Robert Morse, a legend of the New York stage who had a late-in-life resurgence as the eccentric businessman Bertram Cooper on “Mad Men,” is dead at the age of 90. His death was made public by writer-producer Larry Karaszewski on Twitter.
My good pal Bobby Morse has passed away at age 90. A huge talent and a beautiful spirit. Sending love to his son Charlie & daughter Allyn. Had so much fun hanging with Bobby over the years – filming People v OJ & hosting so many screenings (How To Succeed, Loved One, That’s Life) pic.twitter.com/H1vCD3jjul
— Larry Karaszewski (@Karaszewski) April 21, 2022
Morse had some small roles on the boards beginning in the mid-1950s (including the original cast of Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker,” co-starring Ruth Gordon and Prunella Scales), then got his big break in “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” in 1961. Indeed, this iconic Camelot-era musical later reworked into a film in which Morse also starred, worked as a significant wink to insiders when Morse appeared in “Mad Men” decades later.
As J. Pierrepont Finch, Morse won the Tony for Best Actor at age 31, and the show won six more trophies including Best Musical. It also won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. The show is a perennial, with Matthew Broderick playing the part in the mid-1990s and Daniel Radcliffe in 2011.
The film version was directed by David Swift, whose previous work included mainstream Disney pictures like “Pollyanna” and “The Parent Trap,” and sophisticated sex comedies like “Under the Yum Yum Tree” and “Good Neighbor Sam,” both starring Jack Lemmon. “How To Succeed,” blended the two, with big Technicolor musical numbers (some of which were staged by Bob Fosse) featuring some risqué (for their era) lyrics.
Here is the absurd show-stopper “A Secretary Is Not A Toy,” which basically invented “Mad Men”’s whole aesthetic. (Alas, this is one of the few scenes Morse isn’t actually in, but just picturing him making an impish grin off-screen.)
Morse continued working in films and on stage in the 1970s and 80s. Another hit was in the touring company of “Sugar Babies,” an olde tyme revue awash in sexual innuendos. (A personal aside: For some reason, I saw this show as a tiny kid, which scandalized my grandmother. But my parents assured her it was all over my head. It was not.)
He was also a mainstay television guest star, appearing in many big shows of the era, including “Love, American Style,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Fall Guy,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Dukes of Hazzard,” and even on the soap “All My Children.”
In 1989 he starred in a one-man show, “Tru,” basically an “evening in” with Truman Capote. (It was later rebroadcast on PBS.) It won him his second Tony, and the television adaptation won him an Emmy.
As he got into his later years, he still worked consistently, voicing characters for animated shows and appearing on 14 episodes of the medical drama “City of Angels” beginning in 2000. He made his first appearance on “Mad Men” in its second episode as the lunatic-sage elder statesman Bertram Cooper at the advertising agency Sterling Cooper. You may remember the whole bit about taking off your shoes to enter his office. It was always hard to tell if he was a benevolent gentleman or just as much of a bastard as everyone else.
He appeared in 58 of the series’s 92 episodes, usually just for a scene or two, but he stole every one he was in. His character died the night of the moon landing, but he appeared as a vision to Jon Hamm’s Don Draper, finally doing a little Broadway song-and-dance. A perfect career capper and gift to us all.
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