R.I.P. Robert Morse, Broadway and Mad Men star
Morse also won a Tony and an Emmy for playing Truman Capote and starred in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
Aux News Robert Morse
Robert Morse, the Tony-winning Broadway star of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying who got a late-career boost thanks to his role as Bertram Cooper on AMC’s Mad Men, has died. Morse’s death was confirmed by his friend producer Larry Karaszewski (via Variety), who referred to him as a “huge talent and a beautiful spirit.” Morse was 90.
Born in Massachusetts in 1931, Morse wanted to be an actor from a young age and moved to New York City after graduating high school. He studied acting with his brother at the Neighborhood Playhouse and got his first onstage acting role in a 1949 production of Our Town. He made it to Broadway in 1955, appearing in Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker—the play that would later be adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly!—and his first properly credited movie role was in the 1958 film adaptation of the play.
Morse got his first Tony nomination a year after that, for Best Featured Actor In A Play, for his work in the comedy Say, Darling. He was also nominated the year after that for Take Me Along, and in 1962 he won the Best Actor In A Musical award for How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. The musical, which is about a window washer with grander career aspirations, originally ran on Broadway for four years and got a movie adaptation in 1967.
After starring in the musicals Sugar, based on Some Like It Hot, and So Long, 174th Street, Morse’s Broadway career stalled. He returned to the stage in 1989 to star in the one-man show Tru about Truman Capote, winning his second Tony in the process and later picking up an Emmy for his performance in PBS’ American Playhouse adaptation of the show.
It would be his only Emmy win, but Morse landed nearly a half-dozen additional nominations thanks to his work on Mad Men as Bert Cooper, the (seemingly) eccentric senior parter at the Sterling Cooper advertising agency. Though he didn’t win any Emmys for the memorable role, he (along with the rest of the cast) did get the Outstanding Ensemble In A Dram Series trophy at the 2011 Screen Actors Guild awards. Bert Cooper died in the show’s seventh season while watching the moon landing, later reappearing to Jon Hamm’s Don Draper in a vision where he sang and danced to “The Best Things In Life Are Free” (giving Morse a chance to resurrect his old Broadway talents).
Morse, whose final role was as the villainous incarnation of Santa Claus on Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans Go!, is survived by his wife and five children.
35 Comments
He was an astronaut
Bravo, Robert.
So long.
The Best Things In Life Are Free number is one of the best moments in a show filled with amazing moments. RIP.
1) I associated him so much with his Mad Men character that I didn’t realize he was still alive2) I can’t believe Mad Men actually went 7 seasons. Loved the show but that seems almost unbelievable.
How to Succeed is my favorite musical, and Morse was the quintessential Finch—just a perfect balance of unctuousness, mischievousness, and charm. Loved him in Mad Men as well, and his reading of “Mr. Campbell, who cares?” is probably my favorite moment in the series.
I really love the arc of the first season of Mad Men. This reveal to Burt could of been the climax we thought the season was building up to, and then Robert Morse just downplays it so beautifully and wisely.
My favorite part is while Cooper says “who cares” here, he actually secretly stores away this information until he needs to weaponize it against Don in S3. Mad Men did such a good job with stuff like this.
He processes the situation and immediately arrives at the right answer. Yes, maybe Campbell was right about the eventual risk. But that risk was less than firing Draper and losing a bunch of clients, or letting Draper fire Campbell (who would have immediately gone public).
I love that scene. The end of it is one of the great Don Draper “What the fuck just happened?” faces you get in the whole series, and Hamm’s silent acting throughout (particularly the “this is going south, time for a cigarette” moment) is phenomenal. But that delivery of “who cares,” which Morse repeats exactly the same way a second time when Pete Campbell just can’t comprehend what’s going on the first time, is freaking perfect.
RIP. Loved him in Mad Men and I can’t believe I didn’t figure out he’s TTG Santa (who is an awesome, awesome villain – lousy garbage kids)
He’ll be missed.Also, in one of my “Kevin Kline isn’t British?” list of things I believed for years only to be corrected (also Terry Gilliam was born in Minnesota) -I always just assumed that David Morse was his son. Go figure. Anyhow. A loss.
Absolute legend. May your diastema live on.
I associate that fella with Night Gallery’s “Marmalade Wine”.More recently saw him in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, “Hitch Hike”.
A fellow Night Gallery fan! Nice!
Wow. I remembered “Marmalade Wine” but had forgotten -maybe never realized- that Morse’s fellow player in that one was Rudy Vallee! Nice little How to Succeed reunion.How to Succeed is one of my favorite musicals, it’s one of the two I could never imagine anyone else in the lead. The other is Music Man. I know both have been revived and toured all over with people other than Morse or Robert Preston, but come on. Why would you bother?Anyway – 90 is a damn good run, and I remember how fun it was to have him on Mad Men. What a perfect casting idea, and not a gimmick – Morse was really great in the part.
