Alan Alda

Born on January 28, 1936, New Yorker Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo (his real name) is the son of an Irish woman, winner of a beauty pageant, and the Italian-American actor Robert Alda , star of Rhapsody in Blue , celebrated biopic of George Gershwin . The latter was also really called Alphonso D’Abruzzo, and from the first letters of his name and surname he composed the artistic surname “Alda”. As a child, Alan Aldahe was sick with polio for a long time. When he recovered, he attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York, and received a BA in English from Fordham University in the Bronx. Raised in the Catholic faith, during his youth he lost his faith. “I don’t exactly like the word ‘agnostic’. Even though I want to find meaning in this life instead of worrying about the next, I still pray on occasion,” he stated in an interview.

He began his journey as an actor in the theater, and later in television series and telefilms, before taking part in feature films such as Whiskey Inferno , an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, where he plays a guy who is dedicated to clandestinely distilling whiskey when the prohibition on drinking alcohol is about to end. The first period of his was not easy, because they tried to take advantage of him, so he had to sue some producer. “Someone, without even asking me, tried to get me into these seven-year contracts where they take control of everything you do,” he recalls. “The deal was made with my agent without consulting me, and they acted as if I had consented to it. At first I think people were like, ‘Well, he’s not going to complain. He seems like a nice guy,’ but for that reason I was forced to file a lawsuit. People have no right to think of you as a jerk just because you’re nice…it’s important to stand up for yourself.”

Married on March 15, 1957 to photographer Arlene Hope Weiss, the couple have three daughters, Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. In 1972 he was going to change his life when he was offered the leading role in MASH . , television series based on the eponymous film directed by Robert Altman, about a field hospital during the Korean War. He was reluctant to sign the contract: “It had a lot of comedic elements, so I didn’t think it was going to send the right message: war is not a good place to go,” he recalls. In the end, he reached an agreement with those responsible for the fiction a few hours before the pilot chapter began to be filmed. He accepted in exchange for each chapter including at least one sequence that took place in the operating room, with his character operating on someone injured in the fight.

He immediately discovered the formula to connect with the rest of the cast. “Usually when doing a movie or a TV show, when you don’t need to shoot a scene, you go back to your dressing room,” she recalled. “But in MASH .  we would sit in a circle and tease each other or go over our lines together. Laughter was important because when you laugh you are vulnerable, open, allowing the other person to influence you more. And when we started filming we had a special energy.” Later, she tried to apply it to all of his work, and began to be interested in communication: “The same process can be used for business and for everything.”

The series made him a celebrity and was so successful that it was broadcast for nine years despite the fact that the conflict in the Asian country only lasted three, reaching 256 chapters. During all this time he spent Monday through Friday in Los Angeles, where the filming was taking place, and at the weekend he returned to New Jersey, where his wife and his daughters continued to live. “I didn’t know how long the show was going to run, so I never wanted the whole family to move.” During the last few years, he took creative control, putting a dramatic twist on what had originally been a sitcom. He participated in the script for 19 episodes and directed 32, including the last one, which became the most watched in the history of television in the United States until then. For his work, he was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, of which he won five.

During that time, Alan Alda took advantage of the fact that he was at the top to start his journey as director and screenwriter with The Four Seasons , an excellent comedy about three married couples who have spent years enjoying weekends and vacations together, until one replaces his wife. by a young girl, which triggers quite a bit of tension. It was followed by Sweet Freedom , A New Life and Wet Wedding . “ Directing is not easy”, he declared. “One of our daughters, when she was eight years old, said: ‘Are you heading? What do you say? You, go there?’ It’s a problem because when you’re directing you need objectivity, and it’s hard to be objective about your own performance.”

He also starred in two stupendous bittersweet titles during those years , Robert Mulligan ‘s Same Time Next Year and Herbert Ross ‘s California Suite . However, at the end of the MASH series, his popularity suffers, and he ends up being relegated to a secondary role, especially in films by Woody Allen , who recruited him for Crimes and Misdemeanors , Manhattan Murder Mystery and Everybody Says I Love You .

He is good at playing politicians, having played the President of the United States in Michael Moore ‘s satire Operation Canada , and two senators in Martin Scorsese ‘s The Aviator and the series The West Wing of the White House . In addition, he gave life to a lawyer, partner of Tom Hanks , in Steven Spielberg ‘s The Bridge of Spies , and returned to practice as a television doctor in the series With a Capital C , and ER , where his character, Gabriel Lawrence, gave rise to to emotional chapters when it is discovered that he suffered from Alzheimer’s. In Ray Donovanplayed a psychiatrist.

Alan Alda has always been obsessed with communication. In 2009, he created the company Alda Communication Training (ACT), to help people make themselves understood, and funded the Alan Alda Center for Science Communication at Stony Brook University in New York. On the other hand, he created the podcast “Clear + Vivid” where he talks with various guests about how to better communicate. All profits from advertising aired on Clear+Vivid go to Centro Alda. “Sometimes people stop me on the street to tell me what they got from the podcast,” he explains. “They are communicating better with the people around them. That makes me feel really good.”

He has published two books, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I Learned”, from 2005 –his memoirs– and “Things I heard while talking to myself”, a mixture of some speeches he had given with anecdotes from his life. In 2018, Alan Alda revealed, during an interview on the CBS program “This Morning”, that he had suffered from Parkinson’s since he turned 79. That has not prevented him from standing out -despite the brevity of his role- as a lawyer in History of a marriage ,which is precisely about your favorite topic. “When communication breaks down it can lead to divorce, but then the spouses suddenly realize that they must communicate even better than they did when they were married, or else the whole divorce will be a disaster. The children will suffer, they suffer. The thing is, you get divorced because you’re not communicating well and then you communicate better than you did to get through the divorce. And I think the film illustrates that.”