FROM MAJOR TO GENERAL IT'S A NEW RANK, AND A HOMECOMING OF SORTS, FOR PERIPATETIC ACTOR DAVID OGDEN STIERS.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Writer

It's been two decades since David Ogden Stiers (``M*A*S*H*'s'' Maj. Winchester to most of us) last spent any lengthy time on stage. In 1985, he concluded the summer season at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre. where he is an associate artist, and busied himself in a life of film, TV, plenty of voice work (much of it for Disney) and conducting a pair of orchestras in Newport, Ore., where he lives.

So it was with tongue only slightly in cheek that he introduced himself to the company during the first week of rehearsals of Irving Berlin's musical ``White Christmas'' with the words, ``I'm David Stiers, playing Gen. Waverly in Los Angeles. I haven't been on stage in 20 years, and I'm officially terrified.''

``I sat down to laughter and a smattering of applause, and somebody actually shouted, 'Welcome back!' What a lovely thing to hear,'' says Stiers. ``But I went into it without ever assuming I had an automatic place in the company. It was always a matter of earning, of demonstrating by your willingness and preparedness and ability to accept direction and slowly weaving your way into a company, and I truly believe that has happened.''

First an explanation of Stiers' ``...in Los Angeles'' remark. ``White Christmas,'' based on the 1954 film and a hit during its premiere in San Francisco last holiday season, returns this year with three companies in three different cities. San Francisco gets a return engagement, along with new productions in Boston and L.A. The L.A. production, opening Monday at the Pantages Theatre, features the original four leads - Brian D'Arcy James, Meredith Patterson, Anastasia Barzee and Jeffrey Denman.

Overseeing all three productions via a staggered rehearsal schedule in New York, director Walter Bobbie (``Chicago'') assembled some 100 performers - most of them singers and dancers - to fill out the three companies. He had directed Stiers in an Encores production of ``Tenderloin'' several years ago, and came to ``just love the guy.''

``His natural sense of bearing and authority and compassion were wonderful qualities that lend themselves to the soul of the General,'' the director continues. ``I knew his TV work, as most of us do, but when I met him at Encores, he seemed to me to have real chops as a theater actor.''

Those chops were earned. Stiers trained at Juilliard and worked in John Houseman's Acting Company as well as regionally at the Actors' Workshop in San Francisco and at the Old Globe (where he also frequently directed). Absent from the Broadway stage since ``The Magic Show'' in the mid-1970s, Stiers still ``performs'' nightly as the recorded voice narrating Disney's ``Beauty and the Beast.''

Now back on stage, playing a military man in a company of younger triple-threat actor/dancer/singers, Stiers, 63, occasionally finds himself being treated as the ``grand old man'' of the company. But with a bag of voices at his disposal from his work in ``Lilo & Stitch,'' ``Beauty and the Beast,'' ``Atlantis'' and ``Pocahontas,'' Stiers makes sure matters don't stay solemn and serious when he's around.

``People are terribly deferential to me, and I'm thinking, 'I'm a dog-faced actor. Just tell me where to stand,' '' he says. ``Many of the kids in this company were in `Beauty and the Beast' and listened to me at the beginning of the performance night after night. Once I found that out, I could stop them in their tracks by turning upstage and doing any of the voices from the Disney stuff. Then I watch their little faces do that Picasso thing where they're trying not to chuckle.''

As in the 1954 Bing Crosby-Rosemary Clooney film, ``White Christmas'' follows a couple of song-and-dance men (played by D'Arcy James and Denman, who look to help out their former General's (Stiers) flagging Vermont inn by putting on a show. In the process, they fall in love with a sister act. Stiers and Ruth Williamson may be on hand to buttress the character roles, but it's the four leads and the ensemble who have wowed Stiers.

``I'm forced to come back to the ensemble because any one of these kids could step into a major role,'' he says. ``There is no settling for talent across the board. I was told that they would pass up amazingly talented and beautiful people for the ensemble because they brought a kind of edginess or, 'I'm only doing this temporarily,' and they wanted a company.''

If ``White Christmas'' becomes a regular seasonal franchise, Stiers would like to return to the General, possibly with other companies in other cities in future years. ``Once I'm not knocking any scenery over or inadvertently changing the key of a song,'' he says.

``I am not a long-run actor,' he continues. ``I get naughty and bored and start pulling stuff with the kids upstage, and I have to stop. I don't want to set that pattern.''

Some 15 years ago, Stiers relocated to Newport, Ore., to be close to his parents during their remaining years. Every bit a fixture, he is the associate conductor at both the Newport Symphony Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival. He regularly makes the daylong drive to Vancouver for work on the USA series ``The Dead Zone.''

He'll spend the holidays performing a Christmas-themed show in a city without seasons.

``The first audience is going to terrify me,'' he says, ``and saying goodbye to people is going to terrify me. Thinking for next year that they might find someone else to do this and grab them is a little scary. The business is scary, and it morphs without relent. You just don't know - certainly as you age - you don't know what your value is.''

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

WHITE CHRISTMAS

Where: Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday; through Jan. 1.

Tickets: $25 to $87. Call [phone].

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Photo:

(color) no caption (David Ogden Stiers)

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer