09/21/2023
51 years ago today, September 17, 1972, M*A*S*H (an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) premiered. It is an American war comedy-drama television series that aired on CBS from 1972 to 1983. It was developed by Larry Gelbart as the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 feature film M*A*S*H, which, in turn, was based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. The series, which was produced 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 (1950โ53).
For the first three seasons, the show's ensemble cast included Alan Alda as surgeon Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Loretta Swit as head nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, Jamie Farr as corpsman Maxwell Klinger, William Christopher as chaplain Father John Patrick Francis Mulcahy, Wayne Rogers as surgeon Trapper John McIntyre, McLean Stevenson as company commander Lt. Colonel Henry Blake, Larry Linville as surgeon Major Frank Burns and Gary Burghoff as company clerk Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O'Reilly. At the end of the third season, Wayne Rogers and McLean Stevenson left the show, with their characters written out, and they were replaced respectively by Mike Farrell as Captain B. J. Hunnicutt and Harry Morgan as Colonel Sherman T. Potter. After season five, Larry Linville left, to be replaced by David Ogden Stiers as Major Charles Emerson Wi******er III. Early in season eight, Gary Burghoff left the show; Max Klinger (Farr) was moved to company clerk to replace Radar, while G. W. Bailey joined the cast that season to play Staff Sergeant Luther Rizzo. Other long-serving actors on the show include Kellye Nakahara as Nurse Kellye, Jeff Maxwell as Private Igor Straminsky, Allan Arbus as the psychiatrist Major Sidney Freedman, and Edward Winter as intelligence officer Colonel Sam Flagg.
The show's title sequence features an instrumental-only version of "Su***de Is Painless," the original film's theme song. 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 of the M*A*S*H works, and one of the highest-rated shows in U.S. television history. Its final episode, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", was the most-watched television broadcast in American history from 1983 until 2010, and remains both the most-watched finale of any television series and the most-watched episode.
