Allan Arbus Obituary

Character actor who played the psychiatrist Major Sidney Freedman in the TV comedy M*A*S*HThe long-running US television comedy M*A*S*H, set during the Korean war, was often perceived as an allegorical look at the Vietnam war, which was still being fought when it began in 1972. But the television show focused less on the specific mindsets of Vietnam which had driven the nihilistic Robert Altman film on which it was based, and in tone was much closer to Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22, with its comedic take on the intrinsic absurdity of war.No character brought that home more clearly than Major Sidney Freedman, the psychiatrist who appeared in 12 episodes over the show's 11-year run.