RATINGS: IMDB ― 7.6/10, Rotten Tomatoes ― 59%, ME ― 45%
Trapper John: Well, what's the matter with her today?
Hawkeye Pierce: I don't know, I think it's one of those ladies' things.
Trapper John: It's not like her to act like this. She's a bitch, look at my new flannel coat. She's going to have a nervous breakdown.
Hawkeye Pierce She can't even get out of the door, look.
[Hawkeye sits down with Frank]
Hawkeye Pierce: Morning, Frank. Heard from your wife? A bunch of the boys asked me to, uh, ask you, Frank, what Hot Lips was like in the sack. You know, was she...
Frank Burns: Mind your own business.
Hawkeye Pierce: No Frank, you know, is she better than self-abuse? Does that- does that big ass of hers move around a lot, Frank or does it sort of lie there flaccid? What would you say about that?
Duke Forrest: What's Going on over there, is he getting pointers or something?
Trapper John: Oh no, Hawkeye's trying to get him on an appearance tour.
Duke Forrest: Ohhhh, is that a fact?
Hawkeye Pierce: Would you say that she was a moaner, Frank? Seriously Frank. I mean, does she go "ooooh" or does she lie there quiet and not do anything at all?
Frank Burns: Keep your filthy mouth to yourself.
Hawkeye Pierce: Or does she go "uh-uh-uh"?
[Frank leaps over the table and attacks Hawkeye]
Hawkeye Pierce: Get him off me! I've got glasses. Get him off me!
Duke Forrest: What's going on, Frank? That lesson one?
Hawkeye Pierce: Frank Burns has gone nuts! I'm wearing glasses, for God's sake!
Trapper John: Watch out for your goodies, Hawkeye! That man is a sex maniac; I don't think Hot Lips satisfied him. Don't let him kiss you, Hawkeye!
Elliot Gould as Trapper John, Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce, Robert Duvall as Frank Burns and Tom Skeritt as Duke Forrest
Trivia (From IMDB):
The 14-year-old son of Robert Altman, Mike Altman, wrote the lyrics to the theme song "Suicide is Painless". Because of its inclusion in the subsequent TV series, he continued to get residuals throughout its run and syndication. His father was paid $75,000 for directing but his son eventually made about $2,000,000 in song royalties.
The first take of the shot where Hot Lips is revealed in the shower didn't work because Sally Kellerman anticipated the reveal and was already lying on the floor when the tent flap went up. To distract her, Robert Altman and Gary Burghoff entered the shower tent and dropped their trousers while the shot was rolling outside. While Kellerman was staring at them, the tent flap was raised, resulting in her genuine surprise and shock when she realized what had happened. In the special double disc dvd they say that Radar is standing naked beside the camera and that that's the reason why Sally Kellerman looks so surprised when the flap was raised.
Robert Altman said that during filming, Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland together went to the studio and complained that Altman was filming too much of the secondary characters. They requested that he be removed from the film, but the studio refused. After the film was completed and received its accolades, only Gould confessed the matter to Altman. As a result, he received parts in other Altman pictures, whereas the director never again used Sutherland.
In the opening titles, when a soldier carrying a wounded soldier on a stretcher and when the soldier trips and falls down, it wasn't scripted. It was actually an accident by the actor who tripped over something. Robert Altman decided that instead of editing it out, to use it to foreshadow the dark humor theme as the movie's first small, but real, laugh.
The operating scenes were almost cut out due to their graphic nature. However, two women who were visiting the set told the producers that the operating scenes were what made the movie, and should be kept in.
Tom Skerritt recalled that the dialogue was about 80% improvised. In order to create a different kind of atmosphere, Robert Altman cast some of the parts from improvisational clubs who had no previous movie experience.
The scene where Father Mulcahy is blessing the jeep was improvised. Actor Rene Auberjonois found the blessing in a copy of the Army Chaplain's Handbook, and thought it would be a good addition to both the story and to his character. The director agreed, and the scene was shot in one take.
