Henry Blake, Charles Winchester and Father Mulcahy are all characters in which US tv series?
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List_of_M*A*S*H_characters.txt M*A*S*H_(TV_series).txt
List of M*A*S*H characters M*A*S*H (TV series)
This is a list of characters from the M*A*S*H franchise, covering the various fictional characters appearing in the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors and its sequels, the 1970 film adaptation of the novel, and the television series M*A*S*H, AfterMASH, W*A*L*T*E*R, and Trapper John, M.D..

M*A*S*H is a popular media franchise revolving around the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital as they attempt to maintain sanity during the harshness of the Korean War.

Main characters

Hawkeye Pierce

Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce is the lead protagonist in the MASH novels, film, and television series. The character was played by Donald Sutherland in the film and by Alan Alda on television, where he was the only character to appear in all 251 episodes. Between long, intense sessions of treating critically wounded patients, he makes the best of his life in an isolated Army camp by making wisecracks, drinking heavily, carousing, womanizing, and pulling pranks on the people around him, especially the unpleasantly stiff and callous Frank Burns and "Hot Lips" Houlihan. Although initially just one of an ensemble of characters, in the television series Hawkeye quickly became the center of the M*A*S*H unit's medical activity as well as the dramatic center of the series itself. In the series he is Chief Surgeon of the unit.

Pierce was born and raised in New England, most often mentioning Crabapple Cove, Maine, with a few references to Vermont. The character refers to having a sister but at other times identifies himself as an only child. His mother is deceased, and he is close with this father (in the novels lobsterman/fisherman "Big Benjy" Pierce, in the TV series Dr. Daniel Pierce). In the film Hawkeye is married with children, but in the TV series he is a bachelor and something of a ladies' man. He was given the nickname "Hawkeye" by his father, from the character in the novel The Last of the Mohicans, "the only book my old man ever read." 

He attended Androscoggin College. In the book and the film, Hawkeye had played football in college; in the series, he is non-athletic. After completing his medical residency, he was drafted into the U.S. Army Medical Corps and sent to serve at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) during the Korean War, an assignment he openly resents. Alda said of Pierce, "Some people think he was very liberal. But he was also a traditional conservative. I mean, he wanted nothing more than to have people leave him alone so he could enjoy his martini, you know? Government should get out of his liquor cabinet". 

Pierce has little tolerance for military red tape and customs, feeling they get in the way of his doing his job, and has little respect for most Regular Army personnel. He never wears rank insignia on his fatigues, never polishes his combat boots, and on the rare occasions he wears his Class A uniform, does not wear any of the decorations to which he is entitled (which include the National Defense Service Medal, the Korean War Service Medal, the United Nations Service Medal, a couple of Army commendation medals, and the Army Distinguished Unit Citation,  four Purple Hearts, and the Combat Medical Badge). On occasions, he assumes temporary command of the 4077th due to the absence or disability of Colonel Blake or Colonel Potter. Although he acquits himself well, it is plain he is not comfortable with the responsibility that goes with being the commanding officer.

As a surgeon, he does not like the use of firearms. He refuses to carry a sidearm as required by regulations when serving as Officer of the Day.  When ordered by Col. Potter to carry his issue pistol on a trip to an aid station, and they are ambushed on the road, he fires it into the air rather than at their attackers. 

In the series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", Hawkeye experiences a mental breakdown when a Korean woman responds to his frantic demand that she quiet her infant child lest enemy soldiers hear it and discover them, by suffocating it. When the Korean Armistice is announced, he states his intention to return to Crabapple Cove, to be a local doctor who has the time to get to know his patients, instead of contending with the endless flow of casualties he faced during his time in Korea. In Hooker's two sequels to MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors (M*A*S*H Goes to Maine and M*A*S*H Mania), Hawkeye returns to live in Crabapple Cove.

Trapper John McIntyre

Captain John Francis Xavier McIntyre appears in the novels, the film (played by Elliott Gould), the M*A*S*H TV series (Wayne Rogers), the Trapper John, M.D. series (Pernell Roberts). He is one of the protagonists in the M*A*S*H series during the first three seasons, and the central character of the latter series. His nickname comes from an incident in which he was caught having sex with a woman in the lavatory aboard a Boston & Maine Railway train; who claimed in her defense that "he trapped me!"

In the book and the film, Trapper John is a graduate of Dartmouth College (having played quarterback on the school's football team) and serves as thoracic surgeon and eventually Chief Surgeon of the 4077th. In the film, he has a dry, sardonic deadpan sense of humor, while in the M*A*S*H TV series he is more of a class clown. Trapper spends much of his time on the series engaging in mischief with Hawkeye Pierce, with the two playing practical jokes on majors Frank Burns and "Hot Lips" Houlihan, drinking, and trying to seduce women. While Trapper expresses great love for his wife and daughters, he also fraternizes with the nurses a great deal, with no pretense of fidelity.

In the film, Hawkeye and Trapper are given roughly equal focus, but in the TV series the character became more of a sidekick to the character of Hawkeye, who replaced Trapper as Chief Surgeon and hotshot "chest-cutter" of the unit. This frustrated Rogers, and in combination with a dispute over the terms of the contract for the fourth season, he quit the show; the character of Trapper was abruptly transferred back to the U.S. between seasons. The character of B.J. Hunnicutt was created to replace him.

The character of Trapper John returned to television in 1979 in the series Trapper John, M.D.. Now played by Pernell Roberts, the character is depicted in the then-present day as Chief of Surgery at a San Francisco hospital. This version of the character is in continuity with the film rather than the TV series, but no other characters from either production appear in this series, making Trapper John the only M*A*S*H character to be depicted on-screen in (what was then) the present day.

Duke Forrest

Duke's real name is Augustus Bedford Forrest. He is a surgeon and a prominent character in both the book and the movie, but he does not appear in the TV series. In both the book and the movie, he is a small-town southerner of his era. His name references Bedford Forrest, a famous Confederate general and notorious slave trader and war criminal, for the mass murder of African-Americans specifically on grounds of race. He initially shows some racial animosity toward Spearchucker Jones, but overcomes this, with help from Hawkeye and Trapper. He is a bit of a roughneck compared to the other doctors.

Duke was a key character from the beginning of the book and movie, in contrast to Trapper John who only appears later, but was written out of the TV series, possibly in part because Tom Skerritt declined to reprise his movie role as Duke. In an episode in the second season of the TV series, he is obliquely referred to and described as having been sent back to the United States (whether released from the Army or sent to further Army duty in the homeland is not made clear).

B.J. Hunnicutt

Captain B.J. Hunnicutt, is played by Mike Farrell in the TV show. He replaces the departing character of Trapper John, both in his position within the unit and his role on the show as an ally of Hawkeye Pierce and a foil of Frank Burns, appearing in all but one episode of the rest of the series. Although he glibly answers that the initials "B.J." stand for "anything you want", he tells Hawkeye that the initials are derived from the names of his parents, Bea and Jay. However, we are left to wonder if he is being serious or just kidding in good nature.

Hunnicutt resided in Mill Valley, California before he was drafted. He was educated at Stanford University and was a member of the Tau Phi Epsilon fraternity. He is a third-generation doctor in his family.  He went through his military training at Fort Sam Houston.

He is devoted to his wife Peg (née Hayden) who writes many letters to him while he is in Korea. The couple has a daughter Erin, who was born shortly before B.J. left for Korea. His status as faithful family man contrasts him with the philandering Trapper John, and he is also more reserved than his predecessor, often serving as the voice of reason when Hawkeye goes out on a limb. Nonetheless, he also participates in and initiates practical jokes, such as secretly altering the clothing of Maj. Winchester to make him think he's gaining or losing weight, or getting taller. On other occasions, B.J. encourages members of the 4077th to play jokes on each other, starting escalating joke wars for his own amusement, with neither side knowing that he was the instigator.

While he assumed the same general disregard for military discipline exhibited by both Hawkeye and Trapper, B.J. professes stronger moral values. For example, in the episode "Preventative Medicine" he refuses to participate in a scheme to relieve an overzealous officer of command by performing an unnecessary appendectomy on him. He is a skilled surgeon willing to take extraordinary measures to save a patient, such as in the "Heroes," where he undertakes an experimental procedure he'd read about in a medical journal, using a primitive open-chest defibrillator and open-chest heart massage.

He actively avoids the finality of farewells, but when the 4077th is disbanded in the series finale, he is last seen riding his Indian motorcycle away from camp, while Hawkeye sees from a helicopter that B.J. has arranged painted white stones into the word "GOODBYE".

Henry Blake

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Braymore Blake is introduced in the 1968 novel M*A*S*H and is also a character in the film (played by Roger Bowen) and television series (played by McLean Stevenson). He is a surgeon and the commanding officer of the 4077th M*A*S*H unit. He is beloved for his down-to-earth, laid-back manner by many under his command, especially Hawkeye and Trapper John (with whom he drinks, flouts regulations, and chases women), and scorned for it by those who prefer strict military discipline, such as Frank Burns and Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan.

In the film, he is a career Army physician, having been commissioned prior to World War II. In the television series, he is a reservist called up to active duty and taken away from his private practice in Bloomington, Illinois. Henry attended University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he was the football team athletic trainer. He tells Hawkeye he has "a great practice back home", but a "routine" one, and that by serving in Korea, he is doing more doctoring than he would otherwise be called on to do in a lifetime.  While Henry was in command of the 4077th, his wife had a son back in Bloomington—a son Henry would never meet. 

Henry is a good person and a capable surgeon, but not a forceful or competent commanding officer. Company clerk Radar can usually anticipate his wishes and turn them into efficient military orders, but Henry often gets flustered when an important decision needs to be made. In the "Rainbow Bridge" episode, he has to decide whether to send his doctors into enemy territory for an exchange of wounded prisoners, but hems and haws then tells his doctors, "Whatever you guys decide is fine with me." His skill as a commander is his ability to maintain the morale of his unit, which he does through heartfelt talk, and indulgence of the lunacy that is a hallmark of the 4077th. This success is demonstrated by the unit's 97% casualty survival rate.

When McLean Stevenson decided to leave the show at the end of the third season, his character was scripted to be discharged and sent home, as a bittersweet way to write him out of the series. However, the producers added a final scene to his last episode, in which it is reported that Blake's plane has been shot down, killing everyone aboard. This scene was kept secret from most of the cast until just before filming so that they would respond more authentically to the tragic news. 

(The following evening, The Carol Burnett Show opened the show with a shot of McLean Stevenson on a smoking raft, waving his arms, hollering, "I’m OK! I’m OK!"  In addition, the M*A*S*H novels written by W.E.B. Griffin state Henry's death to be "wildly exaggerated".)

Sherman T. Potter

Colonel Sherman Tecumseh Potter appears in the M*A*S*H and AfterMASH television series. He was portrayed by Harry Morgan, and replaced the departing character of Henry Blake as commander of the 4077th M*A*S*H. The character appeared in every subsequent episode with only three exceptions.

Potter is from Hannibal, Missouri, one-quarter Cherokee  and possesses a passion and fondness for horses. He lied about his age to enlist at 15, joining the US Army  horse cavalry as a private during World War I and subsequently rose to the rank of sergeant. During WWI combat, in the Hungarian Argonne Forest, he was "lost for 3 days, taken prisoner, head shaved and beaten to a pulp".  At Battle of Château-Thierry, he was mustard gassed, leaving him blind for a month in a French hospital.  Another time, several of his teeth were then knocked out by his German captors, for which he was later awarded a Purple Heart. After the war, he went to medical school, and began his service as an Army doctor in 1932,  serving in World War II. One of his most cherished possessions is his Good Conduct Medal, an award "only given to enlisted men", Potter explains to Radar whilst unpacking.  It is framed and hangs behind his desk during his tenure at the 4077th.

Potter was created as a different type of commanding officer than his predecessor: a "Regular Army" commander who had made a career out of the service, and was close to retirement. But despite his stern military bearing, Potter is a relatively relaxed and laid-back commander, not above involving himself in camp hijinks and understanding the need for fun and games to boost morale during wartime; but unlike Blake, he is not afraid to put his foot down when the camp's antics get out of hand.  In addition, Potter, who had been handling administrative work prior to his assignment to the 4077th, posesses formidable skills as a surgeon.

Potter is well-liked by his subordinates, especially Radar, who comes to see Potter as a mentor and father figure. Potter receives more respect than Blake did from Major Houlihan, but Major Burns harbors a grudge against him after being passed over for command. In turn, Potter holds Burns' feigned military bearing and subpar medical skills in contempt. Potter takes pride in the competency of the rest of the medical staff despite their antics. Burns' replacement Major Winchester has a grudging respect for Potter, even though their respective personalities are often at odds with one another. Potter initially takes a hard line against Klinger's attempts to get discharged, but is convinced to let him continue cross-dressing, and eventually assigns him to be his new company clerk. As an indication of their respect for him, in the final episode Hawkeye and B.J. formally salute Potter as he leaves the camp, one of the few times either is shown doing so.

The character also appeared as a central character in AfterMASH, a spin-off starring the three cast members who had voted (unsuccessfully) to continue the first series. Potter became chief of staff and chief of surgery of the fictional General Pershing VA Hospital in River Bend, Missouri, where he is joined by Klinger and his wife and Soon-Lee, and Father Mulcahy. Among the resident in-patients is one of Potter's WWI subordinates, who addresses him as "Sarge" as opposed to his retired rank of colonel.

