Obituaries : A. Duggan, 64; Television and Movie Actor

Andrew Duggan, the stylish, all-around actor who demonstrated both a knack for drama and a flair for comedy in films and on television shows over the last 40 years, died Sunday of cancer at his Westwood home.

He was 64 and an earlier operation for throat cancer ironically had enhanced his career, leaving him with a slightly huskier voice deemed more acceptable to commercial voice-overs.

Duggan came to films and television after Army service in India, China and Burma during World War II. He had been assigned to the Special Services Company led by actor Melvyn Douglas, Duggan said in a 1962 interview. Douglas encouraged the aspiring actor to look him up at war’s end.

That renewed contact led to a role opposite Lucille Ball in “Dream Girl” at the old Biltmore Bowl in Los Angeles.

Stage Roles

He went to Broadway for stage roles in “Rose Tattoo” and “Paint Your Wagon,” meeting his future wife, a dancer in that musical.

He did live television from New York City and was given his first starring TV role in 1959 when he was cast as Cal Calhoun in the detective adventure series “Bourbon Street Beat.”

His other roles included a portrayal of Dwight D. Eisenhower in the acclaimed “Backstairs at the White House,” a 1979 miniseries about the private lives of U.S presidents. He also had been seen as Col. Deiner in another series, “Rich Man, Poor Man--Book I” in 1976-77 and starred in “Lancer” as the patriarch Murdoch Lancer resisting those who were trying to take his California land in the Western series set in the 1870s.

His other starring TV roles were as the tolerant husband of the wife who could not quit taking in foster children in “Room for One More,” while he had a featured sustaining role as Gen. Ed Britt in the 1965-67 series “Twelve O’Clock High.”

List of Movies

Duggan made films and did commercials in concert with his television appearances and in 1981 was one of the actors chosen to replace Orson Welles in the Paul Masson commercials that “sold no wine before its time.”

His movies included “Three Brave Men,” “The Chapman Report,” “Merrill’s Marauders,” “Seven Days in May,” “In Like Flint,” “The Secret War of Harry Frigg” and “Doctor Detroit.”

Duggan is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, a son, two daughters and a brother and sister. Donations in his name may be made to the American Cancer Society.