RIP Burt Metcalfe

 

Canadian born producer and actor Burt Metcalfe died in Los Angeles, California on July 27, 2022. He was 87. Born Burton Dennis Metcalfe on March 19, 1935, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Before he gave up full-time acting to work on the other side of the camera, Metcalfe played the surfer Lord Byron opposite Sandra Dee and James Darren in “Gidget” (1959), and appeared on the first season of ‘The Twilight Zone’ and starred on the 1961-62 CBS sitcom ‘Father of the Bride’. Metcalfe was a producer on all but five of M*A*S*H‘s 256 episodes from 1972-83 and its showrunner for its last six seasons. He also directed 31 installments of the acclaimed CBS comedy, wrote three and acted in one collecting 13 Emmy nominations along the way. Metcalfe appeared as Constable Springer in his only Euro-western the British-U.S.A. co-produced “The Canadians in 1961 with Robert Ryan, Torin Thatcher and John Dehner.