Frank Burns

 

Major Franklin Delano Marion "Frank" Burns is the main antagonist in the film (played by Robert Duvall) and the first five seasons of the television series (Larry Linville). Burns first appeared in the original novel, where he had the rank of captain.  (He is also known as "Ferret Face," a nickname first pinned on him by his brother. )

In the novel, Burns is a well-off doctor who attended medical school but whose training as a surgeon was limited to an apprenticeship with his father in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Nonetheless, he maintains a dismissive attitude toward his better-trained colleagues, blaming others for his own failures.  He unjustly accuses a rookie orderly of killing one of his patients, and nearly kills another patient, earning him retaliatory assaults from Duke and Trapper John. His medical incompetence causes Col. Blake to instead assign Trapper John as Chief Surgeon. After the "Swampmen" learn that Burns is having an affair with Major Margaret Houlihan, Hawkeye taunts him about it, baiting him to attack just as Col. Blake enters the tent.  The next day, Burns is permanently sent away for psychiatric evaluation in a straitjacket, shot full of tranquilizers.

In the film and in the subsequent TV series, Frank Burns' rank is that of Major. The film version includes elements of the novel's Major Jonathan Hobson, a very religious man who prays for all souls to be saved. In the TV series, he is very high-strung, with a penchant for malapropisms; one example was from "The Interview" (season 4, episode 24), in which Burns described marriage as "the headstone of American society".

In the TV series, Burns is a firm believer in military discipline and continues to fancy himself a superior surgeon, but his actions invariably reveal his incompetence and require one of the other surgeons to prevent him from making fatal mistakes. Though by military rank Burns is second-in-command of the unit, he is outranked in medical matters by Hawkeye, who reluctantly accepts appointment by Col. Blake as Chief Surgeon.  Burns longs for command of the 4077th himself, and resorts to underhanded means to achieve this end, such as filing misleading complaints about Col. Blake and unsuccessfully preventing Hawkeye and Trapper from testifying in his defense. When Burns is left in command of the unit (per military regulations) he generally micromanages camp operations, just for the sake of being in command, but demonstrates a profound lack of military competence as well.  In at least one episode   Burns is left in temporary command when MASH 4077 is hit with a deluge of critically wounded patients-in Franks version he was a Super doctor; however the truth comes out- Burns goes borderline hysterical which results in two patients almost being killed. (In any early episode, however, before his character becomes more of a buffoon, he demonstrates himself to be an efficient though, again, micromanaging commander.  )

Burns' only friend in the unit is head nurse Major Houlihan, with whom he has an ongoing sexual affair that they believe is discreet, but which is common knowledge in the camp. They share a disdain for the "un-military" doctors, whom they conspire against ineffectively. His wife eventually hears of the affair and threatens him with divorce; he denies it, describing Houlihan as an "old war horse" and an "army mule with bosoms", beginning a rift that leads to her engagement to Donald Penobscott, a handsome lieutenant colonel stationed in Tokyo. Following their marriage, Burns suffers a mental breakdown and attacks a general and his wife in Seoul, mistaking them for the Penobscotts. He is sent stateside for psychiatric evaluation, but in a bitter irony he is cleared of charges and reinstated, as a lieutenant colonel stationed at a veteran's hospital in his hometown. (The departure of Burns from the series stemmed from Linville's frustration with the character, which he felt offered no further opportunity for him to develop.)

Margaret Houlihan

Major Margaret J  "Hot Lips" Houlihan appears in the novel, the film (played by Sally Kellerman), and the TV series (Loretta Swit). She is the regular-army head nurse of the 4077th, and begins as secondary antagonist allied with Major Frank Burns against the more civilian doctors of the unit. Later in the series, particularly after the departure of Burns, she becomes a more sympathetic character, softening her attitude while still serving as a foil for their antics.

Margaret is an army brat, born in an Army base hospital. She entered nursing school in 1938 and graduated in 1942 when she joined the Army. She served in World War II but it is unknown if she served stateside or oversees. She is the head nurse of the 4077th M*A*S*H, the highest-ranking and one of the few female officers in the unit, and fiercely protective of the women under her command. The character was inspired by two real-life Korean War MASH head nurses: "Hotlips" Hammerly, an attractive blonde of similar disposition, and Janie Hall.   Her nickname "Hot Lips" originates from a scene in the film, in which she has a tryst with Burns. Unbeknownst to them, a hidden PA microphone is broadcasting their conversation to the whole camp, including her growl to Frank, "kiss my hot lips".

Early on in the TV series, she is a stern "by-the-book" head nurse, but willingly goes against regulations for her own gain. She uses her sex appeal to her professional advantage as well as personal satisfaction, as shown by her relationship with Frank Burns. In early seasons she had several liaisons with visiting colonels or generals who were "old friends". She is an experienced surgical nurse, so although she thoroughly disapproves of the surgeons' off-duty tomfoolery, she is able to set her personal feelings aside to appreciate their skills, such as when she came down with appendicitis and asked that Hawkeye, not Burns, perform the surgery if needed. 

In later years she becomes a more relaxed and less criticizing member of the unit, tempering her authority with humanity.  Key episodes in this development include the season 5 episode "The Nurses", in which she plays the role of a stern disciplinarian, but breaks down in front of her nurses revealing how hurt she is by their disdain for her; and "Comrades In Arms" (season 6), in which Hawkeye and Margaret make peace as they endure an artillery barrage together while lost in the wilderness. She has a heavy drinking problem, which appears to run in her family. She once told Frank that half of her salary went to support her mother; half of that money went towards drying her out, the other half for bail money (her mother was a kleptomaniac). 

Her long-standing affair with Frank ends with her engagement and subsequent marriage to Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott. The marriage does not last long; she later finds out a visiting nurse had had an affair with him. Though he promises to work things out with her, he has himself permanently transferred to San Francisco, and she divorces him, regaining her self-confidence. In the wake of her split with Burns, she becomes more comfortable with at least some of the unit's more unorthodox ways and as time progresses, becomes a willing participant in some of the hijinks.  Despite their long-running mutual antagonism, Hawkeye and Margaret come to develop respect and affection for each other, reflected in a long passionate farewell kiss in the final episode.  She returns to the US to take a position in an Army hospital.

In the series of novels co-written with (or ghost-written by) William E. Butterworth, Houlihan reappears as the twice-widowed Margaret Houlihan Wachauf Wilson, both husbands having expired on the nuptial bed through excessive indulgence in her still-outstanding physical charms. Her career has taken a new direction as the reverend head of the "God Is Love In All Forms Christian Church, Incorporated", a cult or sect with the unusual distinction that its entire congregation consists of gay men. Most of these are extremely flamboyant and the Reverend Mother herself is conspicuously glitzy and glittery. However, it appears that Margaret genuinely cares for her flock and is not merely shaking them down in pursuit of material gain.

Charles Winchester

Major Charles Emerson Winchester III is a supporting protagonist in the television series, played by David Ogden Stiers. He was introduced in the show's sixth season as a replacement for Frank Burns, both in the unit's surgical team and as a foil for Hawkeye and B.J. Though Winchester did embody some antagonistic qualities similar to that of Burns, he proved over the course of his time on the series to be a very different character than his predecessor, being far more humane and kind.

Charles Emerson Winchester III was born in his grandmother's house in the Boston, Massachusetts, neighbourhood of Beacon Hill, and is part of a very wealthy family of Republican Boston Brahmins. After finishing his secondary studies at Choate, he graduated summa cum laude class of '43 from Harvard College (where he lettered in Crew and Polo), completed his M.D. at Harvard Medical in Boston in 1948, and worked at Massachusetts General Hospital. Before he was drafted to join the US Army during the Korean War, he was on track to become Chief of Cardio/Thoracic Surgery.

Winchester's commanding officer assigned him to the 4077th in retaliation for the major's snide attitude about beating him at cribbage to extent of a $672.17 debt. Assigned to quarters in "the swamp" with Hawkeye and B.J., Winchester found the conditions there appalling, calling the camp "an inflamed boil on the buttocks of the world". Keeping with the show's tradition of replacement characters who are in some way the antithesis of their predecessors, Winchester is as skilled a surgeon as Burns was inept, and he is as cultured as Burns was low-brow. However, Winchester still has to adjust to the realities of field medicine. Although the character was originally intended to develop a romance with Houlihan, the chemistry between the two was not there, so Charles and Margaret maintain a platonic, professional friendship.

Winchester is often adversarial with Hawkeye and B.J., but joins forces with them if it was justified. He has a keen but dry sense of humor, and enjoys April Fool's pranks. Behind his snobbery, he was raised with a sense of noblesse oblige and was capable of profound – albeit sometimes misguided – acts of kindness. For example, in "Death Takes a Holiday" he anonymously gifts an orphanage with expensive chocolates and is initially outraged to find that they have been sold in order to obtain money for staple foods. In "Morale Victory" he sends for a copy of the score for Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand to give encouragement to a pianist who can no longer play with his injured right hand. Classical music is one of his great loves, helping him to maintain his morale. In the series finale, following the sudden death of the Chinese POWs he has been teaching the work of Mozart, Winchester states that music has transformed into a haunting reminder of the horrors of the war. After the war, he returns to Boston where the position of Chief of Thoracic Surgery at a prestigious hospital awaits him.

Radar O'Reilly

Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O’Reilly appears in the novels, film, and TV series. He also appeared in two episodes of  AfterMASH, and starred in the television pilot W*A*L*T*E*R. The character was portrayed by Gary Burghoff in both the film and on television, the only regular character played by a single actor. His full name is never given in the original novel or film, but on the TV series it is Walter Eugene O'Reilly. The later novels by Richard Hooker and William Butterworth give his full name as J. Robespierre O'Reilly.

Radar is from Ottumwa, Iowa and joined the army right out of high school (possibly finishing through a correspondence course). He seems to have extra-sensory perception, appearing at his commander's side before being called and finishing his sentences. He also has exceptionally good hearing, able to hear helicopters before anyone else, and to tell from the rotor sounds if they are coming in loaded or not. It was these abilities that earned him the nickname "Radar".  The character is inspired by company clerk Don Shaffer, who also was born in Ottumwa and nicknamed "Radar" by his compatriots, and who served alongside Hornberger in Korea. 

In the film, Radar was portrayed as worldly and sneaky, a characterization that carried into the early part of the series. He carries with him a pocketful of passes for any potential scam that might arise, and has a racket of selling tickets for spying through a peephole into the nurses' shower. Another time, he cons nearly every member of MASH 4077 into buying mail order shoes. He is known for his tremendous appetite for heaping portions of food, is not averse to drinking Henry Blake's brandy and smoking his cigars when the colonel is off-duty, and he occasionally drinks the moonshine liquor that Hawkeye and Trapper make in their still.

Soon after the pilot episode, Burghoff noted that the other characters were changing from the film portrayals and decided to follow. He and Gelbart evolved Radar into a naïve farm boy,  who still sleeps with his teddy bear and whose favorite beverage is Nehi brand grape soda. He has a virginal awkwardness with women, and a fondness for superhero comic books. He runs the camp PA and radio station, which are often used in minor gags; in one episode he transmits messages to a Navy carrier by morse code.  He frequently looks to the doctors for advice, and increasingly regards Henry Blake and then Sherman Potter as father figures.

Burghoff appeared in every episode of the show's first three seasons. After season three, doing the series had become a strain on the actor's family life, and he had his contract changed to limit his appearances to 13 episodes per season out of the usual 24. By season seven, Burghoff started experiencing burnout and decided it was time to quit; he finished season seven, then returned the next season for a two-part farewell episode titled "Good-Bye Radar" in which Radar was granted a hardship discharge after the death of his Uncle Ed to help on the family farm, which he accepted after being satisfied that Klinger could replace him.

Several years later, Burghoff returned to the role of Radar for a two-part episode of AfterMASH, which led to production of W*A*L*T*E*R, the pilot for a proposed spin-off series that would have followed Radar after his return to the United States. Production never proceeded past the pilot, which aired once on CBS.

Father Mulcahy

1st Lieutenant (later Captain) Francis John Patrick Mulcahy S.J. – the order of his given names was not presented consistently in the series – appears in the film (played by René Auberjonois), and the television series (William Christopher). He is a Roman Catholic priest, and serves as a US Army chaplain assigned to the 4077th. He was played by George Morgan in the pilot episode of the series, but the producers decided that a quirkier individual was needed for the role.

In the novel and film, Mulcahy is familiarly known by the nickname "Dago Red", a derogatory reference to his Italian-Irish ancestry and the sacramental wine used in Roman Catholic Communion. While most of the staff is not religious, they treat Mulcahy with some respect. It is Mulcahy who alerts the doctors that the camp dentist "Painless" is severely depressed. Afterwards, Mulcahy reluctantly helps the doctors to stage the famous "Last Supper" faux suicide, to convince Painless that he should continue with life. He is bewildered by the doctors' amoral pranks and womanizing behavior. When Radar places a hidden microphone inside Hot Lips' tent as she and Frank Burns have sex, members of the camp listen in, and Mulcahy at first mistakes their conversation (and noises) for an episode of The Bickersons, leaving abruptly when he realizes otherwise.

He is from Philadelphia and is frequently seen wearing a Loyola sweatshirt. He has a sibling Kathy, who is a Catholic nun:  he impishly refers to her as "my sister the Sister". He's an amateur boxer and boxing fan; an old priest and mentor in Jesuit school taught his students that boxing built character. There is a running joke that Mulcahy always wins the betting pools. On one occasion, when asked how he knows what bet to place, he looks to the sky with a smile. His luck at poker is unremarkable, however. He donates his winnings to the local orphanage.

Mulcahy understands that many of his "flock" are non-religious or have other faiths, and doesn't evangelize them overtly. Rather than lecturing from authority, he seeks to teach by example ("Blood Brothers"), or by helping someone see the error of their ways ("Identity Crisis"). Although his quiet faith in God is unshakable, Mulcahy is often troubled over whether his role as chaplain and religious leader has importance compared to the doctors' obvious talent for saving lives. This leads him to periodically prove himself, such as volunteering for a dangerous mission to demonstrate his courage to a soldier who had shot himself in the foot to get out of combat duty ("Mulcahy's War"), and putting himself in harm's way to retrieve or negotiate for medical supplies ("Tea and Empathy", "Out of Gas").