During filming Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould became so frustrated with the directorial style of Robert Altman (who often had his actors talk over each other at the same time, to simulate real life conversation), that they went to the head of production to demand he be fired. They were concerned that the movie would end up as a mess, and a movie disaster at the box office might ruin their careers. They were told by the studio head not to worry, that the movie would only be seen at a few drive-ins across the country, and that hardly anyone would ever see the movie.
Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland kept calling each other "Shirley" on the set. Gould did it in one shot, cracking Sutherland up, and Robert Altman decided to keep it in the film. "Shirley" was a reference to Donald Sutherland's second wife, Shirley Douglas.
With its initial box-office take of $41 million, "M*A*S*H" at the time was the second biggest grossing comedy, coming in just below The Graduate (1967).
Robert Altman felt that he was able to get away with so much during shooting because the officials at 20th Century Fox were keeping a closer watch on their two massively expensive projects, also war films, Patton (1970) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).
The opening title sequence has a text that identifies the place as Korea. This was added at the insistence of the studio after director Robert Altman had removed every reference to Korea, intending it to be mistaken for Vietnam, which would reinforce the anti-war statement.
The story goes that Robert Altman was editing the movie with his editor, Danford B. Greene; they had nude pinups on the walls of the editing room. The head of postproduction came by and tried to stop Altman from using the editing machine, as he wasn't a designated editor, and Altman threw him out of the editing room. The next day a memo came down from the Fox front office, stating a new policy that there were to be no pinups on the walls of editing rooms. Altman took the memo to the sound recording studio and added it as one of the loudspeaker announcements during the film.
According Johnny Mandel and Robert Altman, the film's famous theme song was intended to be the "stupidest song ever written". After attempting to write the lyrics himself, Altman said he found it too difficult to write "dumb enough", and instead gave to the task to his 14 year old son. Mike Altman apparently wrote the lyrics in five minutes.
When Donald Sutherland's parents went to see the film, his father stood up and said "Hi, Donny!" after the scene where Hawkeye says "Hi, Dad" to the camerawoman in the Jeep.
When studio execs first saw the dailies, they complained to Robert Altman that the soldiers looked dirty compared to the soldiers in Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) and Patton (1970). Altman, a veteran of WWII, replied that soldiers in war are dirty. The next day the execs told the producers of those two films to make their soldiers look dirtier.
One innovation of Robert Altman was the almost constant overlaying of dialogue: as many as four conversations could be happening at once in a given shot. While this was considered unorthodox and revolutionary at the time, Altman's instinct was vindicated when audiences agreed that the technique contributed to the feeling that war was "messy and confusing". The technique has been emulated on several occasions since.
According to Robert Altman was the first R rated movie to use the word "fuck" in it, but apparently it wasn't his idea. During second-unit shooting for the football game that comes near the end of the film, John Schuck was told to say something "really nasty" to his opponent. Schuck came up with "All right, bub, your fucking head is coming right off," and it made it into the film's final cut.
Speaking about the troubles he had with the studio, Robert Altman now says, "This film wasn't released - it escaped."
The loudspeaker shots and announcements were added after the editing process had begun and the filmmakers realized that they needed more transitions. Some of the loudspeaker shots have the Moon visible and were shot while the Apollo 11 astronauts were on the Moon.
Robert Altman cast so many unknowns that after the few known actors (Tom Skerritt, Elliott Gould, etc.), the opening credits are entirely "Introducing...".
According to Elliott Gould, Sylvester Stallone revealed to him that he was an extra in this film. When Gould later told this to Robert Altman, Altman refused to accept this as fact because he was not a fan of Stallone's work.
Robert Altman was originally promised five "points" (a percentage) of the film's profits. After a disagreement between Altman and one of the Fox executives, the offer of points was taken back before production began. When the film became a big hit, Altman's agent asked for the points back; the studio was considering it when Altman was quoted in the press saying how much he hated working for Fox. He was never given the points back.
G. Wood (General Hammond) played the same character in the movie and first three episodes of the TV series (M*A*S*H (1972).)
Robert Altman was initially considering James Garner for the part of Hawkeye until Donald Sutherland lobbied hard for the role. James Garner was an actual Korean War veteran who had been wounded and treated in military hospital during the conflict.
