The "M*A*S*H" 4077th gang reunites on Fox
Posted: Thu May 16, 2002 7:09 pm
The "M*A*S*H" 4077th gang reunites on Fox
Thursday May 16, 7:30 PM EDT
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, May 16 (Reuters) - Thirty years after the landmark comedy "M*A*S*H" debuted on U.S. television, Hawkeye is doing a one-man show on Broadway, Radar paints wildlife for a living and Hot-Lips designs jewelry.
On Friday, all three -- a.k.a. Alan Alda, Gary Burghoff and Loretta Swit, respectively -- will return to prime time with the rest of the surviving 4077th gang for the first time since the show's finale set an all-time ratings record.
Oddly enough, the "M*A*S*H" reunion will air not on CBS, the network that carried the original series for 11 years, but on Fox, courtesy of its sister studio, 20th Century Fox Television, which produced the show.
The two-hour Fox special is the latest in a flood of reunions, retrospectives and anniversary tributes sweeping the networks this month, saluting everyone from Jackie Gleason and Bill Cosby to "Laverne & Shirley."
"M*A*S*H" co-star Mike Farrell, an executive producer of the retrospective, said he and fellow cast members had long resisted the idea of a reunion telecast.
"In my mind, 'reunion' always meant putting together some sort of preposterous premise for a two-hour movie where everyone just happens to be in the same place at the same time, and using that as a kind of pretext for telling a story," Farrell told Reuters.
Instead, the "M*A*S*H": 30th Anniversary Reunion Special" brings the actors back together for collective reminiscing, individual interviews and clips of the show's most memorable moments, Farrell said. The reunion itself, taped last week, "was really a hoot," he said.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
Farrell, who joined the cast in the fourth season as Hawkeye's best pal, B.J. Hunnicut, said he and several former co-stars have stayed in touch over the years, despite heading in different directions.
Alda went on to appear in numerous TV and film projects and currently stars on Broadway as a physicist in the one-man play "QED." Farrell is perhaps the most familiar to present-day TV audiences, co-starring on the NBC drama "Providence."
Swit, who played the feisty head nurse, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, recently finished a tour of "The Vagina Monologues" in London and is designing her own jewelry line. And Burghoff, best known as the quiet but clairvoyant camp clerk, Cpl. "Radar" O'Reilly (and the only "M*A*S*H" regular to play the same role on TV and film), is an artist who specializes in wildlife renderings.
Joining all of them for the reunion were Wayne Rogers ("Trapper John" McIntyre), Jamie Farr (the cross-dressing Cpl. Klinger), William Christopher (chaplain Father Mulcahy), Harry Morgan (the gruff but kindly Col. Sherman Potter) and David Ogden Stiers (the blue-blooded Charles Emerson Winchester).
There also will be tributes to two of the show's late co-stars -- McLean Stevenson, who played the original commanding officer, Col. Blake, and Larry Linville, the sniveling Major Frank Burns.
One of the few hit TV series to come from the big screen, "M*A*S*H" was based on the 1970 Korean War satire directed by Robert Altman and adapted from a novel of the same name by a real-life doctor who actually served in Korea.
It centered on the antics of Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce and fellow doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital -- MASH for short -- as they struggled to keep their sanity and save lives. When not tending to waves of wounded GIs, Hawkeye and his pals passed the time playing practical jokes, canoodling with nurses and drinking to excess.
BEYOND POKING FUN
A far cry from the military sitcoms that came before it -- like "McHale's Navy" or "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." -- "M*A*S*H" went beyond merely poking fun at Army life to deal with such issues as circumstantial ethics and the morality of war.
On occasion, the show was dead serious. Farrell said a favorite episode of his and fellow cast members was one titled "The Interview," a black-and-white segment featuring documentary-style interviews with the characters by former real-life war correspondent Clete Roberts.
The show was hardly an overnight success. Premiering in September 1972 as America was still embroiled in Vietnam, "M*A*S*H" struggled in the ratings during its first season before catching on with viewers, lauded by critics and resonating with the anti-war sentiment of the time.
"M*A*S*H" ultimately ran for 11 years, far longer than the actual war. The last original episode, a 2 1/2-hour finale on Feb. 28, 1983, was a highly publicized national event that still holds the record for the biggest U.S. audience ever to watch a single TV program.
Farrell said he doubts a show like "M*A*S*H" would make it today, though its success proves "the audience is a lot smarter than the average network executive gives them credit for."
"It's also evidence of the fact that if a network believes in a show enough to give it a shot, and if it's a good show, the audience will ultimately come to it," he said. "You don't see too much of that today. It's all about ratings and egos."
