. The show had a cast of ringers … Pernell Roberts, Gregory Harrison, Seibert, Madge Sinclair, and a young Timothy Busfield.I watched it every Sunday night with my mom after Dad and brother had gone to bed. We loved it.
I kind of remember reading somewhere that Trapper John MD was a spinoff of MASH the movie and not the TV series… which is kind of odd.
I guess it’s possible but the show never got into either previous property. I think about the only little link was Harrison’s character was a M*A*S*H doctor in ‘Nam.
Definitely more odd then than it would be now.
Presumably that effects who they have to pay for the rights, and how much.
It’s also weird the show never really tried to make any connections back to M*A*S*H or its characters. I kept waiting for Alan Alda’s dad – Robert? – to cameo as an aged Hawkeye.They couldn’t at first. Since Trapper John MD aired concurrently with MASH for its first few seasons, they literally didn’t know if Hawkeye would even survive the war.
I remember watching Trapper John, M.D. back in the day, but I can’t remember much about it or the character’s personality being particularly like the MASH character. Maybe it just helped that the character’s name was recognizable in the days when we had 3 networks to choose from. I can’t imagine any TV exec today doing a spin-off from a character played by a handsome young-ish actor and casting a balding, grey-haired actor.
I remember that it was on, but I don’t think I ever saw it.
I saw MASH though, I remember Trapper fooled around a lot and drank. Wikipedia says “after the war, the character had mellowed considerably” and he was “a lovable surgeon who became a mentor and father figure in San Francisco”.
It seemed like basically a generic hospital show. Like they wanted to make a hospital show and only used the familiar name as a hook to get people to tune in.Was the war ever even mentioned?
I remember Gregory Harrison being fine as hell as Gonzo, the young doctor who lived in an RV in the parking lot. Harrison married Randi Oakes from CHIPs after they met on set of Battle of the Network Stars.God, we watched a lot of TV as kids.
I remember a TV show where a character was named “Gonzo” and it wasn’t the Muppet. I guess this was it.
It was.I watched way too much TV, too.
God, I loved watching Trapper John, MD. Christopher Norris as Nurse Brancusi, the other dude as Jackpot.Most likely CBS needed a recognizable character name for a new show. I mean it was Pernell Roberts from Bonanza, fer chrissakes.Anyways, back to Charles Siebert. Great guy and part. RIP.
And for Roberts, it was a chance at redemption. He was sort of blacklisted after leaving Bonanza in 1965 and played bad guy guest roles in several Quinn Martin TV shows until the Trapper John role came up.
I always laughed at the fact that the writers named the hospital Riverside Hospital, and then decided that the name was because of a family named Riverside, not because the hospital was on a river.Which now sets me off about a similar decision, the Smallville writers deciding that the town was named after the founder, a guy whose last name was Small, as opposed to it just being the literal opposite of “Metropolis”.
And this is true, as a lot of towns were named after someone, or a family. And those families will fight you tooth and nail if anyone decided the town’s name should be changed.
Metropolis itself was named after its founder, Ezekiel Metro.