In the series finale he is almost killed and rendered nearly deaf when he releases POWs from a holding pen that is in danger from an artillery barrage. He tells his friends that he intends to work with the deaf following the war, but only B.J. knows why, and helps him conceal this handicap from them.

Father Mulcahy was one of three regular M*A*S*H characters to star in the spin-off AfterMASH, with William Christopher joining Harry Morgan and Jamie Farr. The show was set at the fictional General Pershing VA Hospital in Missouri, where he served as chaplain. An experimental procedure was said to have restored most of his hearing.

Maxwell Klinger

Corporal (later Sergeant) Maxwell Q. Klinger appears in the television series M*A*S*H and the spin-off AfterMASH, played by actor Jamie Farr. Klinger was the first main character introduced on M*A*S*H not to have appeared in either the original novel or the subsequent film. Despite the writers giving him a German-sounding name, Klinger is an Arab-American of Lebanese descent from Toledo, Ohio (like Farr himself). He serves as an orderly/corpsman (and later company clerk) assigned to the 4077th.

The character's original defining characteristic was his continuous attempts to gain a Section 8 psychiatric discharge from the Army, by habitually wearing women's clothing and engaging in other "crazy" stunts. His first appearance was in the fourth episode, "Chief Surgeon Who?"; in that episode's original script, Klinger was an effeminate gay man, but the writers later agreed that it would be more interesting to have Klinger be heterosexual, but wear dresses in an attempt to gain a Section 8 discharge.  He makes it a point to play up his antics to visiting high-ranking officers in an attempt to gain their sympathy and convince them that he is unfit to serve, and when Colonel Potter takes command, Klinger immediately tries the same with him, but Potter sees through the scam immediately. Series writer Larry Gelbart stated during the M*A*S*H 30th Anniversary Reunion special that Klinger's antics were inspired by stories of Lenny Bruce attempting to dodge his own military service by dressing himself as a U.S. Navy WAVE.

Klinger eventually gives up his attempts at a Section 8 when he is picked by Colonel Potter to replace Radar as company clerk, and takes his duties even more seriously when he is promoted to sergeant; the writers had decided to "tap into his street skills" to flesh out his character. In the eighth-season episode "Dear Uncle Abdul", Klinger writes to his uncle – who successfully used cross-dressing to stay out of the army – about the crazy goings-on in camp, ending with the reflection "It's no wonder I never got a Section Eight-- there's nothing special about me; everybody here is crazy!"  Klinger is a fan of the Toledo Mud Hens, an actual minor league baseball team, and occasionally voices his high opinion of the hot dogs at Tony Packo's, an actual Toledo restaurant.

In the third-season episode "Springtime", Klinger marries his girlfriend Laverne Esposito, via radio. In season six he receives a Dear John letter from Laverne saying she has found another man, whom she later divorces, then marrying Klinger's best friend. In the final episodes of the series, Klinger gets engaged to Soon Lee Han (Rosalind Chao), a Korean refugee. She refuses to leave Korea until she finds her family, leading to the irony that although the end of the war means Klinger is free to leave, he chooses to stay with her.

In AfterMASH, it is revealed that Max and Soon Lee found her family and helped them reestablish themselves as farmers, then moved together to the U.S. to settle down. However she faced racial discrimination and he turned to bookmaking, and is only able to escape prison time when Sherman Potter offers a character reference and hires him as his assistant at the veteran's hospital in Missouri where he now works.

Recurring characters

Nurse Kellye

1st Lt. Kealani Kellye was portrayed by Kellye Nakahara. She appeared in 86 episodes of the series, more episodes than some main characters, such as Henry Blake and Trapper John. The character grew steadily from a background (often non-speaking) character in the first season, culminating in the season 11 episode "Hey, Look Me Over" which was centered around the character. In her first appearances, her name changed several times before it finally settled on "Nurse Kellye"; for example, she was referred to as "Nurse Able" in her first appearance in "A Full Rich Day". The first name "Kealani" was never spoken on screen, but according to interviews with the actress, that was the first name used on set when referring to the character.  On several occasions, though, she is called "Lt. Nakahara," notably in the season 10 episode "The Birthday Girls," and in the last regular episode of season 11, the final episode filmed, "As Time Goes By," Major Houlihan refers to Kellye as "Lt. Nakahara".

Originally from Honolulu, she described herself as "part Chinese, part Hawaiian" in Episode 8/11 "Life Time" and speaks Japanese, as revealed in "Communication Breakdown". She had great pride in her Asian American heritage and frequently took umbrage at racial slurs leveled by Frank Burns. Her family lives in Honolulu according to her statements in the final episode.

Nakahara joined Morgan, Christopher and Farr on AfterMASH, albeit off-camera, as the recurring voice of the public address system at the V.A. hospital.

Igor Straminsky

Private Igor Straminsky  was generally portrayed by actor Jeff Maxwell, although Peter Riegert played him in two sixth season episodes. He debuted in the second season and appeared on and off up until the series finale. He has appeared in more episodes than any recurring character except Nurse Kellye.

Igor's role was often to serve food out in the mess and therefore also to serve as the foil for a lot of the complaints about the state of the food. He is also sometimes tasked with duties with Radar, as seen in the episode "Mulcahy's War". As a comic relief buffon he takes the part of Frank Burns as the village idiot.

In "Promotion Commotion", Igor relentlessly tries to impress Hawkeye and B.J., so he can be promoted to Corporal. He once mentioned to Father Mulcahy that he sets aside three dollars from each salary payment for the local orphanage.

In "The Price of Tomato Juice," Igor identifies himself as "Maxwell," (a goof on the part of actor Jeff Maxwell) and Major Frank Burns also refers to him as "Maxwell" in the following line of dialogue.

Igor became a fan favorite with both the fan base and the network. In later seasons, his roles were expanding, making him more of a recurring cast member.

Luther Rizzo

Staff Sergeant Luther Wilson Rizzo was played by G. W. Bailey. In the show, he was the sergeant in charge of the motor pool. While originally written to be from New York City, when the producers heard Bailey's southern accent in his first dailies his character was moved to Louisiana.  He was known for his slow, deep, Louisiana drawl (Bailey himself is in fact Texan) and his slightly disheveled look. Though the motor pool seemed to function well, it did so despite Rizzo's casual work style and frequent naps. His philosophy on success in the army was that it was possible to never do work, so long as your superiors don't see you enjoy yourself: "Where else [but the Army] can you be a bum and get paid for it?"

In the Season 10 episode "Promotion Commotion", Rizzo was one of three 4077th enlisted that appeared before a promotion board consisting of Hawkeye, B.J., and Winchester. He was not promoted, but made it clear that he was American "with an American wife and American son (Billy Bubba)." In Episode 10/21 his first name is given as "Wilson".

Rizzo enjoys shooting craps, and seems to win more than he loses. He also is the camp loan shark, getting Charles on his hook at one point to the extent he had to have money sent from home to clear his debt with the cigar-chewing sergeant.

Sergeant Rizzo is known to carry a grudge. On one occasion, he borrowed a deactivated hand grenade from Igor and used it to scare B.J. out of the shower after B.J. had given him a hard time. He had harsh words with Winchester when the latter, acting as motor pool officer, required him to completely disassemble a jeep's engine and lay it out on white sheets, for no good reason that Rizzo could see. There was little doubt of the malicious delight he took in "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" when he drove Winchester out of the deactivated camp to his next assignment—in the camp garbage truck.

In the series finale, at the 4077th's final dinner Rizzo claimed that he would be going home to work on a new moneymaking venture: breeding frogs to sell to French restaurants. This is a minor error; Rizzo had re-enlisted in the Army service in a previous episode.

Sidney Freedman

Major Sidney Theodore Freedman, played by Allan Arbus, is a psychiatrist frequently summoned in cases of mental health problems; the name is a play on that of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. When Radar was written out of the series, the writers considered adding Sidney Freedman as a regular character. However, Allan Arbus didn't want to commit to be anything other than a guest star, so the character remained an occasionally recurring character. In the M*A*S*H 30th Anniversary Special that aired on Fox in 2002, Arbus was the only non-regular cast member to be featured on the special.

Freedman's first appearance was in the episode "Radar's Report". He visited the camp to do a psychiatric evaluation of Klinger, who was aiming for a Section 8 discharge (as always). After Freedman had finished the report, he quietly took Klinger in for an interview and told him that while he is obviously not mentally ill, Freedman was willing to declare him a transvestite and a homosexual. This label would not leave him, though; as Sidney put it: "From now on, you go through life on high heels." Klinger vociferously denied, "I ain't any of those things! I'm just crazy!" Klinger's discharge was uniformly dropped, and Freedman left the camp. In this first appearance in the series, Dr. Freedman's first name was Milton instead of Sidney.

Freedman appears in 12 M*A*S*H episodes: "Radar's Report" (as Milton Freedman), "Deal Me Out", "O.R.", "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", "Dear Sigmund", "Hawk's Nightmare", "War of Nerves" (in which he qualified for a Purple Heart by being wounded while performing therapy follow-up on one of his patients), "The Billfold Syndrome", "Goodbye, Cruel World", "Bless You, Hawkeye", "Pressure Points", and the series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". He is also mentioned, but does not appear onscreen, in the episodes "Mad Dogs and Servicemen," "Heal Thyself", "A Holy Mess", and "Trick or Treatment".

In the episode "O.R.", Freedman told those gathered in the operating room, "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice: Pull down your pants and slide on the ice." He repeated that advice in the series finale, following his treatment of Hawkeye, who had finally cracked under the strain of the war. Freedman led Hawkeye to stop suppressing the memory of seeing a Korean mother smothering her crying baby in an effort to keep it silent, so that a nearby Chinese patrol would not find and kill or capture their group. (In Hawkeye's suppression, he had 'remembered' that the mother had killed a 'chicken', until Freedman brought the true memory into the light.) He convinced a reluctant Hawkeye that the best thing for him now was to return to duty for the last days of the war.

After leaving Korea and the Army, Dr. Freedman accepts a post at the University of Chicago. The AfterMASH episode "Madness to His Method" has as its frame Colonel Potter writing a letter in Missouri about the episode's situation to an unseen Freedman.

Colonel (Sam) Flagg

Lieutenant Colonel (later Colonel) Sam Flagg is played by Edward Winter. Col. Flagg is an American intelligence agent. His behavior is paranoid and irrational and he appears to the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to be mentally unstable; the fact that he deliberately seriously injures himself to advance an investigation seems proof of that (these included jumping out of Sherman Potter's office window, and re-breaking his arm with the camp's X-ray machine). At one point, he tries to get into Counter Intelligence Corps headquarters by crashing his jeep into a brick wall and setting himself on fire. (When told this, Hawkeye responds, "Is this guy available for kids' parties?") In that episode, to get into the 4077th, he orders a helicopter pilot to crash and then twice breaks his own arm.  He alternately claims to be affiliated with the CIA, the CIC, or the CID (it is worth noting that the latter was formed only in 1971, while the M*A*S*H series is set at the time of the Korea War, which dates 1950-1953), and occasionally all at once, depending on to whom he is speaking. Example: "I'm with the CIA, but I tell people I'm with the CIC, so they think I'm with the CID."  Majors Frank Burns and Margaret Houlihan, both vicious McCarthy-style anti-Communists, follow his assignments with great interest, but are unable to "buddy up" to him as they hope. As Flagg says, "Nobody can get the truth out of me because even I don't know what it is. I keep myself in a constant state of utter confusion." At some point, however, Major Houlihan loses her respect for Flagg, as revealed in an episode in which she claims that he gives Americans a bad name.

Flagg investigates a penicillin theft in the episode White Gold. During the course of his investigation, he shows his papers on the camp's members to Lt. Colonel Henry Blake, Trapper John McIntyre and Hawkeye Pierce. There are red marks next to Trapper and Hawkeye, at which he explains "enemies of the state" and yellow marks next to Blake's, at which he remarks to Blake, "work on it."

Attitude towards Flagg differed among the members of the 4077th. Hawkeye, Trapper, and B. J. refused to be intimidated by him, often returning his insults equally or better than received. Burns, Radar and Father Mulcahy were somewhat afraid of him, and Henry Blake often allowed himself to be manipulated by his bullying. Flagg would meet his match in Colonel Potter, who refused to allow Flagg to manipulate him with words ("I'm not fond of personal abuse, Colonel. I was in this man's Army when the only thumb you cared about was the one you had in your mouth!"). Flagg on one occasion countered this by circumventing Potter and obtaining, in effect, his written permission through I Corps to interrogate a wounded North Korean soldier. It was Winchester, however, who orchestrated the end of Flagg's machinations by duping him into believing that a weekly bridge game with two South Korean officials was a Communist plot. When Flagg attempted to arrest the officials, they threatened to report him to I Corps.  Flagg was never seen again after this.

His paranoia is so fanatical that Flagg even accuses Major Burns twice of being a communist agent on the grounds that Burns has seen a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet in Tokyo and is reading Reader's Digest, which Flagg notes would be "Red's Digest" if the 3rd, 5th, and 6th letters were eliminated. A running gag is Burns almost being beaten up by Flagg—when Burns calls Flagg crazy, Flagg threatens to rip Burns' heart out. Another time, Burns tries to buddy up to Flagg by slapping him on the shoulder. Flagg icily tells Burns "My father touched me like that once. To this day, he still has to wear orthopedic shirts."

Edward Winter's first appearance on M*A*S*H is in the second season episode "Deal Me Out", in which he plays a CID captain named Halloran, and is listed in the credits as such. In the fourth season episode "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?"—the next episode in which both Flagg and Sidney Freedman appear—Flagg greets Sidney with the statement "We played poker once," to which Sidney replies, "Oh sure; with Intelligence, right?" M*A*S*H often used recurring actors to portray different characters (Including Dick O'Neill, Tim O'Connor, Ted Gehring, and numerous Asian- American actors) however, the example of Capt. Halloran can be explained as one of Flagg's many aliases.

