2016 has claimed another icon

2016 has claimed another icon. Father Mulcahy, William Christopher, from MASH has past away. RIP

A year grown sadder. He was one of the bright spots in that show.

Darn. I'll miss Red.

"Dago Red"... More so from the movie than the TV show, although William Christopher was on the TV show. I don't know that they used that expression much on TV. Surprisingly though, they actually used the nickname "Spearchucker" for the black surgeon/ collegiate athlete Dr. Oliver Harmon Jones. Not too many of the original actors on the show still left now.

RIP...

He was called Red a few times during the first season or two, back before they found the formula to break away from the movie and focus on making a TV show. That was one series that changed over the years - if you watched something from the first season then something from the last you'd hardly know it was the same show.

Hawkeye is still around. As for the rest, I'm not sure.

It was a great show, although I am sure it made all the real MASH units shudder in dismay wondering if people thought that the show portrayed real life within the company.

It was based off a partly true book - true enough that the people from that unit could tell you who Hot Lips and others were, satiric enough that it sold well.

The movie and the TV show were "disguised" attacks on the Vietnam War, which added politics to the mix.

Speaking of the movie, I'll never forget how they were able to slip things past the censors. Imagine all the nurses dressed as cheerleaders chanting "69 is divine! 69 is divine!".

Ah, good memories.

"Red" or "Dago Red"? Don't remember the Dago part on the TV show. Could be though.

Hawkeye (Alan Alda) is still around, of course, as is "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit), Radar (Gary Burghoff) and BJ Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell), at least among the main players.

My mother was an Army Nurse at a field hospital in the Pacific during WWII and, though she enjoyed the show, she rather huffily assured both me and my Dad that such drunken, carnal shenanigans as depicted on the show never happened during her Army tenure (usually when we would make some kind of remark about how "loose" some of the nurses seemed to be). It was kind of a sore spot with her, so naturally we took full advantage of it...

Just Red. Questioning my memory, I went out and discovered that there is a MASH fan wiki. It seems that he was only called "Red" twice, the Dago being dropped because... hmm, maybe they couldn't mention wine on TV back then?

Korea was different from the Pacific theatre in WWII. You'd have maybe a 7 - 10 days when nothing much was happening followed by being swamped with the wounded because of a push (ours or theirs). If you check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MASH:_A_Novel_About_Three_Army_Doctors you'll find the history of the book - and details about the author's own time at a MASH.