What Robert Altman, Director of the 1970 ‘M*A*S*H’ Movie, Really Thought of the Hit TV Adaptation
Plus, see what the only actor to star in both the movie and the TV show had to say about them
The classic comedy M*A*S*H had one of the most impressive runs of any TV series. The show, which starred Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers as Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John, two surgeons stationed at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, debuted in 1972 and ran for 11 years, airing 256 episodes before its 1983 finale, which remains the most-watched final TV episode of all time.
During its decade-plus on CBS, M*A*S*H had such a popular following that some viewers may have come to the show not realizing it was an adaptation. In fact, the series was based on the 1970 film of the same name, which had in turn been adapted from the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors by Richard Hooker.
The cinematic adaptation of M*A*S*H, directed by Robert Altman and starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould as Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John, earned rave reviews and was one of the biggest box office successes of the year. While it was a period piece, it perfectly captured the zeitgeist during the Vietnam War, and given its success, it’s not necessarily surprising that it was spun into a TV adaptation. What is surprising is Altman’s reaction to the show. Keep reading to find out what the director of the original M*A*S*H thought of the TV adaptation—and what the sole actor to appear in both had to say about it.
What did Robert Altman say about the ‘M*A*S*H’ TV show?
To put it mildly, Robert Altman was not a fan of the M*A*S*H TV show. In his director’s commentary for the film, included on its DVD release, he called the show (which he had no direct involvement in) “the antithesis of what we were trying to do” and was dismissive of its cast, referring to Alan Alda as “Alan Albert, or whatever his name is.” He also said that he found the show to be “quite a racist thing” and felt that it was unfaithful to his movie’s original political message.
In the book Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, the director expressed his lasting resentment toward the show, saying, “The problem with so many artists today is if a guy succeeds at something in an art form, he feels he is obligated to repeat it. I can’t tell you the amount of money I was offered to make another M*A*S*H or another picture like it, I wouldn’t even mess around with that television series. I mean, I’ve never seen one of those episodes all the way through—never seen a whole one. I don’t like it and I don’t like any of those people. And it’s jealousy, too, that drives me to have those opinions, It’s ‘How dare they walk into my studio and look at my easel?’”
Was anyone from the original ‘M*A*S*H*’ in the TV show?
While the main characters in the M*A*S*H TV show were in the movie, the cast was entirely different, with the exception of Gary Burghoff, who played company clerk Radar O’Reilly in both. Burghoff left the show following its seventh season in 1979, but he came back in the next season for a two-part farewell episode.
As the only actor to star in both the movie and the show, Burghoff had a unique perspective on M*A*S*H, and he changed his portrayal of Radar to fit the decidedly different tone of the show, As he described, “In the original feature film M*A*S*H, I created Radar as a lone, darker and somewhat sardonic character; kind of a shadowy figure. I continued these qualities for a short time until I realized that the TV M*A*S*H characters were developing in a different direction from the film characters. It became a group of sophisticated, highly educated doctors (and one head nurse) who would rather be anywhere else and who understood the nature of the ‘hell hole’ they were stuck in . . . I began to mold Radar into a more innocent, naive character as contrast to the other characters, so that while the others might deplore the immorality and shame of war (from an intellectual and judgmental viewpoint), Radar could just REACT from a position of total innocence.”
Clearly, the M*A*S*H movie and TV show were very different, and while the lone actor from both seemed to maintain an appreciation for the show’s differences, Robert Altman certainly didn’t.
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