The initial scene of the suicide of "Painless" is a mimic of "The Last Supper" by 'Leonardo Da Vinci'.
When the movie was released, the military wanted not to run the movie in their theaters because of its anti-war message. The case went to the Supreme Court which ruled the military could not withdraw the film for this reason. Instead, the military chose to run Patton (1970) in the following week feeling that film was more complimentary to the military.
Although set on the front lines of the Korean War, the only gunshots heard throughout the movie are from the referee's pistol during the inter-camp football game.
Robert Altman didn't want Sally Kellerman initially because "she was too attractive" and he wanted unattractive actors.
Gary Burghoff's film debut.
This was not the first Korean War-based movie to carry the title "MASH." In 1953, Humphrey Bogart starred in a film also about a MASH unit by the same title. But the studio thought the title might make audiences think it was about potatoes, so the title was changed to Battle Circus (1953).
All of the characters, based on the characters from Richard Hooker's novel, are composites of people Hooker knew, met casually, worked with, or heard about.
Writer Ring Lardner Jr. was the only Academy Award winner out of the movie's five nominations. Lardner practically disowned the movie when he saw that very little of his original script made it into the final cut.
The accounting department claimed shooting was 4 days behind schedule on only the second day.
This and Catch-22 (1970), two films satirizing recent American wars, were released in the same year. "Catch-22," based on a best-selling novel, featuring a huge cast, and boasting director Mike Nichols fresh from his success with The Graduate (1967), was expected to be the more successful film. When the reverse proved true, Robert Altman hung a banner in his office reading, "Caught-22."
M.A.S.H. stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. They remained in US Army service until 2006 when the last one was donated to Pakistan.
This was John Schuck's film debut, and he was cast as Capt. Walter Kosciusko 'Painless Pole' Waldowski, the MASH dentist, because of his very pronounced under bite.
Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006.
In 1971, 20th Century Fox somewhat perversely reissued this film on a double bill with a very different kind of war film, Patton (1970) starring George C. Scott.
Gary Burghoff is the only actor to play the role of Radar in four out of five incarnations of the M*A*S*H franchise, in MASH (1970), M*A*S*H (1972), After MASH (1983) and the failed pilot W*A*L*T*E*R (1984). He does not appear in Trapper John, M.D. (1979). The next most frequently returning characters are Trapper John McIntyre (MASH (1970), M*A*S*H (1972) and Trapper John, M.D. (1979)) and Father John Francis Mulcahy (MASH (1970), M*A*S*H (1972) and After MASH (1983)), although they were each played by three different actors.
In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #54 Greatest Movie of All Time.
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Austin Pendleton turned down the part of Radar in order to work on Catch-22 (1970) instead. He has since admitted that this is the biggest regret of his career.
According to George Litto, when studio executives first saw the film, they handed Altman "10 pages of notes for cuts and changes they wanted made," then producer Ingo Preminger arranged a test screening in San Francisco. By the time Hawkeye was stealing the Jeep, the audience was openly applauding the film, and executive Richard D. Zanuck apparently said, "Tell Bob to forget about my notes."
This film was among the first to be released on home video. In 1977 20th Century Fox licensed 50 of its titles to a fledgling video duplication company called Magnetic Video Corp. Fox purchased the company in 1978, laying the groundwork for its current successful video operation.
The character of Major Frank Burns in the film is actually a combination of two characters from the original novel, Captain Frank Burns and Major Jonathan Hobson.
Burt Reynolds turned down the role of Trapper John.
Robert Altman originally wanted Elliott Gould 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.
When Hawkeye arrives at the first camp, we hear the PA call several men to the departure area. Of these men one of them is named "Robert A", a homage to the film's director Robert Altman.
