Biography

Milt was born at Beth Israel Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 10, 1936 to Eastern European immigrants, Mildred and Joseph Kogan. Joseph earned a degree as a pharmacist from Temple University and after one year moved his family across the Delaware River to Camden, New Jersey, where he set up a pharmacy that lasted for 40 years and became a neighborhood icon. Milt found success at Woodrow Wilson high school as a basketball player, winning choice on Camden, N.J. City All-Star Basketball Team in 1953. He won acceptance to prestigious Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where he performed as leading scorer on his college freshman team. In his first game, the next year, for the varsity, unfortunately, he suffered a severe knee injury, before modern knee surgery, which essentially ended his high caliber performances. Still, in 1957, he was voted Captain of the Cornell Basketball Team. Milt went on to medical school, instead, and graduated with a D.O. degree and then an M.D. from the University of California, Irvine. It was in those early 1960 years that he serendipitously fell into acting in Hollywood. Early success in TV commercials brought him much respect, especially since his early roles were as dumb, working-class characters that incited much laughter. He married Dena Lambie, from Northern California, after a stint as a professor/physician on the University of the Seven Seas, a floating campus that went around the world. Two children followed, Magavin and Teidi, and because his TV career never floundered, he soon felt embarrassed about his success and decided to repay someone...but whom? He joined the United States Peace Corps and brought his young family to West Africa, now Burkina Faso, where he served the poor there for two and a half years. On his return to California, he enrolled in a Masters in Preventive Health program at U.C.L.A. and graduated with an M.P.H. Unfortunately, his marriage took a toll from his energetic lifestyle and Dena divorced him two years later. Dedicating himself, full energy, to his dual careers of medicine and acting, working with the homeless and mentally ill in Los Angeles, he was soon guest starring on many major TV shows, appearing in movies, and continuing his success in comedy in commercials. After returning from two years in Harlowton, Montana, where he accepted a position with the National Health Service Corps as a cowboy doctor, he met Susan Quast, a South Dakota small-town beauty, who agreed, after some effort, to be his wife. Milt shares two children with Susan, son Jamie and daughter, Millay. In effort to continue contact with all his children, Milt joined the U.S. Defense Department and served with the U.S. Army in West Germany for two years. He returned to Hollywood with his complete family and now has been married to Susan for 35 years. Because of his medical adventures, he can speak German, French and Spanish. He is a voting member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars) and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Emmy). Three of his four children have earned lawyer degrees and son, Jamie, is a successful film composer in Hollywood. Susan and Milt built a home and farm in Oceanside, California where he now practices, he says, as a farmer. He continues his efforts in medicine and acting, traveling to Los Angeles to participate in TV
- IMDb mini biography by: Milt Kogan