M*A*S*H

1. A Novel Idea and an Unconventional War Film

To tell the story of M*A*S*H as a televisual phenomenon, it is necessary to first reflect on its literary and cinematic forerunners, which anticipated many of the themes that would be cultivated and treated with greater sensitivity and complexity during the program’s eleven-season run on CBS. So, let us now turn our attention to that best-selling antiwar novel from 1968, which set the satiric tone adopted in Robert Altman’s film of the same title two years later and in the award-winning television series that Larry Gelbart, Gene Reynolds, and Burt Metcalfe subsequently produced throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Written by Dr. Richard Hornberger under the pen name of Richard Hooker as a semi-autobiographical portrait of his time in South Korea, MASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors (note the lack of asterisks) combined the author’s personal reminiscences of actual events and real people with fictionalized dramatizations and characterizations.1 Initially rejected by more than a dozen publishing houses, Hornberger ’s manuscript made its way into the offices of William Morrow, the New York–based company that in October 1968 published this raucous story of free-spirited surgeons who C h a p t e r 1 A Novel Idea and an Unconventional War Film 15 Chapter 1 take to booze and hit the links to escape the daily horrors surrounding them. Part of a cultural trend in English-language publishing, MASH rode a wave of success based on word-ofmouth recommendations and contributed to the rise to a new generic dominant during the 1960s: the antiwar novel, earlier epitomized by Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961).2 Like the film and television adaptations that followed, Hornberger’s novel focuses on the men and women who work twelve-hour shifts at a fictional Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the 4077, located dangerously close to the front lines and about twenty-five miles away from the next MASH unit (the 6073). Of these individuals, three in particular— Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, “Trapper” John McIntyre , and Augustus Bedford “Duke” Forrest—stand out as the main protagonists. These skirt-chasing doctors quickly develop an antagonistic relationship to the “regular army” types represented by Major Johnathon Hobson, Captain Frank Burns, and Major Margaret Houlihan. That hostility distinguishes the trio as countercultural heroes willing to risk being court-martialed for the sake of a good practical joke. It is Hawkeye, though, who occupies the most prominent spot in the loosely episodic plot, effectively suturing the strands of the narrative together through his bemused observations about the chaos and calamity engulfing the camp (which is nevertheless kept running smoothly by the diminutive Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly). This privileging of Hawkeye would eventually shape the textual contours of the television program , which—although an ensemble series filled with nearly a dozen talented character actors—is really Alan Alda’s show (both in front of and behind the cameras). In fact, many biographical details concerning Hawkeye, who would undergo significant changes over the course of the TV series’ eleven seasons, are provided in the first chapter of Hornberger’s book. It informs us, for instance, that Pierce hails from Crabapple Cove, Maine (the actual birthplace of the author), 16 A Novel Idea and an Unconventional War Film and that his unusual nickname derives from James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans (his father’s favorite book). Readers are introduced not only to Hawkeye but also to Duke in the novel’s opening chapter, which provides the first of many peeks behind the door of tent number six (“The Swamp”) and offers details about these doctors’ family histories and cultural backgrounds. Although coming from two different regions of the United States (Maine and Georgia), Hawkeye and Duke form an immediate bond because of their similar ages (both are in their late twenties) and their shared insolence in the face of military bureaucracy and hypocrisy. This attitude casts in relief the sanctimonious demeanor of Hobson, another character brought to light in chapter 1. Prone to prayer and subjected to practical jokes, this rather inept thirty-five-year-old chest surgeon represents an easy target for his younger tent mates. In chapter 2 of the novel, he is honorably discharged from service by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake following a skirmish with Duke (who earlier tackled the nincompoop). In Hobson’s absence, several other characters make their...