For some, Alan Alda will always be Hawkeye Pierce, the sarcastic but tender-hearted surgeon bedeviling his U.S. army superiors during the Korean War. The final episode of season 11 of M*A*S*H in 1983, which Alda directed as well as starred in, was the most-watched television broadcast ever until the 2010 SuperBowl.
But Alda’s career has been packed in the past three decades. Movies , as a writer and director, as well as an actor. More television, including a role in the last two years of The West Wing as Republican Senator Arnold Vinnick, for which Alda won another Emmy. In 1993 Alda started a new calling as a science journalist, when he signed on to host the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers. He also wrote two books, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I've Learned and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.
Tomorrow, Alda will be in Baltimore to kick off the new season of the Baltimore Speaker Series presented by Stevenson University. He joins Sheilah by phone.
