Oliver Clark

Sturdy, gap-toothed, usually bespectacled American character actor of Armenian ancestry, born in Buffalo, New York, as Richard Mardirosian to parents Matthew and Afro Mardirosian. On screen from 1968, he has specialized in likeable, if frequently awkward, uptight or geeky characters. Clark is possibly best known for his two season five and six appearances in M*A*S*H (1972): respectively, as U.S. Navy doctor Lieutenant Tippy Brooks, a crossword fanatic and friend of Hawkeye, in the episode '38 Across'; and as Captain Ben Pierce, who by dint of having the same surname, receives Hawkeye's mail (and vice versa), in Mail Call Three. Best employed in comedy, Clark also had a recurring role as a mild-mannered patient of psychologist Bob Hartley in The Bob Newhart Show (1972) and was third-billed in the sitcom The Two of Us (1981), as the beleaguered agent of talk-show host Nan Gallagher (Mimi Kennedy). He briefly starred in his own domestic sitcom, We've Got Each Other (1977), as a home-bound writer for a mail order catalogue. Neither a critical nor a commercial success, the show was cancelled after one season. Clark subsequently essayed diverse characters in episodes of Barney Miller (1975), played an amnesiac psychiatric patient in NBC's St. Elsewhere (1982) and made guest appearances in other TV series until his retirement from acting in 2003. Clark appeared three times on Broadway, notably as Louis XVI in Ben Franklin in Paris (1964-65) and as the 'Sultan of Bashir' in Don't Drink the Water (1966-68), a comic play written by Woody Allen, set inside a U.S. embassy behind the Iron Curtain. A hit show, it ran to 598 performances at the Morosco, Ethel Barrymore and Belasco theatres and spawned a motion picture in 1969.