Texas Tech University - La Ventana Yearbook (Lubbock, TX)

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We won ' t soon forget M ' A ' S ' H or e people who made it possible. ery costume party will still have a II, lanky guy in a red robe, combat lOts and a cowboy hat. Every televi- :)n schedule with syndicated shows II still have M ' A ' S ' H somewhere in (e lineup. But where were we when M ' A ' S ' H ;st hit prime time? Waters and Huck ifreshed our memories: On Sept. ' . 1972, the day the 4077th was lobilizcd, presidential candidate ijorge McGovern accused Richard xon of ordering a ' whitewash ' in the deral investigation of Watergate; tional-sccurity adviser Henry Kiss- inger reported little progress in the secret peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese; ' Jesus Christ Su- perstar ' was beguiling Broadway, ' Jonathan Livingston Seagull ' was perched atop the best-seller chart and ' The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour ' was beginning its second year on CBS. The times certainly have changed. We have changed, too. Perhaps change is best described by Father Mulcahy in a 1976 episode entitled, The Interview, and quoted in the March 7 issue of People IVee c y. ' ' When a doctor operates in a thin canvas tent in sub-zero weather, ' Fa- ther Mulcahy explains with a mildness that somehow makes his words more horrifying, ' the steam rises from the body he is operating on, and so that he can continue operating, the doctor will warm his hands over the open wound . . . can anyone look on that and not be changed? ' Can anyone look on 11 years worth of the war-weary 4077th and not be changed? I think not. And so, in the final episode entiteld Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, we all said good- bye and farewell to the people with whom we ' d spent many an hour. May they all rest in peace. — Kellie McKenzie M ' A ' S ' H— 19

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M.I.A. Holleman said that while the television show wandered far afield in some of its portrayals, the medical scenes were well done and the operating room on the television screen was just as he remembers it in Korea. He says the show also ac- curately depicts the differences in military medicine between World War II and the Korean War. Even with all the criitical and au- dience support, even with all that money that rolled in every week, the cast of M ' A ' S ' H managed to keep their heads out of the clouds and their feet on the found. Rather than let the series run on forever, they chose to quit while they were ahead, voting to take themselves off the air while M ' A ' S ' H was still a gigantic success. From Bark ' s article in The Dallas Morning News: On Jan. 14 at 6:00 p.m. PST, director Burt Metcalfe shouted, ' That ' s a wrap! ' The M ' A ' S ' H cast members hugged and kissed as best they could under the watchful eyes of some 200 reporters and cameramen. And then they en- dured one last mass press conference. How much will they miss M ' A ' S ' H? As usual, Alda said it best: ' How much would you miss your arm? Like M ' A ' S ' H itself, 1 don ' t have just one emotion. I ' m both sad and happy. We ' re stopping because if we ran fur- ther, we would be taking the risk of squeezing it dry. 1 hope people will understand. We ' re stopping out of respect for the work we ' ve done up until now. And we don ' t want to diminish that. Not every show was a gem. Nobody ' s perfect, but we had such a high average of good shows. There ' s never been an idea for a show where you had people under the greatest stress possible, where people were dying and you were standing in their blood, and hating it, and wanting to do something about it, and wishing you weren ' t there, and going crazy Class picture - The people who gave us 1 1 years of laughs and tears — William Christopher (Father Mulcahy), Gary Burghoff (Radar O ' Reilly), David Ogden Stiers (Charles Emerson Winchester III), Jamie Farr (Max Klinger), Loretta Swit (Margaret Houlihan). Harry Morgan (Colonel Potter). Alan Alda (Hawkeye Pierce), and Mike Farrell (B. J Hunnicutt). from that. ' But don ' t think for a minute that this cold rationality was the norm for the last day of filming. In Newsweek. Waters and Huck said, Never has so disparate an ensemble presented as much in- telligence, idealism, agony and love in 24 minutes and 40 seconds of weekly diversion and managed to lift it to the realm of art. Nor has a plastic-phony Hollywood set ever witnessed a part- ing of such honest sorrow. A thoughtful makeup man provided a box of Kleenex for each of the show ' s ' Magnificent Seven ' and executive producer Burt Metcalfe had to periodically stop the filming when the grief got out of control. ' I was choked up all day, ' recalls Alan Alda. ' Every time I did anything, I thought, this is the last time I ' ll do it, and I ' d start to cry. ' Cast members surely weren ' t the only people to cradle a box of Kleenex during the final episode. But, as Waters and Huck said, it ' s far from the end of M ' A ' S ' H. Think of it: those 250 fragments of shared love will one day entrance our children ' s children. So hold the eulogies for the 4077th; a hundredfold host of videotape ghosts is out there keeping alive its flame. IS — M-AS-H

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