Fox is part of Fox Entertainment Corp. (FOX), which is a unit of News Corp. Ltd (NCP) (NWS), while CBS is now owned by Viacom Inc. (VIA)
Thursday May 16, 7:30 PM EDT
By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, May 16 (Reuters) - Thirty years after the landmark comedy "M*A*S*H" debuted on U.S. television, Hawkeye is doing a one-man show on Broadway, Radar paints wildlife for a living and Hot-Lips designs jewelry.
On Friday, all three -- a.k.a. Alan Alda, Gary Burghoff and Loretta Swit, respectively -- will return to prime time with the rest of the surviving 4077th gang for the first time since the show's finale set an all-time ratings record.
Oddly enough, the "M*A*S*H" reunion will air not on CBS, the network that carried the original series for 11 years, but on Fox, courtesy of its sister studio, 20th Century Fox Television, which produced the show.
The two-hour Fox special is the latest in a flood of reunions, retrospectives and anniversary tributes sweeping the networks this month, saluting everyone from Jackie Gleason and Bill Cosby to "Laverne & Shirley."
"M*A*S*H" co-star Mike Farrell, an executive producer of the retrospective, said he and fellow cast members had long resisted the idea of a reunion telecast.
"In my mind, 'reunion' always meant putting together some sort of preposterous premise for a two-hour movie where everyone just happens to be in the same place at the same time, and using that as a kind of pretext for telling a story," Farrell told Reuters.
Instead, the "M*A*S*H": 30th Anniversary Reunion Special" brings the actors back together for collective reminiscing, individual interviews and clips of the show's most memorable moments, Farrell said. The reunion itself, taped last week, "was really a hoot," he said.
DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS
Farrell, who joined the cast in the fourth season as Hawkeye's best pal, B.J. Hunnicut, said he and several former co-stars have stayed in touch over the years, despite heading in different directions.
Alda went on to appear in numerous TV and film projects and currently stars on Broadway as a physicist in the one-man play "QED." Farrell is perhaps the most familiar to present-day TV audiences, co-starring on the NBC drama "Providence."
Swit, who played the feisty head nurse, Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, recently finished a tour of "The Vagina Monologues" in London and is designing her own jewelry line. And Burghoff, best known as the quiet but clairvoyant camp clerk, Cpl. "Radar" O'Reilly (and the only "M*A*S*H" regular to play the same role on TV and film), is an artist who specializes in wildlife renderings.
Joining all of them for the reunion were Wayne Rogers ("Trapper John" McIntyre), Jamie Farr (the cross-dressing Cpl. Klinger), William Christopher (chaplain Father Mulcahy), Harry Morgan (the gruff but kindly Col. Sherman Potter) and David Ogden Stiers (the blue-blooded Charles Emerson Winchester).
There also will be tributes to two of the show's late co-stars -- McLean Stevenson, who played the original commanding officer, Col. Blake, and Larry Linville, the sniveling Major Frank Burns.
One of the few hit TV series to come from the big screen, "M*A*S*H" was based on the 1970 Korean War satire directed by Robert Altman and adapted from a novel of the same name by a real-life doctor who actually served in Korea.
It centered on the antics of Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce and fellow doctors and nurses of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital -- MASH for short -- as they struggled to keep their sanity and save lives. When not tending to waves of wounded GIs, Hawkeye and his pals passed the time playing practical jokes, canoodling with nurses and drinking to excess.
BEYOND POKING FUN
A far cry from the military sitcoms that came before it -- like "McHale's Navy" or "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." -- "M*A*S*H" went beyond merely poking fun at Army life to deal with such issues as circumstantial ethics and the morality of war.
On occasion, the show was dead serious. Farrell said a favorite episode of his and fellow cast members was one titled "The Interview," a black-and-white segment featuring documentary-style interviews with the characters by former real-life war correspondent Clete Roberts.
The show was hardly an overnight success. Premiering in September 1972 as America was still embroiled in Vietnam, "M*A*S*H" struggled in the ratings during its first season before catching on with viewers, lauded by critics and resonating with the anti-war sentiment of the time.
"M*A*S*H" ultimately ran for 11 years, far longer than the actual war. The last original episode, a 2 1/2-hour finale on Feb. 28, 1983, was a highly publicized national event that still holds the record for the biggest U.S. audience ever to watch a single TV program.
Farrell said he doubts a show like "M*A*S*H" would make it today, though its success proves "the audience is a lot smarter than the average network executive gives them credit for."
"It's also evidence of the fact that if a network believes in a show enough to give it a shot, and if it's a good show, the audience will ultimately come to it," he said. "You don't see too much of that today. It's all about ratings and egos."
Fox is part of Fox Entertainment Corp. (FOX), which is a unit of News Corp. Ltd (NCP) (NWS), while CBS is now owned by Viacom Inc. (VIA)