History Trivia / Mash

* McLeaned: Why Henry Blake left the series. {{Trope Namer|s}}. And this was used to get some EnforcedMethodActing in the final scene.

** McLeaned

** [=McLean=] Stevenson is supposed to have appeared in character as Henry Blake on ''Series/TheCarolBurnettShow'' (sitting in a rubber raft and shouting "I'm okay!"), the very next night after Henry was McLeaned on the show. However, there are no actual logs, data, or information to support that such a ''Carol Burnett Show'' appearance actually exists... because [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxmvqrCNwH8 it aired as a clip]] on ''The Cher Show''[[note]] After Sonny Bono and Cher divorced, Sonny left ''The Sonny and Cher Show'', so Cher presented it solo for 26 episodes in 1975 and 1976.[[/note]] and not on ''The Carol Burnett Show''. During Cher's introduction for an episode in which Stevenson appeared as a guest, she joked that he had been reported "missing in action", leading to the cutaway to Stevenson dressed as Henry in a dinghy with plastic sheeting posing as water. (Some fanfiction authors have taken this and run with it, with various explanations as to why Henry had to be reported dead.)

** Two different guys voiced the camp P.A. announcer, when it wasn't obviously Radar or Klinger doing it.

** As proud as he is of “Sometimes You Hear The Bullet”, Alan Alda has commented that the scene of Hawkeye having a SingleTear (and very much CryCute, when later episodes have sobbing breakdowns) always gets used to show MASH’s status as a dramedy… and he doesn’t like that performance.

** During the opening credits a stretcher-bearer stumbles and falls on his ass while carrying a wounded soldier from the chopper pad. This was a real, unscripted accident during filming and was something that likely happened a lot in real life due to the inhospitable terrain where mobile hospitals had to be set up.

** Altman wanted Creator/JamesGarner for Hawkeye Pearce.
** Creator/JamesCaan, Creator/JamesCoburn and Creator/BurtReynolds turned down the role of Trapper John. Reynolds was also offered the role of Duke Forrest, but turned it down after "they told me the other two leads would be Music/BarbraStreisand's husband and that tall, skinny guy who was in ''Film/TheDirtyDozen''".

* WriteWhoYouKnow: All of the characters are composites of people Richard Hooker knew, met casually, worked with, or heard about. Richard Hooker was originally the joint pseudonym of actual combat surgeon H. Richard Hornberger, M.D. and American Korean War journalist and writer W.C. Heinz, who was later an expert commentator on numerous sports documentaries beginning in 1998. The Hooker pen name was later enhanced with a third author joining the team, William E. Butterworth, (a.k.a. W.E.B. Griffin), who was the co-author of the sequel series of books beginning with ''Mash Goes to New Orleans'' in 1974.

* WriteWhoYouKnow: All of the characters are composites of people Richard Hooker knew, met casually, worked with, or heard about. Richard Hooker was originally the joint pseudonym of actual combat surgeon H. Richard Hornberger, M.D. and American Korean War journalist and writer W.C. Heinz, who was later an expert commentator on numerous sports documentaries beginning in 1998. The Hooker pen name was later enhanced with a third author joining the team, William E. Butterworth, (a.k.a. W.E.B. Griffin), who was the co-author of the sequel series of books beginning with 'Mash Goes to New Orleans" in 1974.

** Creator/RobertAltman also hated the series, mostly because he felt that it softened the anti-war and anti-authoritarian spirit of his movie. In his DVD commentary for the latter, he further disparages the show as racist.

** Hawkeye is bipolar in that DiseaseByAnotherName kind of way, but Alan Alda talked about the character being mentally ill, and he already had experience with that in both form of a schizophrenic mother and his own depression before the show. He also talked about Hawkeye having “roots” in the burlesque dancing scene he grew up around.

* McLeaned: Why Henry Blake left the series. {{TropeNamer}}. And this was used to get some EnforcedMethodActing in the final scene.

