Drafted surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, now an Army Captain (Donald Sutherland) reports for duty at the 1077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit just behind the front lines in Korea, where wounded GI's receive immediate attention but the rules of military discipline are openly ignored. By combining a raunchier update of the service comedy with allusions to the pointless carnage of combat, M*A*S*H encouraged American audiences to express their contempt and disapproval of a war they didn't believe in, run by a military they didn't trust.ġ951. That's why M*A*S*H, sneaking onto screens in between the big-budget productions Tora ! Tora! Tora! and Patton, became such an instant hit. Vietnam was no laughing matter, so much so that Hollywood retreated to WW2 stories instead of confronting the war on any level, with The Green Beret as a grotesque exception. Bilko, McHales' Navy and the supremely tasteless Hogan's Heroes. The service comedy eventually ended up a TV staple with Sgt. By the time of The Teahouse of the August Moon all connection to real experiences of real GIs had been lost amid silly characters and slapstick comedy. The organizing principle behind these comedies was the dame-hungry soldiers' schemes to procure female companionship, usually in the form of sexy army and navy nurses. The "service comedy" had been around since the early 1950s and had found its best expression in pictures like 1957's Operation Mad Ball. Now remembered as a raucous comedy punctuated by realistic surgery scenes, for most viewers M*A*S*H was the first Vietnam War-era picture to come right out and say, Screw the army. from the book by Richard HookerĪmerica was hurting and ready for M*A*S*H in the late spring of 1970. Starring Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, Roger Bowen, Rene Auberjonois, David Arkin, Jo Ann Pflug, Gary Burghoff, Fred Williamson, Michael Murphy, Indus Arthur, Ken Prymus, Bobby Troup, Kim Atwood, Timothy Brown, John Schuck, Dawne Damon, Carl Gottlieb, Tamara Horrocks, G.
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