Colonel Flagg appears in seven M*A*S*H episodes: "Deal Me Out" (as Capt. Halloran), "A Smattering of Intelligence", "Officer of the Day", "White Gold", "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", "The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan", and "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys". In "A Smattering of Intelligence" his first name is given as "Sam"; a running gag is that his rank insignia is the same as that of the Commanding Officer of MASH 4077 either Lt. Col. or Colonel, although he first appears as a Captain; both his rank and his last name may be covers.

His final appearance was in the episode "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys", in which he attempted to recruit Major Winchester as an agent to spy on Hawkeye following Pierce's triaging a North Korean ahead of an American GI. Charles dealt with him by insinuating Pierce's spymasters would appear at that evening's bridge game, which led to Flagg accusing the mayor and chief of police of Uijeongbu of being Communists. Considering that those politicians angrily vowed to use their connections with Flagg's superiors to ensure that he was punished, Flagg was not seen at the 4077th again.

Flagg resurfaces a few years after the war, in a Hannibal, Missouri courtroom (as seen in the AfterMASH episode "Trials"), in which he uses the name Flagg and asserts employment with an intelligence organization "which has initials and its members are allowed to carry firearms in their shoes."

Ken Levine, a writer for both M*A*S*H and AfterMASH, wrote in 2011, "We loved writing Col. Flagg (the hilarious Ed Winter) but always felt there was a danger in going to that well too often. So we tried to use him sparingly (once a season or every other season). He was incredibly funny but that character was very broad and we didn’t want him to wear out his welcome." 

Spearchucker Jones

Captain Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones originally appears in the novel MASH, and was portrayed by Fred Williamson in the movie and Timothy Brown in the television series. Spearchucker was shown during several episodes during the first season of the series. His full name was never mentioned in the series. The character's middle name was Harmon in the film and Wendell in the novels. He is a board-certified neurosurgeon in the film, and in the episode in which Hawkeye becomes chief surgeon, Spearchucker's specialty is indicated as he struggles to do surgery and when he asks Hawkeye for help he says "anything outside of the brain and I'm dead".

Dr. Jones was one of the original Swampmen with Trapper, Hawkeye, and Frank Burns, and was the sole black surgeon at the 4077th. In the pilot episode, to raise funds for Ho-Jon's education, Trapper jokingly suggests selling Spearchucker. During his brief run on the show, it was implied that he and nurse Ginger Bayliss (played by Odessa Cleveland) were romantically involved.

Spearchucker's role was limited. It is implied he assisted Hawkeye and Trapper in their schemes on the sidelines. The producers decided to drop the character after the first few episodes reasoning that they wouldn't be able to write enough meaningful episodes for Spearchucker if they were concentrating on Hawkeye and Trapper. Some accounts assert the producers were unable to find evidence for black Army surgeons in Korea; there were, however, a number of black surgeons who served in the U.S. military at the time. 

"Spearchucker" Jones was also a character in both the novel M*A*S*H (and its sequels) by Richard Hooker and Robert Altman's movie. In each, the Spearchucker character is a superior surgeon who was also a stand-out collegiate athlete ("Spearchucker," a common racial slur, is said to instead in this case refer to his javelin-throwing prowess). Initially, he is transferred to the 4077th to help them win a football game against a rival outfit. It is established in the novel that Jones is from Duke Forrest's hometown of Forest Park, Georgia, and knew Duke's father. Duke makes racist comments about Jones, causing Hawkeye and Trapper to punish Duke. In the novel it is related that while a poorly paid resident, he had been scouted by the Philadelphia Eagles playing semi-professional football in New Jersey for extra cash, and had been signed by the Eagles, playing with them until caught up in the draft. According to the movie, his professional football career had been with the San Francisco 49ers prior to the war in Korea. Coincidentally, Timothy Brown played seven seasons of his 9-year NFL career with the Philadelphia Eagles.

In the sequel novels, particularly M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, Jones joins the other doctors in their practice in Spruce Harbor, Maine, becoming a highly successful doctor and prominent citizen.

Ugly John

Captain "Ugly" John Black was portrayed by Carl Gottlieb in the movie, and John Orchard in the TV series. The character on the television show was an anesthesiologist from Australia, often depicted wearing an Australian Slouch hat. In the book, he was an American who had "trained in the States with McIntyre." In the film, he is an American (as he can be seen wearing the insignia of a U.S. Army Captain), but his background is not discussed.
In the TV series, Ugly John was only present in the first season. He began as a significant supporting member of the cast, often engaged in poker games with Hawkeye and Trapper, but by the end of the season he was rarely seen outside brief O.R. scenes.
Ugly John was never seen living in "The Swamp" and there was no fifth bunk, though it was the only quarters for subordinate male officers ever seen. In the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", Hawkeye says that he shares a tent with three other doctors. The script was likely written before Spearchucker was dropped and the writers presumably overlooked editing that line of dialogue. However, Ugly John was still a recurring character, and may have been one of the "three other doctors."
John Orchard later returned to the show for the Season 8 episode "Captains Outrageous", this time playing a drunken and corrupt Australian Military Policeman "Sgt. Muldoon".

Ho-Jon

Ho-Jon was portrayed by Kim Atwood in the film, and Patrick Adiarte in the series. In the original novel, Ho-Jon is described as a 17-year-old Korean, tall, thin, bright, Christian, and living in Seoul. He is drafted into the South Korean army, subsequently wounded and sent back to the 4077th for treatment. After rehabilitation, he resumes his position as "Swampboy". The Swampmen, who are very fond of Ho-Jon, arrange to have him sent to Hawkeye's old college in the US. To raise funds, Trapper grows a beard, poses as Jesus Christ (complete with a cross mounted on a jeep or hanging from a helicopter), and autographs thousands of photos which the Swampmen sell for a buck apiece.
In M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, Ho-Jon is briefly seen again, having pursued a successful career in university administration. In M*A*S*H Mania he is shown to have become the Director of Admissions at Androscoggin College (Hawkeye's alma mater).

In the film, Ho-Jon is drafted, and Hawkeye drives him to the induction center. The Korean doctor who examines Ho-Jon discovers that Hawkeye has given him drugs to induce hypertension and tachycardia (so that he will fail the induction physical). Ho-Jon is last seen in the film being led away by South Korean soldiers while the doctor tells Hawkeye that he has seen through the trick.

In the screenplay, Ho-Jon is wounded and sent to the 4077th; however, his surgery is unsuccessful, and he dies. The final film omits this storyline, although a scene showing Ho-Jon in the operating room remains with overdubbed dialogue (Houlihan: "That man's a prisoner of war, Doctor."  Trapper: "So are you, Sweetheart, but you don't know it.") and a scene showing a jeep driving off with the deceased Ho-Jon, causing a brief pause in the poker game. 

In the pilot episode Ho-Jon is accepted at Hawkeye's old college, just as in the novel. In the TV version, the doctors raise funds for him by raffling off a weekend pass to Tokyo with Nurse Dish.

In the episode "I Hate a Mystery", Ho-Jon steals many valuable items and Hawkeye's poker winnings in order to bribe the border guards to bring his family down from the North. This contrasts with an incident in the pilot where he receives his college acceptance letter and leaves to tell his parents, who presumably live nearby.

Lieutenant Dish

1st Lieutenant Maria "Dish" Schneider was played by Jo Ann Pflug in the film and (as Lt. Maggie Dish) by Karen Philipp in the series. She was a nurse at the 4077th MASH during the Korean War.

Dish's role in the finished film was limited, as a large portion of her role did not make the final cut. The same thing happened to the character in the television series. After being prominently featured as Hawkeye's love interest in the pilot, she appeared in only one further episode (Episode 1/11) before leaving the show entirely. However, she continued to be featured in the opening credit montage sequence (wherein the M*A*S*H staff run toward approaching helicopters) for most of the show's run.

Donald Penobscott

Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott was played by two actors, Beeson Carroll and former football player and Tarzan actor Mike Henry.
Donald is introduced in name only at the start of the fifth season. Tall, dark, handsome, and muscular, he is a Lieutenant Colonel and graduate of West Point whom Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit) meets while she is on leave in Tokyo. She falls madly in love with him on the spot, and he quickly asks her to marry him. Margaret promptly accepts, leading to a falling out with her former flame Frank Burns.

Penobscott is not actually seen until the season-ending episode "Margaret's Marriage", wherein Donald (played by Carroll) arrives to marry Margaret at the 4077th. Hawkeye and B.J. have a bachelor party for him, and after he passes out from drunkenness, the hosts, also inebriated, decide to play a joke on Penobscott by plastering him from his chest to his toes, intending to tell him that he had broken both his legs during the night. The cast is still on during the wedding ceremony, and he is unable to move without assistance. The wedding is cut short by incoming wounded, which leaves Donald in the mess hall, unable to move in his body cast. As Margaret leaves for her honeymoon, they make a halfhearted attempt to tell her that the cast could be removed, but she doesn't hear them over the sound of the helicopter.

He is not seen again until the sixth season episode "The M*A*S*H Olympics", in which Donald (played this time by Henry) arrives to visit Margaret and ends up taking part in the 4077th's amateur Olympics competition; he almost wins a race against portly Sgt. First Class Ames, but Penobscott trips over himself while showing off.

He is mentioned frequently throughout the 6th and 7th seasons, particularly in reference to problems Margaret and Donald are having. For example, in the episode "In Love and War", a new nurse arrives at the 4077th. After saying she was recently involved with a colonel named Donald, Margaret comes to the conclusion that Donald has cheated on her, and she flies into a rage against the nurse. In "Comrades in Arms", Margaret receives a letter from Donald that was meant for another woman—a letter that says unkind things about Margaret and hints at Donald having an affair with the other woman. Finally, in the season 7 episode "Peace on Us", Margaret announces she's getting a divorce. Margaret receives her official divorce decree from Donald in the episode "Hot Lips is Back in Town".

Zelmo Zale

Staff Sergeant Zelmo Zale was portrayed by Johnny Haymer.  Zale is the supply sergeant  for the 4077th MASH and also is the camp's electrician; he is shown trying to keep the camp's generator going until it blows up. He is responsible for repairing the juke box in the officers' club after the Marines bust it up. In the episode "Patent 4077", Zale describes himself a master craftsman. He mentions in one episode that he is from Brooklyn, which was the reason he didn't know what people who were heading to California in the late 1840s were looking for, when quizzed. He makes his first appearance in the Season 2 episode, "For Want of a Boot", and his final appearance in the Season 8 episode, "Good-Bye Radar" (which also marked Gary Burghoff's last appearance on the show as Corporal Radar O'Reilly). Zale's name is mentioned for the final time in "Yes Sir, That's Our Baby". A running gag is his feud with Maxwell Klinger-once Klinger hit Zale for insulting the Toledo Mud Hens and is put on KP for a whole month. Another time Major Burns manipulates Klinger and Zale into a boxing match, which results in Burns being knocked out by both men.

Roy Goldman

Roy Goldman is a corpsman who is assigned various duties at the 4077th. His name was not used for several seasons, and in an early season, while with another soldier, he is referred to as either Carter or Willis (it is not clear which of the two is which). He is also referred to in one episode as Fred. Later the name "Goldman" was firmly established as his own. He is usually seen in a non-medical setting (such as guard duty), though he also does chores within the hospital. Goldman appears off and on throughout the run of series, usually when a soldier is needed for a random line or reaction. When Hawkeye walks into the mess tent naked, for example, Goldman is the first one to notice, dropping his metal tray in shock. He rarely has more than one or two lines, though in the episode The Red/White Blues, his reaction to a medication is an important plot point and he speaks quite a bit more. (It is hinted in that episode that he is Jewish.) The character was played by an actor not coincidentally named Roy Goldman.

Dennis Troy

Like Roy, he is a corpsman, and he is frequently seen together with Roy. Sometimes he is a jeep driver. Dennis has glasses and straight hair, and usually has  a mustache. Roy rarely speaks beyond a few words. In one episode, Officer of the Day, he appears with another soldier and his last name is said to be Carter or Willis (it is unclear who is being referred to). One of those names, however, applies to Roy Goldman (see above), thus one can assume that the name was merely a one-time usage. In the episode Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde, Dennis is General Clayton's jeep driver, and it is uncertain, in that instance, whether he is based at the 4077th or not. M*A*S*H is an American television series developed by Larry Gelbart, adapted from the 1970 feature film MASH (which was itself based on the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, by Richard Hooker). The series, which was produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS, follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" in Uijeongbu, South Korea during the Korean War. The show's title sequence features an instrumental-only version of "Suicide Is Painless", the theme song from the original film. The show was created after an attempt to film the original book's sequel, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine, failed. The television series is the best-known version of the M*A*S*H works, and one of the highest-rated shows in U.S. television history.

The series premiered in the U.S. on September 17, 1972, and ended on February 28, 1983, with the finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", becoming the most-watched and highest-rated single television episode in U.S. television history at the time, with a record-breaking 125 million viewers (60.2 rating and 77 share),  according to the New York Times.  It had struggled in its first season and was at risk of being cancelled.  Season two of M*A*S*H placed it in a better time slot (airing after the popular All in the Family); the show became one of the top 10 programs of the year and stayed in the top 20 programs for the rest of its run. It is still broadcast in syndication on various television stations. The series, which depicted events occurring during a three-year military conflict, spanned 256 episodes and lasted 11 seasons.  The Korean conflict lasted 1,128 days, meaning each episode of the series would have averaged almost four and a half days of real time. Many of the stories in the early seasons are based on tales told by real MASH surgeons who were interviewed by the production team. Like the movie, the series was as much an allegory about the Vietnam War (still in progress when the show began) as it was about the Korean War. 

