Alan Alda looks forward more than back

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

And Other Things I’ve Learned

Alan Alda

Random House: 228 pp., $24.95

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ALAN ALDA has enjoyed what most actors must surely envy: longevity and a breadth of work that includes film, television and theater -- most recently, appearing in David Mamet’s Broadway revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He is best remembered for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the CBS series “M*A*S*H,” which ran from 1972 to 1983.

Alda could have retired after “M*A*S*H” went off the air, an Emmy-winning member of a show widely considered to be among the best in TV history. (In fact, he has the distinction of being the only person to win Emmys for acting, writing and directing during his years on the show.)

Yet Alda continued acting, writing and directing other projects. He has indulged his passion for science by hosting PBS’ popular “Scientific American Frontiers” series for years.

In his memoir, “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed,” Alda reflects on his career highlights and on the tumultuous road he’s taken. As an only child (born Alphonso D’Abruzzo) growing up in New York City and Hollywood, Alda watched his handsome father, Robert Alda, perform musical numbers with burlesque troupes and become a movie star, playing George Gershwin in the film bio “Rhapsody in Blue.”

Alda noticed at a fairly young age that his family “had a strange list of things you didn’t notice or talk about.” Aside from his father’s job involving dancing with half-naked women, there was the painful issue of his mother’s mental illness. (When he was 6, his mother tried to stab his father.) As an adolescent, Alda coped with guilt over his mother’s schizophrenia, convinced that whenever he acted badly, he triggered her destructive behavior.

As for the book’s rather curious title, it refers to a formative episode in Alda’s life, one that takes on a larger meaning. The anecdote is heartbreaking and bizarre: At age 7, Alda is overjoyed to have his first dog, a black cocker spaniel. When the dog dies from ingesting a bone fragment, Alda’s father suggests having him stuffed: “That way you could always keep him.”

The taxidermist’s shoddy efforts result in a grotesque figure of a dog unrecognizable as former family pet -- “a hollow parody of himself.” Alda reflects that the incident was about more than turning “a dead body into a souvenir. It’s also what happens when you hold on to any living moment longer than it wants you to. Memory can be a kind of mental taxidermy, trying to hold on to the present after it’s become past.”

By 9, Alda -- curious, imaginative, bookish and lonely -- knew he wanted to be an actor. By the time Alda turned 20, his father had divorced his mother, and Alda met the love of his life: Arlene, a classically trained musician whom he married and had three daughters with. (The marriage has endured nearly 50 years.)

Alda clearly is fond and admiring of his wife, but he is also grateful; in their early years together, aware that he was a natural performer, she pushed him to pursue the acting career he so clearly desired.

He was too poor to study formally (and never did). While living in New Jersey with his young family, Alda began pursuing theater work, then landed small TV and film roles.

In 1972, when a script came his way for “a television series about a bunch of doctors and nurses in Korea,” his first impulse was that he’d have to turn it down. He didn’t want to uproot the family, and as he told his wife, “This thing could run a year or two.”

Alda took the role and ended up commuting from his home in New Jersey to Los Angeles every weekend for 11 years. Although he devotes a generous amount of space to his time on the set -- recounting the dedication and closeness of the cast -- this book is no ego-driven trip down memory lane. He writes more about his own fears and struggles than the acclaim he’s received, describing acute stage fright and bouts with mania and depression, which he treated successfully with Zoloft. (Sorry, Tom Cruise.)

Alda is so unassuming that he seems to prefer writing about passions and dramas in his life that have little to do with acting (such as his keen interest in science).

When he does recall happy career moments, he employs self-deprecating humor. And though he ends the book discussing his recent work with Mamet, he doesn’t delve into his Oscar-nominated performance in Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator.”

“Never Have Your Dog Stuffed” is a memoir by of one of the most acclaimed actors of our time, who perhaps is one of the most genuinely humble. Alda seems defined more by his struggles, intellectual pursuits and general sense of wonder than by fame or wealth.

What’s striking about this book is not merely the scope of his accomplishments -- personally as well as professionally -- but the sense that the author thinks there’s still so much yet to be learned.

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Carmela Ciuraru, editor of six anthologies of poetry, is a regular contributor to Book Review.