Suzanne Pleshette was such a hottie.
“There you go.”
Loved him in Mad Men, and I enjoyed the filmed version of How to Succeed. Great actor, incredible speaking voice. RIP.
Man, he was so fun in The Loved One. Glad I got off my ass to go to a screening of it he was at when I had the chance.
Not sure I’d call Bert eccentric. He was the only one around the place with any gravitas at all. His rebuke of Roger when he loses Lucky Strike was so on point.
It seemed to me that his eccentricities were largely of the superficial sort (no shoes, zen office) but that at heart, he was much of an old school ad man as the rest of them
The eccentricity works to give him the gravitas. The initial setup of Sterling Cooper maps out the firm as having two halves, in one, Roger drinks, womanizes, and brings in and keeps clients. In the other Don drinks, womanizes, and dreams up advertising campaigns. And initially, it’s hard to see where Bert fits in. He seems kind of checked out of the life of the firm, he spends his time in his office, and there are special rules for when you want to go to his office to see him. And though his role in the firm’s present is clearly to be the firm’s boss/dad, if you wonder what role he played when it was him and Roger’s dad as the firm’s two partners, and nothing seems to fit. Was he another accounts guy? Was he an ad writer? Either option seems kind of ridiculous.But what becomes evident in all his big confrontations with the other characters is that it’s almost certain he was Don in that earlier life. His big scenes aren’t just power plays, they’re acts of salesmanship. In each of his confrontations with Don, he arranges things like a presentation, designed to make Don do whatever it is Bert needs him to do. In his big scene in S1, when Pete reveals Don is actually Dick Whitman, Bert actually comes up with a slogan, on the spot, to convince Pete that ratting out Don is a bad idea (and also manages to convince Don, for the second time that season, that retribution against Pete might not be a good idea. The air of mystery around him, the being locked up in his office all the time, the morsels Japanese philosophy he drops, make it all the more effective each time he decides to drop the hammer. Because for all his pretensions, Bert was always the most practical person at Sterling Cooper. Arguably, the only practical person.
I work at a small firm (around 30 people) and one of our founders was very much Bert (he passed last year). He hadn’t done any client work for close to 10 years but was an excellent and impartial businessperson who knew how to cut through bullshit and find practical solutions. So I knew Bert early on.
The best things in life are indeed free. Farewell Mr Morse, your last appearance as Cooper was an all time favorite.
In a career full of worthy achievements, his work on Mad Men was really an ultimate achievement, insofar as I believe his character was originally envisioned to be very minor and only seen very occasionally, yet his portrayal was so strong he developed into part of the main ensemble in one of the best ensemble casts ever assembled for T.V.The two Bert moments from the show that get singled out are usually the “Who cares?” scene from season one, and the musical number from the last season. However my two favorites are Season 2, when he pushes Don into signing a contract:And season 5, when he delivers his, “This is my business” speech:Which really sort of demonstrated the value of his character on the show – he was the only guy in the firm with the authority and the gravitas to call Don on his B.S. Roger was theoretically a senior partner, but he was every bit the drinker and philanderer that Don was, and something of a dilettante. Burt appeared avuncular and genteel, but he was hiding a shiv in those argyle stockings.
Well this is weird. I was just thinking about him last night before going to sleep. The guy was kind of a fixture in my childhood pop culture from THE BOATNIKS and that campy/disturbing NIGHT GALLERY episode (based on a story by children’s author Joan Aiken) and a whole lot of TV stuff. He was utter perfection in MAD MEN (“She was an astronaut”) all the way up until his final song and dance. What a great run.
That’s Life, from 1968 was a wonderful show that starred Robert Morse. It combined singing and dancing plus a plot! I wish it had lasted…
Another great movie he stars in that I can’t recommend highly enough is The Loved One, whatever one thinks about his fake English accent in that.
As a child, I saw him in the Disney movie “The Boatniks”. The movie was bad, he was good, and I remained a fan. Fun fact, Morse and Dustin Hoffman both made their TV debuts in the same episode of Naked City (way before my time, but I saw it in syndication later on.)
My youngest daughter and I got hooked on Mad Men and watched most of the last few seasons together. She was amazed when I showed her How to Succeed one afternoon and realized that Robert Morse was the same guy playing Bert Cooper.Morse was a great talent and will be missed.
Outstanding Ensemble In A Dram SeriesEntirely appropriate typo.