Fred Thompson, former senator and 'Law & Order' actor, dies at 73

Fred Thompson, the former U.S. senator from Tennessee and acclaimed film and television actor who first gained national prominence as a lawyer on the Senate committee that investigated Watergate, died Nov. 1 in Nashville. He was 73.

A family statement said he died after a recurrence of lymphoma.

In a multifaceted career, Thompson represented his state in the U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2003. He was also a lobbyist, radio host and columnist. Among other acting roles, he starred as a district attorney on the hit television series "Law & Order."

More than many of his contemporaries, Thompson, a product of a small-town upbringing, demonstrated the possibilities inherent in American life, in the courtroom and the hearing room, in the halls of Congress and on the sound stages of the entertainment world.

A physically imposing man who stood 6-foot-5 and deployed a deep, syrupy voice, he was known as folksy but hardworking, and both amiable and ambitious during a career in which he prosecuted criminals in real life as well as on TV, played presidents on screen and sought the Republican presidential nomination in actuality.

But in a life of many phases, he first came to the attention of the American public in 1973 as one of the principal supporting players in one of the country's most celebrated political dramas, the Watergate hearings.

These held the nation spellbound through hot summer days, with a roster of engrossing characters and an almost-daily menu of startling plot twists. Of all that occurred at the hearings, one of the most breathtaking incidents was the revelation that White House conversations had been surreptitiously recorded.

It was during the questioning by Thompson of White House aide Alexander Butterfield that the public first learned of the taped conversations, with their potential to become incriminating evidence.

"Mr. Butterfield," Thompson began, "Are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"

Moments of silence followed as the country, tuned in on television, hung on Butterfield's response. It was in the affirmative.

Historians and scholars have probed into the story of how Thompson's question came to be asked, what lay behind it and who played the most significant role in unearthing the existence of the tapes. It was clear that Thompson was asking a question to which he already knew the answer.

Nevertheless, it was his questioning and the response it drew that have been recognized as a turning point in history. After the existence of the tapes became known, President Richard M. Nixon's ultimate resignation was regarded as inevitable.

Viewers of the hearings saw Thompson at the side of the senior Republican member of the Watergate committee, Sen. Howard Baker (Tenn.). Thompson was Baker's chief counsel. Baker became known for encapsulating the hearings in the question "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"

Freddie Dalton Thompson was born Aug. 19, 1942, in Sheffield, Ala., and grew up about 40 miles away in the Tennessee town of Lawrenceburg. A statement released by his family quoted him as saying that the events and lessons of his small-town boyhood stamped him throughout his days.

Known in his adolescent years as easy-going, relaxed and fun-loving, he played basketball but was known as an indifferent student.

Long afterward, when he announced from a platform in Lawrenceburg that he would seek the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, he said he wanted "to tell my former teachers I'm just as surprised to be here as you are to see me up here tonight."

According to one account, he gained purpose after reading a book on the life of the famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

"At 17," he has been quoted as saying, "I knew I wanted to be a lawyer." He had married as a teenager, attended Florence State College in Alabama and Memphis State University in Tennessee, and went to Vanderbilt University law school on a scholarship.

He began practicing in Lawrenceburg and made Republican Party connections that helped him become an assistant U.S. attorney. He won convictions against bank robbers. After he was asked to help manage Baker's Senate reelection campaign, the bond they formed led to the Watergate post for Thompson.

"It didn't start out being that big a deal," he once said of the committee work. "It grew. And then you go out and then everybody on the street is talking about it, and you realize this thing you've been working on for several weeks has grown enormous."

After Nixon's resignation, Thompson went back to Nashville, where he practiced law and was hired in 1977 by Marie Ragghianti, who had been fired from a state job after becoming a whistleblower. She was ordered reinstated. A book was written about the case, and a movie was made.

The credits included the words "Fred Thompson as Himself."

Hailed as an acting natural, he found himself in demand as a drawling, sometimes intimidating authority figure. At least three times he was cast as the president.

Dick Wolf, producer of "Law & Order," noticed how he dominated a room and once called him "the living definition of command presence."

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Politics remained an interest. In 1994, he was elected to fill out the unexpired term of Al Gore, who had become vice president. He was reelected in 1996 and decided not to seek another term in 2002.

In a statement, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) called him a longtime friend and "one of our country's most principled and effective public servants."

Thompson wrote a book about his life, which was titled "Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances." In it he recalled his effort to get the presidential nomination the first time he "couldn't accomplish something I had set out to do."

He and his first wife divorced in 1985. He was married a second time to Jeri Kehn in 2002. Survivors include four children. A daughter died in 2002.