Alan Fudge is a face you’ve probably seen because it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s been in just about everything. With 168 credits going back to 1972 on IMDB, his first listed credit is on Gunsmoke, which I feel sets him up perfectly for a career as “that guy”. Of course, this isn’t to disparage his talent. Mr. Fudge always shows up with his best game no matter what role he plays.
Though he often showed up on the same shows multiple times as different characters, he only had a handful of regular and recurring roles. He was CW Crawford on Man from Atlantis; Deputy Commissioner Kimbrough on Eischsied; Dr. Van Adams on Paper Dolls; and Lou Dalton on 7th Heaven, the longest running series of the bunch as the rest were short-lived.
What I appreciate about Alan Fudge is that he doesn’t necessarily look like he should be a bad guy -he sort of has an uptight executive/accountant vibe about him- but he can play a downright nasty individual.
One of my favorite bad guy roles he played was in the Season 2 episode of The A-Team, “Water, Water Everywhere”. He played a rich rancher attempting to push three disabled Vietnam vets off of their land in order to gain access to the spring water on it. Mr. Fudge’s character is already sent up to be a rat bastard. I mean, he has three disabled men beaten up in an attempt to muscle them off their land. But, he chooses to keep his diabolical nature low key, preferring to make him menacing in a quieter way, making him a more challenging enemy for the A-Team. Naturally, our heroes give him his much needed comeuppance, but he makes that comeuppance well-earned.
Even though Alan Fudge can play a fabulous villain, he can also swing completely in the other direction and play a character that you ache for. In the Season 4 M*A*S*H episode “Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler”, Mr. Fudge plays a soldier with a superficial head injury claiming to be Jesus Christ. Dr. Sidney Freedman is called in to determine whether or not the man is faking it. The sincerity with which Mr. Fudge plays Captain Chandler gives the audience little room to doubt that he’s a severely wounded man, and Dr. Freedman confirms our diagnosis. The war has so damaged him that he’s become a savior rather than continue to be a killer. Alan Fudge and Alan Arbus gift us with an incredible scene between the two characters leading to the memorable moment in which Captain Chandler responds to Dr. Freedman’s question of whether or not God answers all prayers with a well-time tear as he says, “Yes. Sometimes the answer is no.” It wrenches the heart every time.
He also has the distinction of showing up on the M*A*S*H spin-off AfterMash, albeit as a different character.
Due to Mr. Fudge’s talent, he appeared on a wide variety of shows.
He got daytime soapy on Santa Barbara, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless; he got nighttime soapy on Dallas, Falcon Crest, Dynasty, and Knots Landing; and got teen soapy on Beverly Hills, 90210 and Dawson’s Creek.
He sought medical help from Marcus Welby, MD, Trapper John, MD, and Doogie Howser, MD; and checked in for further treatment on St. Elsewhere, Diagnosis Murder, and Grey’s Anatomy.
He got on a first name basis with Lucas Tanner, Kate McShane, Lou Grant, Barnaby Jones, Matt Houston, and Sledge Hammer!; got on a last name basis with Banacek, Kojak, Petrocelli, Delvecchio, MacGyver, Mannix, Matlock, McCoy, Hunter, and Columbo; and took on the dynamic duos of Starsky and Hutch, McMillian and Wife, Simon & Simon, Cagney & Lacey, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and Hardcastle and McCormick.
He continued a classic on Archie Bunker’s Place and brought a couple of other classics into the 80s on The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents; ran into a couple of superheroes on Wonder Woman and The Greatest American Hero; and went out of this world on Alien Nation and Dark Skies.
He spent time with the family on The Waltons, Our House, and Home Improvement; flashed back on The Wonder Years and Quantum Leap; and hung out with Michael Landon on Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven.
He traveled on Movin’ On, took flight on Wings, went north on Northern Exposure, and hit the beach on Baywatch; found trouble in paradise on Hawaii Five-O, Magnum PI, and Riptide; and spent time on the west coast on The Streets of San Francisco and LA Law.
He did martial arts on Kung Fu, rode around with Knight Rider, and fell with The Fall Guy; tangled with the law on The Rookies, Police Story, The Closer, and The District; went to work on The Office, discovered polyamory on Big Love, got introduced on How I Met Your Mother, and experienced heaven on Charlie’s Angels; and took on Jessica Fletcher more than once on Murder, She Wrote.
He may be a face you recognize from somewhere even if his name doesn’t immediately come to mind, but his talent and ability to play a range of characters makes Alan Fudge one of a kind. And we’re grateful that he’s been gracing us with his presence for decades.
I’ve made no secret that I love a good bad guy, someone to really make our good guys work with their nefarious, sometimes elaborate, plots. I make a distinction between villains and antagonists. Antagonists are the every day assholes that make a protagonist’s life more difficult. Villains do that, too, but typically less often and with a lot more razzle dazzle.
Minor trigger warning for mentions of sexual assault.
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As a day job, I work as a clerk at the local library. We have something called Reader’s Advisory, which is one of the stats we keep to show our usefulness to the community and therefore justify our existence and budget and financial requests. Specifically, Reader’s Advisory is when we recommend books or movies or TV shows or other items in our collection to our patrons. This sometimes comes from us knowing our regular patrons and their reading/viewing habits well enough that when we see a new item come in, we automatically recommend it to them. Or in the case of certain patrons (or former coworkers) we just put it on hold for them.
aka KikiWrites 