Happy Anniversary M*A*S*H

Of all the TV shows based on movies the most successful would have to be M*A*S*H. The movie was based on a book by Richard Hooker. The movie starred Elliot Gould and Donald Sutherland as Trapper and Hawkeye. The Korean war comedy was a hit in America. With the country torn up over the current Vietnam war we need something funny to laugh at. When the show was created for TV it was produced by Larry Gelbart who had written for Duffy’s Tavern, Bob Hope, Your Show of Shows and was head writer on The Pat Boone Show as well as others. When the show started it only had one member of the movie to transition with it to television. That was Gary Burghoff who played Walter “Radar” O’Reilly for both the movie and TV series. He became one of the most popular characters on the show. The theme song from the movie, Suicide Is Painless, was also kept for the TV series.
During its first season this black comedy had a hard time finding its audience. Most networks would have canceled it after 13 weeks. CBS had faith in the show and kept it around. Its first show was broadcast on Sunday September 17, 1972. Each season brought a new night for the show until they hit the jackpot on Monday night in January of 1978. Mash was on the air for about 11 years, lasting longer then the Korean war, and most of those years it was not a hit.
With the TV show on the air more novels were published about the adventures of the Mash unit. Instead of being based in Korean they were now globetrotters with such titles as Mash Goes to Maine, Mash Goes to Morocco, Mash Goes to Hollywood, Mash Goes to Montreal, etc. Richard Hooker was only a co-author on the sequels. Some have said that he only had his name on the book and they were really written by the other co-author William E. Butterworth (W.E.B. Griffin).
Mr. Hooker was not a big fan of the show. I have read that while the TV series was always taking a stand against war Mr. Hooker believed that sometimes war is a good thing for the country. He thought that the series was the complete opposite of what his books were about.
There were many cast changes during the run of the series. It seemed with each change the show got stronger and the audience grew. TV Guide once said that it didn’t matter who left the show that the series would continue. I disagreed with that observation. If Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye, left the series would have died. Of those who left for other series, like MacLean Stevenson, Larry Linville and Wayne Rogers, only Wayne Rogers had a hit with House Calls. However, it paled in comparison to the popularity of Mash. The biggest exit from the show came when MacLean Stevenson’s character of Henry Blake was killed off. When Radar reads the dispatch that Col. Blake’s plane was shot down and there were no survivors the reaction from the other actors was real. The producers didn’t tell them of the last minute change to get that reaction from them. You can tell they are having a hard time staying in character when you see that episode. I remember one of my high school teachers telling how she cried when she saw that episode because Henry Blake reminded her of her Father. When Mr. Stevenson’s new show flopped I bet he regretted that he left the show that way. Otherwise he may have come back.
The character of Klinger was added to the cast in 1973. He was to be a man who dressed like a woman in order to get out of the Army saying that he was crazy. He stopped wearing the dresses but still kept trying to get out in crazier ways. Jamie Farr played Klinger and said that he was on the verge of giving up on acting when the producers cast him in the role. The remembered seeing him play a funny Indian on F-Troop and thought he would be right for the part. It was only supposed to be for a couple of episodes but kept him around for the rest of the series.
In 1983 the show finally aired its 251st and last episode with “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”. At that time I was sort of glad as the show was starting to repeat itself. When I watched a new episode I felt like I had seen it before. Only this time the central character was Winchester instead of Hawkeye or it might be Klinger instead of B.J. You get the idea. The series went out with a bang and became one of the most watched episodes in the history of TV.
As you can imagine from such a successful series spin-offs were attempted. There is an unsold pilot that starred Gary Burghoff called Walter. It had Radar going back home and joining the police department. Trapper John M.D. was sort of an unofficial spin-off. The main character was said to be the Trapper John from the movie. Not the Trapper from the TV series. This was the only hit spin-off from Mash. They tried one called AfterMash with Col. Potter, Klinger and Father Mulcahy all working together at a hospital but it didn’t last long. The most successful reunion of cast members came in a series of commercials for a computer company. I forget the name of the company but it had them all as office workers marveling at the new computers that just arrived. While they didn’t tell you the names of their characters they are all acting like the ones they played on Mash.
Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of the airing of first episode of the TV series. The show has never been off the air. During the late 70’s and early 80’s you could see it 2 times a day in syndication in my area. Since it was still on the network that meant you could see it 3 times on Monday. Not bad for a show that normally would have been cancelled during its first season.
The above photo is from TV Guide.com