The episodes "Abyssinia, Henry" and "The Interview" were ranked number 20 and number 80, respectively, on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time in 1997. In 2002, M*A*S*H was ranked number 25 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.  In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the fifth-best written TV series ever  and TV Guide ranked it as the eighth-greatest show of all time.

Synopsis

M*A*S*H aired weekly on CBS, with most episodes being a half-hour in length. The series is usually categorized as a situation comedy, though it is also described as a "dark comedy" or a "dramedy" because of the dramatic subject material often presented.  The show was an ensemble piece revolving around key personnel in a United States Army Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) in the Korean War (1950–1953). (The asterisks in the name are not part of military nomenclature and were creatively introduced in the novel and used in only the posters for the movie version, not the actual movie.) The "4077th MASH" was one of several surgical units in Korea. As the show developed, the writing took on more of a moralistic tone. Richard Hooker, who wrote the book on which the television and film versions were based, noted that Hawkeye's character was far more liberal in the show than on the page (in one of the MASH books, Hawkeye makes reference to "kicking the bejesus out of lefties just to stay in shape"). While the show is traditionally viewed as a comedy, many episodes were of a more serious tone. Airing on network primetime while the Vietnam War was still going on, the show was forced to walk the fine line of commenting on that war while at the same time not seeming to protest against it. For this reason, the show's discourse, under the cover of comedy, often questioned, mocked, and grappled with America's role in the Cold War. Episodes were both plot- and character-driven, with several episodes being narrated by one of the show's characters as the contents of a letter home. The show's tone could move from silly to sobering from one episode to the next, with dramatic tension often occurring between the civilian draftees of 4077th — Hawkeye, Trapper John, and B.J. Hunnicutt, for example — who are forced to leave their homes to tend the wounded and dying of the war, and the "regular Army" characters, such as Margaret Houlihan and Colonel Potter, who tend to represent ideas of patriotism and duty (though Houlihan and Potter could represent the other perspective at times, as well). Other characters, such as Col. Blake, Maj. Winchester, and Cpl. Klinger, help demonstrate various American civilian attitudes toward army life, while guest characters played by such actors as Eldon Quick, Herb Voland, Mary Wickes, and Tim O'Connor also help further the show's discussion of America's place as Cold War warmaker and peacemaker.

Characters

M*A*S*H maintained a relatively constant ensemble cast, with four characters — Hawkeye, Father Mulcahy, Margaret Houlihan, and Max Klinger — on the show for all 11 seasons. Several other main characters departed or joined the program midway through its run. Also, numerous guest actors and recurring characters were used. The writers found creating so many names difficult, and used names from elsewhere; for example, characters on the seventh season were named after the 1978 Los Angeles Dodgers. 

*Note: Character appearances include double-length episodes as two appearances, making 260 in total.

Recurring characters

* Nurse Kealani Kellye, a recurring character in the 4077th (appearing in 164 episodes), was played by Kellye Nakahara. A warm character, she had more to say than the other nurses. She is often seen dancing with Radar, and later, Charles. The first name "Kealani" was never used in the series. On several occasions, David Ogden Stiers and Loretta Swit have referred to her as "Nurse Nakahara" and "Lieutenant Nakahara", respectively.
* Jeff Maxwell appeared as the bumbling Pvt. Igor Straminsky in 75 episodes. In his earlier appearances, he was the camp cook's aide, complaining that, despite not cooking the food (SSG Pernelli was the cook, not revealed until season 9 as described below), he still had to listen to everyone's gripes about it. He was often the target of Hawkeye's wrath because of the terrible food, and the recipient of his "river of liver and ocean of fish" rant in "Adam's Ribs". His bumbling even gained the ire of Father Mulcahy, when he creamed the fresh corn Mulcahy grew in "A War for All Seasons". In at least two episodes, he was called a sergeant by Major Burns. In another episode, Burns asks his name and he replies "Maxwell," the actor's actual surname. Burns then replies with that name.
* Roy Goldman appeared in 35 episodes as Corpsman Roy Goldman.
* Odessa Cleveland appeared in 29 episodes as Lt. Ginger Bayliss, one of the nurses.
* Patricia Stevens appeared in 15 episodes, primarily as Nurse Baker (also as Nurse Mitchell, Nurse Stevens, Nurse Brown and Nurse Able)
* Rita Wilson appeared in two episodes as Nurse Lacey.
* Johnny Haymer played Staff Sgt. Zelmo Zale, supply sergeant for the 4077th, in 20 episodes. He made his first appearance in the season-2 episode "For Want of a Boot", and his final appearance in the season-8 episode "Good-Bye, Radar". Zale's name is mentioned for the final time in "Yessir, That's Our Baby".
* G. W. Bailey played the perpetually lazy Staff Sgt. Luther Rizzo, who headed the camp motor pool, in 14 episodes.
* Enid Kent played Nurse Peggy Bigelow in 14 episodes. She was quite often the target of Hawkeye's flirtations. In "They Call the Wind Korea", she gets injured by a falling water tower and is treated by the 4077th. In "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", when various members of the 4077th announce postwar plans, she blandly recounts her days as a nurse both in World War II and in Korea and simply says, "I've had it."
* Dr. Sidney Freedman, Major, a psychiatrist, was played by Allan Arbus, who appeared 12 times. In his first appearance, his name was Dr. Milton Freedman, but was subsequently changed. Dr. Freedman played a major role in the two-hour final episode.
* Colonel Flagg, a paranoid and jingoistic counterintelligence officer prone to using aliases, was played by Edward Winter. He appeared six times (and the actor appeared once as a very similar intelligence officer named Halloran).
* Marcia Strassman played nurse Margie Cutler six times during the show's first season. Her last appearance was in the episode "Ceasefire".
* Herb Voland appeared seven times as Henry Blake's commander, Brigadier General Crandall Clayton.
* G. Wood appeared three times as Brigadier General Hammond, the same role he played in the movie.
* Robert Gooden appeared three times as Private Lorenzo Boone.
* Robert F. Simon appeared three times as Major General Mitchell.
* Loudon Wainwright III appeared three times as Captain Calvin Spalding, who was usually seen playing his guitar and singing.
* Eldon Quick appeared three times as two nearly identical characters, Capt. Sloan and Capt. Pratt, officers who were dedicated to paperwork and bureaucracy.
* Sergeant (later Pvt) Jack Scully, played by Joshua Bryant, appeared in three episodes as a love interest of Margaret Houlihan.
* Pat Morita appeared twice as Capt. Sam Pak of the Republic of Korea Army.
* Karen Philipp (singer with Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66, 1967–70) appeared twice as Lt. Maria 'Dish' Schneider during the first season.
* Sorrell Booke appeared twice as Brigadier General Bradley Barker. Booke was an actual Korean War veteran.
* Robert Symonds appeared twice as Col/Lt Col. Horace Baldwin.
* Robert Alda, Alan Alda's father, appeared twice as Maj. Borelli, a visiting surgeon.
* Catherine Bergstrom appeared twice as Peg Hunnicutt, B.J.'s wife, back in the U.S.
* Lt. Col. Donald Penobscot appeared twice (played by two different actors), In "Margaret's Marriage" (#5.24), Penobscot was played by Beeson Carrol, and was her fiancé at the time (they were married during the episode). In "The M*A*S*H* Olympics" (#6.10), he appears as her husband, he takes part in a M*A*S*H Olympics; he is played by Mike Henry.
* Staff Sgt. "Sparky" Pryor, a friend of Radar and Klinger, was the telephone operator usually called by the 4077th MASH. He was seen only once, played by Dennis Fimple, in Tuttle (season 1, episode 15), but was sometimes faintly heard on the phone when he yelled.
* Sal Viscuso and Todd Susman played the camp's anonymous public address system announcer throughout the series. This character (who is never seen on camera) broke the fourth wall only twice, in the episodes "Pilot (M*A*S*H)" (1.1) and "Welcome to Korea" (4.1), both times while introducing the regular cast members. Both Viscuso and Susman appeared onscreen as other characters in at least one episode each.
*Eileen Saki appeared in seven episodes as Rosie, the owner and head bartender at Rosie's Bar, which was frequented by the regular characters. Her first appearance on the show, however, was as the madam of a brothel which was occupying a much-needed hut in the episode "Bug Out". Rosie had previously been played by Shizuko Hoshi (in "Mad Dogs and Servicemen") and Frances Fong (in "Bug Out" and "Fallen Idol") before Saki assumed the role.
* Timothy Brown appeared as Capt. Oliver Harmon 'Spearchucker' Jones in six season-1 episodes as a captain who lived with Pierce, Burns, and McIntyre in the "Swamp".
* Val Bisoglio appeared in three episodes as Staff Sergeant Salvatore Pernelli, the actual mess cook for the 4077th. His first appearance was in season 9's "The Life You Save", followed by two appearances in season 10, "Twas the Day After Christmas" and "A Holy Mess".
* Nurse Shari appeared in 15 episodes during the last four seasons, played by Shari Saba. 
* John Orchard played Ugly John, an anesthesiologist, and later  "Muldoon" in "Rosie's Pub".

Character timeline

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  bar:Winchester text:"Charles Emerson Winchester III"
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Actors with multiple roles

Several guest stars made appearances as multiple characters:
*Hamilton Camp appeared twice, first as the insane Cpl. "Boots" Miller in "Major Topper" (episode 6.25), and again as a film distributor named Frankenheimer in "The Moon is Not Blue" (11.8).
*Dennis Dugan appeared twice, as O.R. orderly Pvt. McShane in 3.20, "Love and Marriage", and again in 11.11, "Strange Bedfellows", as Col. Potter's philandering son-in-law, Robert "Bob" Wilson.
*Gary Burghoff was the only actor to ever appear simultaneously on the show with himself. He played Radar O'Reilly throughout the show, and in episode 4.15 "Mail Call... Again", he watched a home movie sent to him in Korea in which he played his own mother. Father Mulcahy remarks, "Radar certainly bears a striking resemblance to his mother!"
*Tim O'Connor appeared as wounded artillery officer Col. Spiker in "Of Moose and Men" (4.12), and as visiting surgeon Norm Traeger in "Operation Friendship" (9.10). Both characters were noticeably at odds with Hawkeye.
*Dick O'Neill appeared three times (each time in a different U.S. service branch): as Navy Rear Admiral Cox, as Army Brigadier General Prescott, and as Marine Colonel Pitts.
*Harry Morgan played both the 4077th's second beloved C.O. (Col. Sherman T. Potter) and the mentally unstable Major Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele in the show's third season, in the episode "The General Flipped at Dawn". This last character was a reprise of his role as Major Pott in the 1966 movie, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?
*Soon-Tek Oh appeared five times: twice as a North Korean POW (in 4.7, "The Bus", and 8.10, "The Yalu Brick Road"); once as a North Korean doctor (5.10, "The Korean Surgeon"); once as O.R. orderly Mr. Kwang (3.20, "Love and Marriage"); and once as a South Korean interpreter who poses as a North Korean POW (11.3, "Foreign Affairs").
*Philip Ahn appeared three times: episodes 4.19 ("Hawkeye"), 5.13 ("Exorcism"), and 6.9 ("Change Day"). Like Soon-Tek Oh, Ahn was one of the few Korean actors to play a Korean on M*A*S*H; most of the other "Korean" characters were played by either Japanese, Chinese, or Vietnamese ethnic actors. Ironically, Ahn played Japanese villains in World War II movies and Chinese characters on Bonanza and Kung Fu.
*Robert Karnes appeared twice: once as a colonel in 4.1 ("Welcome to Korea") and as a general in 6.4 ("Last Laugh").
*Clyde Kusatsu appeared four times: twice as a Korean bartender in the Officers' Club, once as a Chinese-American soldier, and once as a Japanese-American surgeon.
*Robert Ito played a hood who works for the black market in 1.2, "To Market, To Market", and a North Korean soldier disguised as a South Korean looking for supplies, in 5.10, "The Korean Surgeon".
*Keye Luke appeared three times. In “Patent 4077” (6.17), he played Mr. Shin, a local jewelry maker hired by the surgeons to make a new surgical clamp; in “A Night at Rosie’s” (7.24), he played Cho Kim, who ran a crooked craps game in the back room at Rosie’s Bar; and in “Death Takes a Holiday” (9.5), he played the headmaster of a local orphanage.
*Mako appeared four times, once as a Chinese doctor (3.2, "Rainbow Bridge"), once as a South Korean doctor (5.11, "Hawkeye Get Your Gun"), once as a South Korean officer (8.3, "Guerilla My Dreams"), and once as a North Korean soldier (9.1, "The Best of Enemies").
*Jerry Fujikawa appeared as crooked Korean matchmaker Dr. Pak in "Love and Marriage", as Trapper John's tailor in 3.3, "Officer of the Day", as an acupuncturist named Wu in 8.24, "Back Pay", as the Uijeongbu chief of police in "Rally Round the Flagg, Boys", and as "Whiplash Wang" in "Deal Me Out".
*John Orchard starred as Australian anesthetist Ugly John in the first season, and later appeared in 8.13 as disgruntled and drunken Australian MP Muldoon, who has an arrangement with Rosie the barkeeper: he takes bribes (in the form of liquor in his "coffee" mug) to "look the other way." Orchard was actually English, so adopted an Australian accent and some Australian colloquialisms for his persona. He also normally wore an Australian-style "slouch" hat.
*Richard Lee Sung appeared 10 times as a local Korean who often had merchandise (and in one case, real estate) he wished to sell to the hospital staff; he once sold a backwards-running watch to Major Burns and he also tried to help Corporal Klinger lose his money in a game of craps in A Night at Rosie's.
*Jack Soo, known for his role as Barney Millers Sgt. Nick Yemana, appeared twice, once as black-market boss Charlie Lee, with whom Hawkeye and Trapper made a trade for supplies in "To Market, To Market" (1.2), and in "Payday" (3.22) as a peddler who sold Frank two sets of pearls: one real, the other fake.
*Ted Gehring appeared twice: in 2.12, as moronic Supply Officer Major Morris, who refuses to let the MASH doctors have a badly needed incubator, and in 7.6, as corrupt supply NCO Sgt. Rhoden.
*Eldon Quick appeared three times, once as a finance officer and twice as Captain Sloan.
*Edward Winter appeared as an intelligence officer named "Halloran" in 2.13, and in six episodes as Colonel Flagg (although Halloran may have been one of Flagg's numerous and often mid-episode-changing aliases). Given a comment he makes to Sidney Freedman about the two playing poker together (a reference to Winter's appearance as Halloran) this seems to be likely.
*Shizuko Hoshi appeared four times: once as "Rosie" of "Rosie's Bar" in episode 3.13, "Mad Dogs and Servicemen"; and three times as the mother in different Korean families in "Hawkeye" (4.18), "B.J. Papa San" (7.16), and "Private Finance" (8.8).
* John Fujioka, who played the uncredited role of a Japanese golf pro in the movie, appeared three times in the series. The first time was in "Dear Ma" (1975) as Colonel Kim, the second time was in "The Tooth Shall Set You Free" (1982) as Duc Phon Jong, and the last time, he played a peasant in "Picture This" (1982).
* Stuart Margolin appeared twice, first as psychiatrist Capt. Phillip Sherman in season 1's "Bananas, Crackers and Nuts" (1.07), and again as plastic surgeon Major Stanley "Stosh" Robbins in season 2's "Operation Noselift" (2.18).
* Oliver Clark appeared twice. In "38 Across" (5.16), he played the part of Hawkeye's crossword-loving friend Lt. Tippy Brooks. In "Mail Call Three" (6.21), he played the part of 'the other' Captain Ben Pierce.
* Jeanne Schulherr appeared in season 3's "There Is Nothing Like a Nurse" as Frank Burns's wife, Louise (in a home movie), and in two other season-3 episodes as an unnamed nurse.
* Charles Frank appeared in season 5 as Capt. Hathaway in "Dear Sigmund", a pilot who admitted to not knowing the victims of his bombings from his plane, and appeared in season 6 as Lieutenant Martinson in "What's Up, Doc?", a troubled Yale graduate who finds himself in the infantry and holds Maj. Winchester Hostage at gunpoint.
* Kevin Hagen appeared twice. In "Some 38th Parallels" (4.20, 1976), he played the part of Colonel Coner, on whom Hawkeye drops garbage from an airborne helicopter. In "Peace On Us" (7.2, 1978), he played the part of red-haired Major Goss, sent to warn Hawkeye to stay away from the peace talks.
* Yuki Shimoda appeared three times. In "The Price" (7.18, 1979), he played the part of Cho Pak, a farmer who was a former Korean cavalry officer who steals Col. Potter's horse Sophie only because he is dying and wants one final chance to remember his military days. In "Yessir, That's Our Baby" (8.15), he plays a Korean consular officer who advises Hawkeye and B.J. that to allow an abandoned Amerasian infant to live in Korea would result in dire consequences. And, in "Oh, How We Danced" (9.14, which aired almost two months before his death in 1981), he plays the grandfather of a child patient of the 4077th who is a skilled harmonica player.
* James Carroll appeared twice, as an orderly in "Bug Out" and as a jeep driver who brought Major Winchester to the 4077th in "Fade Out, Fade In".

