M*A*S*H: The Series

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M*A*S*H: The Series

In the beginning, there was...

THE BOOK

MASH was written by Dr. Richard Hornberger (under the pen name "Richard Hooker") as a fictionalized account of his Korean War service with the 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit. The novel was rejected by seventeen publishers before William Morrow & Company, Inc. took it on in 1968, and it became a surprise success. The story centers on three draftee doctors: Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, "Trapper" John McIntyre, and Duke Forrest (who appears in the movie but not the TV series).

Hornberger, a native of Maine drafted at age twenty-six, based the Hawkeye character on himself, and though he apparently loved the movie version, he disliked Alan Alda's TV incarnation. A Republican who believed that U.S. involvement in the Korean conflict was warranted, Hornberger disapproved of the sometimes strident antiwar and/or "liberal" tone of the TV series. He did not, however, complain about receiving the residual check when each episode aired. :)

A number of sequels to the original MASH novel were also published, the last one in 1979. Most of them bore titles starting with MASH Goes to... (London, Paris, Montreal, New Orleans, etc.) and most were written "in collaboration with" William E. Butterworth. (Besides the original, Hornberger wrote the first sequel, MASH Goes to Maine, and the final book in the series, MASH Mania, solo.) The reviews I've seen of the Butterworth books generally paint them in less than glowing terms. Not having read any of the novels myself, however, I can't comment on their relative literary merit.

And then came...

THE MOVIE

Producer Ingo Preminger secured the movie rights to Hornberger's novel for about $100,000 and Ring Lardner Jr. wrote the screenplay. One of the initial problems was finding a director -- fifteen turned down the job before Robert Altman accepted. Released by Twentieth Century Fox in the fall of 1970, the low-budget movie ended up pulling in around $36 million and several award nominations (Lardner won the Oscar for Best Screenplay, the film was nominated for Best Movie, and Sally Kellerman earned a Best Actress nomination).

Which brings us to...

THE SERIES

With the success of the movie, William Self, president of Fox, was eager to make a television version. His strongest argument was that the risk would be minimal -- Fox already owned the rights to the story and the movie set was still standing. Self hired Gene Reynolds to produce, and Reynolds asked his friend Larry Gelbart to write a script for the pilot.

Gary Burghoff (Radar O'Reilly), the only actor from the movie asked to reprise his role, was first to be cast. McLean Stevenson wanted to play Hawkeye, but he eventually agreed to take on the role of Henry Blake. In the end, the casting of Hawkeye came down to the wire; mere hours before rehearsals for the pilot were set to begin, Alan Alda signed on.

[Much of the information above was taken from The Complete Book of M*A*S*H, by Suzy Kalter (Abradale Press, 1984).]