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Photographer who went on to become an actor best known on television in 'M*A*S*H'
Sometimes a character can take a disproportionately large place in people's memories of a film or television series, an effect that is, in large part due to the actor. So it was with Major Freedman, the M*A*S*H psychiatrist played by Allan Arbus. Though he only appeared in 12 episodes it became a signature role, in part because of how deeply he empathised with the character, possibly through witnessing the mental difficulties faced by his wife, the photographer Diane Arbus.
Arbus was the son of a stockbroker and an English teacher, and dropped out of City College to take an advertising job at Russek's department store. The store-owner's daughter, Diane Nemerov, was studying painting but becoming increasingly frustrated and she and Arbus began seeing exhibitions together. Allan bought her first camera and Russek's employed them to take fashion photographs. He later recalled: "in confronting the world, we were really always tremendous allies". They married in 1941 and during the war he was a photographer in the Army Signal Corps, spending some time in India.
After the war the Arbuses added Vogue, Glamour and Harper's Bazaar to their clients. Broadly speaking, she was the art director and he the technician. Individually, both did more personal work and in...