Character names

*Throughout the series, Klinger frequently introduces himself by his full name, Maxwell Q. Klinger, but never says what the Q. stands for.
*B.J.'s real name is the subject of an episode's secondary plot line. Hawkeye goes to extreme lengths to learn what "B.J." stands for, but all official paperwork concerning his friend indicates that B.J. really is his first name. Toward the end of the episode, B.J. (in explaining who gave him his name) says, "My mother, Bea Hunnicut, and my father, Jay Hunnicut." A recurring joke in that episode is that upon being asked what B.J. stands for, B.J. merely replies, "Anything you want."
*Frank Burns had four different middle names during his time on the show: W. (on the punching bag in "Requiem for a Lightweight"), D., X., and Marion.
*Radar's first name is stated as Walter, and once (in "Fade Out, Fade In"), he introduces himself by his full name to Charles Emerson Winchester III as "Walter Eugene O'Reilly". The book says his name is J. Robespierre, and his first name is not revealed in the film.
*In the finale ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"), Father Mulcahy tells Klinger that his full name is Francis John Patrick Mulcahy, in case Klinger might want to name any of his children after him. Also, in the eighth-season episode "Nurse Doctor", he gives his full name as Francis John Patrick Mulcahy. Yet, in all other episodes, his name was John Patrick Francis Mulcahy, and he just wanted others to call him by his confirmation name, Francis.

Notable actors and actor information

*Antony Alda, Alan Alda's half-brother, appeared in one episode ("Lend a Hand") as Corporal Jarvis alongside both his brother and father (Robert).
*Robert Alda, Alan Alda's father, had guest appearances in two episodes, "The Consultant" and "Lend a Hand", the latter written by Alda himself. According to Alda, "Lend a Hand" was his way of reconciling with his father. He was always giving suggestions to Robert for their vaudeville act, and in "Lend a Hand", Robert's character was always giving Hawkeye suggestions. It was Robert's idea for the doctors to cooperate as "Dr. Right" and "Dr. Left" at the end of that episode, signifying both a reconciliation of their characters, and in real life, as well.
*While most of the characters from the movie carried over to the series, only four actors appeared in both: Gary Burghoff (Radar O'Reilly) and G. Wood (General Hammond) reprised their movie roles in the series, though Wood appeared in only three episodes. Timothy Brown (credited as "Tim Brown") played "Cpl. Judson" in the movie and "Spearchucker Jones" in the series. Corey Fischer played Capt. Bandini in the film and was the guitar-playing dentist "Cardozo" in the episode "Five O'Clock Charlie".
*Two of the cast members, Jamie Farr (Klinger) and Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce), served in the U.S. Army in Korea in the 1950s after the Korean War, Alda as a junior officer, Farr as enlisted. The dog tags Farr wears on the show are his actual dog tags. Farr served as part of a USO tour with Red Skelton. Furthermore, Wayne Rogers served as a Naval Reserve officer in the mid-1950s after the end of Korean War, and Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicut) served in the U.S. Marine Corps as a younger man from 1957-1960.
*Gary Burghoff's left hand is slightly deformed, with three smaller than normal fingers and slight syndactyly between the fourth and fifth digits, and he took great pains to hide or de-emphasize it during filming. He did this by always holding something (like a clipboard) or keeping that hand in his pocket. Burghoff later commented that his (Radar's) deformity would have made it impossible for him to be involved in active service. The deformity can be clearly seen at the very beginning of the pilot episode, when he is holding the football just before announcing the arrival of choppers. It is also visible at the end of "Images" (season 6, episode 9), when he is trying to lift weights.
*Most of the M*A*S*H main cast guest-starred on Murder, She Wrote (with the exceptions of Alan Alda, McLean Stevenson, and Gary Burghoff). Wayne Rogers made five appearances as roguish private investigator Charlie Garrat. David Ogden Stiers appeared three times as a Civil War-infused college lecturer and once as a classical music radio host. G.W. Bailey appeared twice as a New York City police officer. Larry Linville made two appearances as a police officer who was sure that Jessica was in the CIA. Harry Morgan appeared once in a cleverly cut episode that mixed with the 1949 film Strange Bargain in which Morgan had starred. William Christopher made an appearance as a murderous bird watcher. Jamie Farr appeared in two episodes, once as a hopeful new publisher for Jessica Fletcher, and again with Loretta Swit (she played a modern artist framed for murder). Mike Farrell appeared as a Senate hopeful.
*Through the series, several actresses play characters named Nurse Able or Nurse Baker, with widely varying personalities/roles. The characters' names were based on the old military phonetic alphabet.
*Sorrell Booke guest-starred as Brigadier General Barker in the episodes "Requiem for a Lightweight" and "Chief Surgeon Who?". Booke was a Korean War veteran who achieved greater fame as Boss Hogg in the Dukes of Hazzard television series.
*Ron Howard guest-starred as Marine Private Walter Peterson in the episode "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet". He is discovered to be underage and using his brother Wendell's identification, having come to Korea to impress his girlfriend. Hawkeye first gives the young soldier some sage advice about women, and then essentially lets him decide for himself whether he wants to go back to the States or stay in Korea. After losing his best friend Tommy Gillis, Hawkeye immediately reports the young soldier to the MPs, sending him back to America and to safety - with the Purple Heart Frank Burns put in for after his back pain.
*Leslie Nielsen guest-starred as Colonel Buzz Brighton in the episode "The Ringbanger". Because of his high casualty record, Hawkeye and Trapper try to get him sent back to America by convincing him that he is insane.
*Sal Viscuso is often credited as the sole PA announcer for the television series and even the film. Though he did serve as the voice of the PA announcer for a time, Todd Susman had the longest tenure. Neither actor's voice was heard in the film. Both actors appeared as other characters in various episodes.
*Art LaFleur appeared in one episode in season 9 ("Father’s Day") as an MP looking for the person(s) responsible for a stolen side of beef.
*Patrick Swayze appeared in one episode ("Blood Brothers") as Gary Sturgis, an injured soldier with a broken arm who is diagnosed with leukemia.
*John Ritter was in one episode ("Deal Me Out") early in his career, as a "shellshocked" soldier.

*Football player Alex Karras was in one episode ("Springtime") serving as Hawkeye's bodyguard after the doctor saves his life.
* Bruno Kirby (When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers) played Boone in the first episode. He can be seen tossing a football with Radar, and later helping to carry a drugged-out Major Frank Burns to a bed in post-op.
* Richard Herd appears in the season-9 episode called "Back Pay".
* Laurence Fishburne (CSI, The Matrix) appeared in the season-10 episode "The Tooth Shall Set You Free", in which Hawkeye and B.J. encounter a racist commander who is sending his African-American soldiers into dangerous duty. He also appeared in an episode of Trapper John, M.D. (the year before appearing on M*A*S*H). His Matrix costar, Joe Pantoliano, also appeared both on M*A*S*H and Trapper John, M.D. He appeared in the M*A*S*H episode "Identity Crisis" (also season 10), about a soldier (Pantoliano) who had stolen a fallen friend's identity, as well as his discharge papers, to get out of the fighting.
*Pat Morita, who was famous for his role as Matsuo "Arnold" Takahashi on Happy Days and as Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid franchise, played Captain Sam Pak in season two's episode "Deal Me Out" (also with John Ritter) and again in season two's "The Chosen People".
* Shelley Long played in the 1980 episode "Bottle Fatigue", as one of Hawkeye's would-be lady friends. She later played alongside Ted Danson in the hit television comedy Cheers as Diane Chambers.
* George Wendt played in the 1982 episode "Trick or Treatment" as Private La Roche, a Marine treated by Charles Winchester because he had a pool ball stuck in his mouth. He later played alongside Ted Danson and Shelley Long in Cheers.
* Pat Hingle played in the 1980 episode "April Fools" as Colonel Daniel Webster Tucker.
* Ed Begley, Jr., played in the 1979 episode "Too Many Cooks" as Private Paul Conway, a clumsy infantry soldier who turns out to be a gifted chef.
* Blythe Danner played a nurse transferred to the 4077th, who happened to be Hawkeye's old college sweetheart, in the season-4 episode "The More I See You". Her presence stirs up old feelings between the two of them.
* Teri Garr played a nurse in the - episode "The Sniper".
* Susan Saint James guest-starred in the season-8 episode "War Co-Respondent".
* Andrew Dice Clay played drunken Marine Cpl. Hrabosky in the season-11 episode "Trick or Treatment".
* George Lindsey played Captain Roy Dupree in the season-6 episode "Temporary Duty".  Lindsey had previously appeared on The Andy Griffith Show as Goober Pyle.
* George Morgan played Father Mulcahy in the pilot episode, but was immediately replaced for all other episodes by William Christopher.

Changes

Character developments

Spearchucker Jones

During the first season, Hawkeye's, Trapper's, and Frank's bunkmate was an African-American character called Spearchucker Jones, played by actor Timothy Brown. (Brown appeared in the film version as a corporal, while neurosurgeon Dr. Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones was played by former NFL player Fred Williamson.) The character disappeared after the episode "Germ Warfare" because, at the time, no record existed of African-American doctors serving in Korea during the Korean War.  According to the memoirs of Harold Secor, a doctor working at the 8055th MASH unit, on which M*A*S*H is based, at least one African-American doctor did serve in Korea during the Korean War. 

Father Francis Mulcahy

Chaplain of the 4077 unit, Father Mulcahy plays the piano and likes to feel needed. He is a fairly good amateur boxer and poker player, and at one stage takes up jogging. A recurring storyline throughout the series has him visiting and bringing supplies to local orphanages. An episode in season 7, "Dear Sis", is filmed from his point of view, as he struggles with feeling useless at the 4077th. William Christopher plays Mulcahy, replacing actor George Morgan, who played Father Mulcahy in the pilot episode. Dago Red, Mulcahy's nickname from the book and film, was shortened to "Red" for television and used by Trapper John in the pilot episode and by Hawkeye in "Dear Dad" and was dropped.  Starting in season 4, Colonel Potter started calling Mulcahy "padre", and that nickname kept for the rest of the series, even mentioning it once in the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". Mulcahy was promoted to captain in the episode "Captain's Outrageous" after several attempts in previous seasons.  Before the promotion, he was a first lieutenant.

Henry Blake

By season 3 (1974–1975), McLean Stevenson had begun chafing at what he considered to be a supporting role to Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers. Midway through the season, he informed the producers that he wanted to leave M*A*S*H. With ample time to prepare a "Goodbye, Henry" show, it was decided that Henry Blake would be discharged and sent home for the season-3 finale, which aired on Tuesday, March 18, 1975. In the final scene of his last episode ("Abyssinia, Henry"), Radar tearfully reports that Henry's plane has been shot down over the Sea of Japan, and no survivors were found among the wreckage. This part of the script was kept secret from the cast. The producers wanted the reaction to be as much as a surprise as possible. Originally, the episode was written with Henry making it home, but the writers wanted to show that it was war and people may not make it home.

