Alan Alda (/ˈɑːldə/; born Alphonso Joseph D\'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, comedian and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he played Hawkeye Pierce in the war television series M*A*S*H (1972–1983). He has also appeared on television programs such as Scientific American Frontiers, The West Wing, and 30 Rock, and in films such as Same Time, Next Year (1978) and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). He also experienced success as a director with 1981\'s The Four Seasons. In 2004, Alda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Aviator.\n', '

Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D\'Abruzzo on January 28, 1936 in the Bronx, New York City, and had a peripatetic childhood, as his parents traveled around the United States in support of his father\'s job as a performer in burlesque theatres. His father Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D\'Abruzzo) was an actor and singer, and his mother Joan Browne was a homemaker and former beauty-pageant winner. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda", is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D\'Abruzzo.\n', '

When Alda was seven years old, he contracted polio. To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, consisting of applying hot woolen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles. Alda attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York. In 1956, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Fordham College of Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV. Alda\'s half-brother, Antony Alda, born that year (1956), also became an actor.\n', '

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