According to the memoir of actress Sally Kellerman, during the scene in "MASH" when Major Houlihan storms into Colonel Blake's tent after being exposed in the shower, Sally Kellerman shouted her scripted lines at actor Roger Bowen, and then noticed that Robert Altman was keeping the camera running. Kellerman, not knowing what else to do, continued sobbing her final words of dialogue, "My commission...my commission..." until finally Altman ordered the camera to cut. Following the scene, Altman embraced Kellerman and told her she had finally revealed the vulnerability in the character he'd been hoping for. Unfortunately, the scene was the final appearance in the script of the Houlihan character. But because of Altman's delight with Kellerman's improvised performance in the scene, the director kept her on the film for the duration of the production, and inserted the actress into additional scenes in which she was not originally scripted, such her cheer-leading as the football game, observing the poker-playing, and even a scene near the end of the picture which revealed Major Houlihan had become romantically involved with Captain Duke Forrest.
MASH is often incorrectly cited as the first American film to use the word "fuck". It was however the first to be given a MPAA R rating. Other than its possible use in Bosko's Picture Show (1933), the word can be heard in earlier films including the major studio releases I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name (1967) (a major-studio production made in the UK), Medium Cool (1969), and the independent productions Ulysses (1967) (a UK/USA co-production), David Holzman's Diary (1967) and Futz (1969), among others.
James Caan turned down the role of Trapper John in order to appear in Rabbit, Run (1970) instead.
According to Robert Altman, Ring Lardner Jr. was very upset with the liberties taken with his script. Lardner later won an Academy Award for his screenplay. Lardner apparently told Elliott Gould, "There's not a word that I wrote on screen."
Sylvester Stallone confessed to Elliott Gould that he had been an extra on this. When Gould told this to Robert Altman, Altman thought it hilarious that he had directed a Sylvester Stallone picture.
According to Elliott Gould, he and Robert Altman got into a heated argument on set after Altman told him that he needed to act like Corey Fischer.
The film is radically different from the novel. Robert Altman described the novel as "pretty terrible" and somewhat "racist" (the only major black character has the nickname "Spearchucker"). He claims that the screenplay was used only as a springboard. However, the screenplay itself reveals that, while there is some improvisation in the film, and although Altman moved major sequences around, most sequences are in the screenplay. The main deletion is a subplot of Ho-Jon's return to the 4077th-as a casualty. When Radar steals blood from Henry, it is for Ho-Jon's operation under Trapper and Hawkeye's scalpels. When the surgeons are playing poker after the football game, they are resolutely ignoring a dead body being driven away-Ho-Jon's. The main deviation from the script is the trimming of much of the dialogue.
For "Hot Lips" shower scene, Robert Altman had to deploy a few distractions. Sally Kellerman had never appeared nude onscreen before, and in early takes of the scene she was dropping to the ground before the point of the moment was even made clear. So Robert Altman had to think of distractions to get her to pause before falling to the ground. These included Gary Burghoff standing naked in front of her and Tamara Wilcox-Smith standing out topless. Kellerman attributes her Oscar nomination to them.
14 other film directors passed on directing M*A*S*H before it was offered to Robert Altman accepted. Amongst those considered were Stanley Kubrick and Mike Nichols.
James Coburn was one of Robert Altman's first choices for the Trapper John role.
Roger Bowen, the actor portraying Lt Col. Henry Blake, passed away on February 16, 1996. MacLean Stevenson, who played the role of Henry Blake in "M*A*S*H" for the first three seasons of the classic TV spin-off, died on February 15, 1996. A day apart.
Rene Auberjonois and John Schuck later worked together again on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
Film debut of G. Wood.
During production, a caption that mentions the Korean setting was added to the beginning of the film, at the request of 20th Century Fox. The Korean War is explicitly referenced in announcements on the camp public address system and during a radio announcement that plays while Hawkeye and Trapper are putting in Col. Merrill's office which also cites the film as taking place in 1951.
One of the first films to be released on VHS video tape, along with The Sound of Music (1965) and Patton (1970).
This was the 38th film to be released to the home video market when 20th Century Fox licensed fifty motion pictures from their library to Magnetic Video.
Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.
According to Malachy McCourt, he was the original choice for the part of Father Mulcahy, because Robert Altmanwanted a "real Irish priest." Producer Ingo Preminger didn't agree, so the part ultimately went to Rene Auberjonois.
Spoilers ―
During Painless' suicide ceremony, the group at the table depict Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper", with Painless Waldowski in Jesus' place.
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