Trapper John McIntyre

Wayne Rogers (Trapper John McIntyre) was planning to return for season 4, but abruptly withdrew over a disagreement about his contract. Rogers had a dislike of having a supporting role for Alda, and had been threatening to leave since season 1. His departure was unexpected and, unlike that of McLean Stevenson, no onscreen farewell was used. Rogers felt his character was never given any real importance and that all the focus was on Alda's character, Hawkeye Pierce.

Rogers's replacement, Mike Farrell, was hastily recruited during the 1975 summer production hiatus. In the season's first episode, "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye is informed by Radar that Trapper was discharged while Hawkeye was on leave, and B.J. Hunnicutt is Trapper's replacement. Trapper was described by Radar as being so jubilant over his release that "he got drunk for two days, took off all his clothes, and ran naked through the mess tent with no clothes on." He made Radar promise to give Hawkeye a kiss as a final farewell message.

Actor Pernell Roberts later played a middle-aged Trapper in the seven-year run of Trapper John, M.D.

Sherman T. Potter

In the third episode of the fourth season, "Change of Command", Col. Sherman T. Potter arrives at the unit to assume command, replacing Frank Burns, who had taken over as commander after Blake's departure (season 3, episode 24). Harry Morgan, who played Potter, had previously guest-starred in the first episode of season 3, "The General Flipped at Dawn", as General Hamilton Steele.

Colonel Potter is a regular Army man, having served in both World War I and World War II, first in the cavalry and later as a doctor. He is passionate about horses, and keeps an old US Cavalry issue McClellan saddle in his office, which is later put to use when he acquires a horse, when Radar gives one to him for his wedding anniversary, after B.J. and Hawkeye are unable to catch it. This horse, which remained with Col. Potter until the end of the series, was referred to as a colt (Potter remarks, "He can't be more than four years old") in its first appearance, after which it is named "Sophie" and referred to as a mare. In his spare time, Potter also enjoys painting.

Margaret Houlihan

When Margaret Houlihan became engaged to a fellow officer, Lt. Col. Donald Penobscot, she had a falling-out with Frank; she became much friendlier toward Hawkeye and B.J., and her subordinate nurses. She later married Penobscot, but the union did not last long. The "Hot Lips" nickname was rarely used to describe her after about the midway point in the series. Loretta Swit wanted to leave the series in the eighth season to pursue other acting roles (most notably the part of Christine Cagney on Cagney & Lacey), but the producers refused to let her out of her contract. Swit originated the Cagney role in the made-for-TV movie that served as that pilot of the series.

Frank Burns

Larry Linville noted that his "Frank Burns" character was easier to make light of after head comedy writer Larry Gelbart departed after season 4 and Frank and Margaret parted ways in season 5. After season 4, Linville realized that he had taken Frank Burns as far as he could, and he decided that since he had signed a five-year contract, he would leave the series after season 5. During the first episode of season 6, "Fade Out, Fade In", Burns (off camera) suffers a nervous breakdown due to Margaret's marriage and is held for psychiatric evaluation. Hawkeye offered a toast to Frank's departure, pausing only a moment, then stating "Goodbye, Ferret Face." In an unexpected twist, Burns is transferred to an Indiana Veterans Administration hospital, near his home in Fort Wayne,  and is promoted to lieutenant colonel — in a sense, Frank's parting shot at Hawkeye. Unlike McLean Stevenson and Wayne Rogers, Linville had no regrets about leaving the series, saying, "I felt I had done everything possible with the character." Linville was not alone when he left; Executive Producer Gene Reynolds left after the production of season 5, and Burt Metcalfe and star Alan Alda took over the producing responsibilities. During season 6, Alda and Metcalfe even consulted Reynolds once a week, mainly to obtain help with their jobs as executive producers. These two men remained as executive producers for the remaining six seasons, as Reynolds was credited as a creative consultant along with Alan Alda.

Charles Emerson Winchester III

Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers) was brought in as an antagonist of sorts to the other surgeons, but his relationship with them was not as acrimonious, although he was a more able foil. Unlike Frank Burns, Winchester did not care for the Army. His resentment stemmed, in part, from the fact that he was transferred from Tokyo General Hospital to the 4077th due, in part, to a cribbage debt owed to him by his commanding officer, Lt. Col. Horace Baldwin. What set him apart from Burns as an antagonist for Hawkeye and B.J. was that Winchester was clearly an excellent, technically superior surgeon, although his work sometimes suffered from his excessive perfectionism when rapid "meatball surgery" was called for. As with many new MASH surgeons, Winchester took some time to wrap his head around the fact that faster, less precise work saved lives that more elegant, slower work might cost.

Winchester was respected by the others professionally, but at the same time, as a Boston blue blood, he was also snobbish, as when he stated in the scrub room, "I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on," which drove much of his conflict with the other characters. Still, the show's writers occasionally allowed Winchester's humanity to shine through, such as in his dealings with a young concert pianist who had partially lost the use of his right hand, the protection of a stuttering soldier from the bullying of other soldiers (it is revealed later that Winchester's sister stutters), his keeping a vigil with Hawkeye when Hawkeye's father went into surgery back in the States ("Sons and Bowlers"), his willingness to be officer of the day for Hawkeye when Hawkeye was offered three days in Seoul, giving blood to a patient even though he already donated blood five days earlier, or his continuing a family tradition of anonymously giving Christmas treats to an orphanage. Winchester subjects himself to condemnation after realizing that "it is sadly inappropriate to offer dessert to a child who has had no meal." Isolating himself, he is saved by Klinger's own gift of understanding. Klinger scrapes together a Christmas dinner for Charles, with the provision that the source of the gift remain anonymous (Klinger had overheard Winchester's argument with the manager of the orphanage). For the final moment of the episode ("Death Takes a Holiday"), the two are simply friends as Charles says, "Thank you, Max," and Klinger replies, "Merry Christmas, Charles." As well, in the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", Charles comes across a group of Chinese musicians who surrender to him. When Charles takes them back to the camp as prisoners of war and later listens to his record of Mozart's  Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings, K. 581, the musicians attempt to play the piece of music. Charles, ever the perfectionist, cannot stand to hear them play the piece incorrectly (and is impressed that they can even attempt to play the music after only hearing it once) and spends the next week conducting them on how to play the piece properly. During this time, Charles is forced to use the little patience that he rarely shows. When the Chinese musicians are taken off to a prisoner of war camp in a prisoner exchange to Charles' dismay and protest, their final goodbye to Charles is the Mozart piece played correctly. Later, one of the musicians returns to the camp mortally wounded on a Jeep. When Charles inquires as to where the other musicians are, it's revealed that the truck the musicians were on was ambushed and that there were no other survivors. In a combination of shock and disbelief, Charles returns to The Swamp to listen to the Mozart record, but removes the record and smashes it in anger. Later still on the final night that everyone at the M*A*S*H is together, Charles says that before the war, music was a stress reliever to him, but because of the Chinese musicians and their fate, music will forever be a reminder of the horrors of war.

Radar O'Reilly

Gary Burghoff (Walter "Radar" O'Reilly), one of only two cast members of the original 1970 film to play the same character in the TV series, had been growing restless in his role since at least season 4. With each successive year, he appeared in fewer episodes; and by season 7, Radar is in barely half of the shows. Burghoff planned to leave at the end of the seventh season (in 1979), but was convinced by producers Alda and Metcalfe to wait until the beginning of season 8, when they filmed a two-part farewell episode, "Good Bye, Radar" (originally intended to be the seventh season's finale), as well as a few short scenes that were inserted into episodes preceding it (Radar is shown having a horrible R & R in Tokyo). The final nod to Radar came in the penultimate episode of the series, "As Time Goes By", when his iconic teddy bear (though it was a different bear than was used throughout the show) was included in a time capsule of the 4077th initiated by Margaret, which Hawkeye says is a symbol of those who "came as boys and went home as men."

Max Klinger

Max Klinger also grew away from the cross-dressing reputation that overshadowed him. He dropped his section 8 pursuit when taking over for Radar as company clerk. Both Jamie Farr and the producers felt that there was more to Klinger than a chiffon dress, and tried to develop the character more fully. In the role of company clerk, Klinger's personality turned more to the "wheeler-dealer" aspects developed in the streets of (Farr's actual hometown) Toledo, Ohio, using those skills to aid the 4077th. Farr stayed throughout the rest of the series. Klinger was later promoted from corporal to sergeant (he and Father Mulcahy were the only two characters to be promoted on-screen in the entire series, Frank Burns received his promotion off-screen after having left the series). In the final episode, Klinger is, ironically, the only character who announces that he is staying in Korea. He wants to help his wife, Soon Lee, find her parents. (He and Soon Lee marry at the end of the episode). When Klinger announces that he is staying in Korea, Hawkeye says, "You don't have to act crazy now. We're all getting out!" However, in the short-lived spin-off, AfterMASH, it becomes clear that soon after the end of the war, Klinger, with new wife Soon Lee (Rosalind Chao) returned to the United States. After Soon Lee was subjected to discrimination in Toledo the Klingers moved to River Bend, Missouri and Max got a job like that he had as the 4077th's company clerk for Chief of Staff Dr. Sherman Potter, now head of the General Pershing VA Hospital there.

Change in tone

While the series remained popular through these changes, it eventually began to run out of creative steam. Korean War doctors regularly contacted producers with experiences that they thought might make for a good storyline, only to learn the idea had previously been used. Harry Morgan admitted that he felt "the cracks were starting to show" by season 9 (1980–1981).  Alda wished to make season 10 (1981-1982) M*A*S*Hs last, but was persuaded by CBS to produce a slightly shortened 11th season, coupled with a farewell movie finale, because CBS refused to let the show go away so easily. In the end, season 11 had 15 episodes (although six had been filmed during season 10 and held over) and a 2-1/2 hour movie, which was treated as five episodes and were filmed before the nine remaining episodes. The final episode ever produced was the penultimate episode "As Time Goes By". The series finale movie, titled "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", became the most-watched television broadcast in history, tallying a total of 125 million viewers.

Production

Set location

The 4077th consisted of two separate sets. An outdoor set in the mountains near Malibu, California (Calabasas, Los Angeles County, California) was used for most exterior and tent scenes for every season. This was the same set used to shoot the movie. The indoor set, on a sound stage at Fox Studios in Century City, was used for the indoor scenes for the run of the series. Later, after the indoor set was renovated to permit many of the "outdoor" scenes to be filmed there, both sets were used for exterior shooting as script requirements dictated (e.g., night scenes were far easier to film on the sound stage, but scenes at the chopper pad required using the ranch).

Just as the series was wrapping production, a brush fire destroyed most of the outdoor set on October 9, 1982. The fire was written into the final episode as a forest fire caused by enemy incendiary bombs that forced the 4077th to bug out.

The Malibu location is today known as Malibu Creek State Park. Formerly called the Century Ranch and owned by 20th Century Fox Studios until the 1980s, the site today is returning to a natural state, and is marked by a rusted Jeep and an ambulance used in the show. Through the 1990s, the area was occasionally used for television commercial production.

On February 23, 2008, series stars Mike Farrell, Loretta Swit and William Christopher (along with producers Gene Reynolds and Burt Metcalfe and M*A*S*H director Charles S. Dubin) reunited at the set to celebrate its partial restoration. The rebuilt signpost is now displayed on weekends, along with tent markers and maps and photos of the set. The state park is open to the public. It was also the location where the film How Green Was My Valley (1941) and the Planet of the Apes television series (1974) were filmed, among other productions.

Smithsonian exhibit

The exhibit M*A*S*H: Binding Up the Wounds was at the National Museum of American History from July 30, 1983 through February 3, 1985.  The exhibit was extremely popular drawing more than 17,000 in a single week, a record for any Smithsonian display. 

On exhibit were The Swamp and Operating Room sets, one of the show’s 14 Emmy Awards, early drafts of the pilot script, costumes from the show and other memorabilia.  Sets were decorated with props from the show including the iconic signpost, Hawkeye's still and Major Winchester's Webcor tape recorder and phonograph. The exhibit also encouraged visitors to compare the show to real Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals of the Korean and the Vietnam Wars.
  

Radar's teddy bear was originally found at the ranch set was never on display at the Smithsonian.  Following completion of production, the prop was kept by the show's set designer.  It was sold several times including to Burghoff himself.   It was sold at auction on July 29, 2005 for $11,800, it sold again on March 27, 2015 for $14,307.50 after 19 bids. 

Content

M*A*S*H was the first American network series to use the phrase "son of a bitch" (in the 8th-season episode "Guerilla My Dreams"), and brief partial nudity occurred in the series (notably Gary Burghoff's buttocks in "The Sniper" and Hawkeye in one of the "Dear Dad" episodes). A different innovation was the show's producers' not wanting a laugh track, as the network did. They compromised by omitting laughter entirely in the operating room. The DVD releases of the series allow viewers to select an audio version with no laugh track.

In his blog, writer Ken Levine revealed that on one occasion, when the cast offered too many nitpicking "notes" on a script,  his writing partner and he changed the script to a "cold show"—one set during the frigid Korean winter. The cast then had to stand around barrel fires in parkas at the Malibu ranch when the temperatures neared 100 F. Levine says, "This happened maybe twice, and we never got a ticky-tack note again."

Jackie Cooper wrote that Alan Alda, whom Cooper directed in several episodes during the first two seasons, concealed a lot of hostility beneath the surface, and the two of them barely spoke to each other by the time Cooper’s tenure on the show ended. 