* OnlyBareleyRenewed: The show performed incredibly poorly in its first season (placing ''46th'') and was almost guaranteed to be cancelled. Fortunately, the network had enough faith in the series to give it one more season.[[note]]a possibly apocryphal story claims that the wife of the head of CBS was a fan[[/note]] A combination of summer reruns gaining traction, and being given a primo time slot for season two (following the hugely popular ''Series/AllInTheFamily'') catapulted the series into the top ten, where it would remain for all but one of it's remaining ten seasons.[[note]]The fourth season would slip to 14th place, following the departures of Henry and Trapper[[/note]]

* CreatorBacklash: Despite winning the film's only UsefulNotes/AcademyAward, screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. later disowned the film, since he claimed that little of his script was used in the final film. On his DVDCommentary for the film, Creator/RobertAltman said it upset him that Lardner hated the film so much, since the reason the film had the feel that it did was because of his script. Essentially, Altman claimed the final film was a distillation of Lardner's script.

** By the end of the series, most of the actors were visibly greying and showing other signs of age. This would have been less problematic if the Korean War--and therefore the timespan of the show--hadn't only consisted of three years.

* SleeperHit: As a movie based on an obscure novel, about an unpopular war, with leads played by [[Creator/DonaldSutherland one of the secondary actors]] from ''Film/TheDirtyDozen'' and Music/BarbraStreisand's then-[[Creator/ElliottGould husband]] (hell, Creator/BurtReynolds said that they were described to him as such when he was offered the role of Duke Forrest), Fox didn't expect it to do much at the box office, focusing most of their attention at the time on ''Film/{{Patton}}'' and ''Film/ToraToraTora''. Instead, it became a huge sensation among younger audiences, had incredible word-of-mouth, and for a while ranked as one of the most profitable comedy films of all time.

* DawsonCasting: Gary Burghoff played 18-year-old farmboy Radar well into his thirties.

* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/RobertAltman originally wanted Creator/ElliottGould to play Duke Forrest. It was only at Gould's request that he got the role of Trapper John, as he was worried that he would spend more time focusing on nailing Duke's Southern accent than inhabiting the character.

* CastTheRunnerUp: Creator/RobertAltman originally wanted Creator/ElliottGould to play Duke Forrest. It was only at Gould's request that he got the role of Trapper John, as he was worried that he would spend more time focusing on the accent.

* BreakawayPopHit: A couple different instrumental cover versions of "Suicide is Painless" became minor hits in 1970, but the male vocal quartet version that plays over the film's opening credits became a surprise #1 hit in the UK in 1980, boosted by the popularity of the TV show. Creator/RobertAltman's son Mike (who was 14 at the time) wrote the lyrics. [[note]]Due to various covers, and especially being used as the instrumental theme to the TV series, Mike Altman ended up getting millions in royalties for the song, far more than his father got for actually directing the film[[/note]].

* AmateurCast: Of the twenty eight speaking parts, only half of them had prior screen credits.

** Additionally, due to a limited shooting schedule at the ranch quite a lot of "outdoor" scenes (particularly those taking place at night, and/or in the immediate vicinity of the compound) were rather obviously shot on a soundstage. During season eleven, ''all'' scenes were shot on the soundstage because the ranch set burnt down in a wildfire during production of the finale (which was actually the first episode shot that season), and it was deemed pointless to build a new one so close to the end.

* RealitySubtext:
** Sure, Klinger stopped running around in dresses because he was being promoted to company clerk, and therefore, pretty much had to forget about trying to buck for Section 8... but also because Jamie Farr felt that his kids were starting to feel embarrassed about seeing their dad dressed "like a transvestite" week after week on national TV.
** It's often been said that whenever the actors complained about the show's writing, the scriptwriters would pen a script set in the winter that required location filming, forcing the cast to spend the day at the Fox Ranch in heavy winter clothing under the California sun.

* WriterRevolt: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37HXBdOMKOk Alan Alda]] wasn’t shy about being angry at the execs for censoring sexual talk, violence and how Hawkeye could get caught up in women’s underwear but not allowed to touch other men’s, and talked about how much coded jokes they did to get around the censors. His episode “Dear Sigmund” involves Margaret having a FreakOut about seeing an athletic supporter and demanding it be covered.

** Much of the dialogue in "The Interview" is ad-libbed, with the cast improvising in-character responses to Clete Roberts's questions.