Character information

Throughout the run of the series, any "generic" nurses (those who had a line or two, but were minor supporting characters otherwise) were generally given the names "Nurse Able", "Nurse Baker", or "Nurse Charlie". During the Korean War, the letters A, B, and C in the phonetic alphabet were Able, Baker, and Charlie (since then, the standard has been updated; A and B are now Alpha and Bravo). In later seasons, it became more common for a real character name to be created, especially as several of the nurse actresses became semiregulars. For example, Kellye Nakahara played both "Able" and "Charlie" characters in season 3 before becoming the semiregular "Nurse Kellye"; however, Judy Farrell (at the time, Mike Farrell's wife) played Nurse Able in eight episodes, including the series finale.

By the time the series ended, three of the regulars had been promoted. Klinger (Jamie Farr) went from corporal to sergeant, and Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) from lieutenant to captain. Frank Burns (Larry Linville) was promoted from major to lieutenant colonel off screen when he was shipped back to the U.S. following Margaret's marriage. (Farr and Christopher also saw their names move from the closing credits of the show to the opening credits.) Radar O'Reilly was fraudulently "promoted" for a short time (through a semi-intentional machination of Hawkeye and B.J.) to second lieutenant, but discovered he disliked officers' duties and asked them to "bust" him back to corporal.

Mike Farrell asked that his character's daughter's name be Erin, after his real-life daughter (the character's name was originally going to be Melissa). When B.J. spoke on the telephone on-camera, Erin or his then-wife Judy were on the other end.

Character injuries

Three MASH 4077 staff members suffered fatalities on the show: Lieutenant Colonel Blake, when the plane taking him back to the States was shot down over the Sea of Japan; an ambulance driver, O'Donnell, in a traffic accident; and a nurse, Millie Carpenter, by a land mine. "Capt. Tuttle", an imaginary person made up by Hawkeye to provide money for Sister Teresa's orphanage, was said to have died when he jumped from a helicopter without a parachute; Hawkeye gave him an ironic eulogy.

Among those wounded were Hawkeye Pierce ("Hawkeye", "Out of Sight, Out of Mind", "Comrades in Arms [Part I]", "Good-Bye, Radar [Part I]", and "Lend a Hand"), Radar O'Reilly ("Fallen Idol"), B.J. Hunnicutt ("The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan" and "Operation Friendship"), Max Klinger ("It Happened One Night", "Baby, It's Cold Outside", and "Operation Friendship"), Father Mulcahy ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" and "Bombed"), and Sherman Potter ("Dear Ma"). Henry Blake was injured four times: once by a disgruntled chopper pilot ("Cowboy"), once by friendly fire ("The Army-Navy Game"), and in season 3, episode 15 ("Bombed"), Henry is injured when he is blown up while in the latrine. (The gag of Blake being caught in an exploding latrine is also in the episode "Cowboy".) Henry is also injured when the latrine catches fire. Father Mulcahy is given a concussion on two separate occasions - first in the episode "Bombed", where he is in the latrine stall next to Blake when it is blown up; and again in "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" when he is knocked out by mortar fire which strikes close by him; he also suffers severe hearing loss as a result of this incident. Frank Burns is twice awarded Purple Hearts for spurious injuries: throwing his back out after he gave Margaret a dip and could not move - which was later covered up with a story that he slipped on the way to the showers ("Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", 1.17), and getting an egg-shell fragment in the eye ("The Kids", 4.8). Burns' Purple Heart medals were then given to more deserving people: a GI who was admitted with appendicitis and a Korean newborn infant who was hit by a bullet in utero.

At least three permanent 4077 personnel suffered emotional breakdowns: Hawkeye Pierce ("Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"), B.J. Hunnicutt ("Period of Adjustment"), and Frank Burns ("Fade Out, Fade In").

Vehicles

The helicopters used on the series were model H-13 Sioux (military designation and nickname of the Bell 47 civilian model). As in the film, some care seems to have been taken to use the correct model of the long-lived Bell 47 series. In the opening credits and many of the episodes, Korean War-vintage H-13Ds and Es (Bell 47D-1s) were used complete with period-correct external litters. A later (1954–73) 47G occasionally made an appearance. The helicopters are similar in appearance (with the later "G" models having larger two-piece fuel tanks, a slightly revised cabin, and other changes) with differences noticeable only to a serious helicopter fan. In the pilot episode, a later Bell 47J (production began in 1957) was shown flying Henry Blake to Seoul, en route to a meeting with General Hammond in Tokyo.  A Sud Aviation Allouette II helicopter was also shown transporting Henry Blake to the 4077th in the episode "Henry, Please Come Home".

The Jeeps used were 1953 military M38 or civil CJ2A Willys Jeeps and also World War II Ford GPWs and Willys MB's. Two episodes featured the M38A1 Jeep, one of which was stolen from a General by Radar and Hawkeye after their Jeep was stolen. Two of the ambulances were WC-54 Dodges and one was a WC-27. A WC-54 ambulance remains at the site and was burned in the Malibu fires on October 9, 1982, while a second WC-27 survives at a South El Monte museum without any markings. The bus used to transport the wounded was a 1954 Ford model. In the last season, an M43 ambulance from the Korean War era also was used in conjunction with the WC-54s and WC-27.

File:Mashdodge.jpg|Burned Dodge ambulance at Malibu Creek State Park
File:Mashjeep.jpg|Burned Jeep (most likely an M38) at Malibu Creek State Park

Laugh track

Series creators Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds wanted M*A*S*H broadcast without a laugh track ("Just like the actual Korean War", he remarked dryly). Though CBS initially rejected the idea, a compromise was reached that allowed for omitting the laughter during operating room scenes if desired. Seasons 1–5 utilized a more invasive laugh track; a more subdued audience was employed for Seasons 6-11 when the series shifted from sitcom to comedy-drama with the departure of Gelbart and Reynolds. Several episodes ("O.R.", "The Bus", ""Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", "The Interview", "Point of View" and "Dreams" among them) omitted the laugh track altogether; as did almost all of Season 11, including the 135-minute series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen". The laugh track is also omitted from some international and syndicated airings of the show; on one occasion during an airing in the UK, the laugh track was accidentally left on, and viewers expressed their displeasure, an apology from the network for the "technical difficulty" was later released.  UK DVD critics speak poorly of the laugh track, stating "canned laughter is intrusive at the best of times, but with a programme like M*A*S*H, it's downright unbearable." 

On all released DVDs, both in Region 1 (including the U.S. and Canada) and Region 2 (Europe, including the UK), an option is given to watch the show with or without the laugh track.  

"They're a lie," said Gelbart in a 1992 interview. "You're telling an engineer when to push a button to produce a laugh from people who don't exist. It's just so dishonest. The biggest shows when we were on the air were All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show both of which were taped before a live studio audience where laughter made sense," continued Gelbart. "But our show was a film show – supposedly shot in the middle of Korea. So the question I always asked the network was, 'Who are these laughing people? Where did they come from?'" Gelbart persuaded CBS to test the show in private screenings with and without the laugh track. The results showed no measurable difference in the audience's enjoyment. "So you know what they said?" Gelbart said. "'Since there's no difference, let's leave it alone!' The people who defend laugh tracks have no sense of humor." Gelbart summed up the situation by saying, "I always thought it cheapened the show. The network got their way. They were paying for dinner."

Broadcast history

NOTE: Dates are for first-run airings.
*Sunday at 8:00-8:30 PM on CBS: September 17, 1972—March 25, 1973
*Saturday at 8:30-9:00 PM on CBS: September 15, 1973—March 2, 1974
*Tuesday at 8:30-9:00 PM on CBS: September 10, 1974—March 18, 1975
*Friday at 8:30-9:00 PM on CBS: September 12—November 28, 1975
*Tuesday at 9:00-9:30 PM on CBS: December 2, 1975—January 24, 1978
*Monday at 9:00-9:30 PM on CBS: January 30, 1978—February 28, 1983

The show also aired in daytime reruns from September 1978-September 1979 on CBS at 3:30 pm (ET).

Episodes

Final episode: "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen"

"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" was the final episode of M*A*S*H. Special television sets were placed in PX parking lots, auditoriums, and dayrooms of the U.S. Army in Korea so that military personnel could watch that episode, in spite of 14 hours' time zone difference with the east coast of the U.S. The episode aired on February 28, 1983, and was 2½ hours long. The episode got a Nielsen rating of 60.2 and 77 share  and according to a New York Times article from 1983, the final episode of M*A*S*H had 125 million viewers.

When the M*A*S*H finale aired in 1983, 83.3 million homes in the United States had televisions, compared to almost 115 million in February 2010. 

"Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" broke the record for the highest percentage of homes with television sets to watch a television series. Stories persist that the episode was seen by so many people that the New York City Sanitation/Public Works Department reported the plumbing systems broke down in some parts of the city from so many New Yorkers waiting until the end to use the toilet. Articles copied into Alan Alda's book The Last Days of M*A*S*H include interviews with New York City Sanitation workers citing the spike in water use on that night. According to the interviews at 11:03 pm, EST New York City public works noted the highest water usage at one given time in the City's history. They attributed this to the fact that in the three minutes after the finale ended, around 77% of the people of New York City flushed their toilets.  These stories have all since been identified as part of an urban legend dating back to the days of the Amos and Andy radio program in the 1930s. 

Spinoffs and specials

M*A*S*H had two spin-off shows. The short-lived AfterMASH (1983–85) inherited the parent show's Monday night time slot and featured several of its characters reunited in a Midwestern hospital after the war. The more successful Trapper John, M.D. (1979–86) took place nearly three decades after the events of M*A*S*H and depicted Trapper John McIntyre as chief of surgery at a San Francisco hospital. In an unpurchased television pilot, W*A*L*T*E*R (1984),  Walter "Radar" O’Reilly joins the St. Louis police force after his farm fails following his return to the U.S.

A documentary special titled Making M*A*S*H, narrated by Mary Tyler Moore and taking viewers behind the production of the season 8 episodes "Old Soldiers" and "Lend a Hand", was produced for PBS in 1981. The special was later included in the syndicated rerun package, with new narration by producer Michael Hirsch. 

Two retrospective specials were produced to commemorate the show's 20th and 30th anniversaries. Memories of M*A*S*H, hosted by Shelley Long and featuring clips from the series and interviews with cast members, was aired by CBS on November 25, 1991. A 30th Anniversary Reunion special, in which the surviving cast members and producers gathered to reminisce, aired on the Fox network on May 17, 2002. The two-hour broadcast was hosted by Mike Farrell, who also got to interact with the actor he replaced, Wayne Rogers; previously filmed interviews with McLean Stevenson and Larry Linville (who had died in 1996 and 2000, respectively) were featured, as well. The two specials are included as bonuses on the Collector's Edition DVD of "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". Also included is "M*A*S*H: Television's Serious Sitcom", a 2002 episode of the A&E cable channel's Biography program that detailed the history of the show.

In the late 1980s, the cast had a partial reunion in a series of commercials for IBM personal computers. All of the front-billed regulars (with the two exceptions of Farrell and Stevenson) appeared in the spots over time.

Review

Season ratings

As a top-20 series, M*A*S*H has an average rating of 24.6.

Awards

M*A*S*H was nominated for over 100 Emmy Awards during its 11-year run, winning 14:

*1974 — Outstanding Comedy Series – M*A*S*H; Larry Gelbart, Gene Reynolds (Producers)
*1974 — Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Series – Alan Alda
*1974 — Best Directing in Comedy – Jackie Cooper: "Carry On, Hawkeye"
*1974 — Actor of the Year, Series – Alan Alda
*1975 — Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series – Gene Reynolds: "O.R."
*1976 — Outstanding Film Editing for Entertainment Programming – Fred W. Berger and Stanford Tischler: "Welcome to Korea"
*1976 — Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series – Gene Reynolds: "Welcome to Korea"
*1977 — Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series – Alan Alda: "Dear Sigmund"
*1977 — Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series – Gary Burghoff
*1979 — Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Series – Alan Alda: "Inga"
*1980 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy or Variety or Music Series – Loretta Swit
*1980 — Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy or Variety or Music Series – Harry Morgan
*1982 — Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series – Alan Alda
*1982 — Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy or Variety or Music Series – Loretta Swit

The show won the Golden Globe Award for Best Television Series (Musical or Comedy) in 1981. Alan Alda won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series (Musical or Comedy) six times: in 1975, 1976, 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1983. McLean Stevenson won the award for Best Supporting Actor in a Television Series in 1974.

The series earned the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in a Comedy Series seven times: 1973 (Gene Reynolds), 1974 (Reynolds), 1975 (Hy Averbeck), 1976 (Averbeck), 1977 (Alan Alda), 1982 (Alda), 1983 (Alda).

The show was honored with a Peabody Award in 1976 "for the depth of its humor and the manner in which comedy is used to lift the spirit and, as well, to offer a profound statement on the nature of war." M*A*S*H was cited as "an example of television of high purpose that reveals in universal terms a time and place with such affecting clarity." 

Writers for the show received several Humanitas Prize nominations, with Larry Gelbart winning in 1976, Alan Alda winning in 1980, and the team of David Pollock and Elias Davis winning twice in 1982 and 1983.

The series received 28 Writers Guild of America Award nominations - 26 for Episodic Comedy and two for Episodic Drama. Seven episodes won for Episodic Comedy in 1973, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1981.

Home media

20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has released all 11 seasons of M*A*S*H on DVD in Region 1 and Region 2.

On January 20, 2015, it was announced that the first five seasons of M*A*S*H would be available on Netflix's instant streaming service beginning February 1, 2015. This marked the first time the series was made available on an internet platform. As of July 1, 2015, all 11 seasons were available; syndicated versions of hour-long episodes were utilized for streaming, splitting these shows into two parts.  In contrast to the DVD sets, the Netflix streams did not have an option for disabling the laugh track on the soundtrack. On April 1, 2016, M*A*S*H was removed from Netflix due to its contract to stream the series expiring.
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