M*A*S*H is a 1970 American satirical black comedy war film directed by Robert Altman and written by Ring Lardner Jr., based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors.
The film depicts a unit of medical personnel stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) during the Korean War. It stars Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt, and Elliott Gould, with Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, René Auberjonois, Gary Burghoff, Roger Bowen, Michael Murphy, and in his film debut, professional football player Fred Williamson. Although the Korean War is the film's storyline setting, the subtext is the Vietnam War – a current event at the time the film was made.
After having a panel screen the film, the Army and Air Force Motion Picture Service initially banned M*A*S*H from being shown at Army and Air Force base theaters because it "reflected unfavorably" on the armed services.
M*A*S*H became one of the biggest films of the early 1970s for 20th Century Fox. It won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, later named the , at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 1996, M*A*S*H was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Academy Film Archive preserved M*A*S*H in 2000.
The film inspired the television series of the same name, which ran from 1972 to 1983 on CBS. Gary Burghoff, who played Radar O'Reilly, was the only actor playing a major character who appeared in both the film and the television series. Altman despised the TV series, calling it "the antithesis of what we were trying to do" with the film.
Plot In 1951, the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea is assigned two new surgeons, "Hawkeye" Pierce and "Duke" Forrest, who arrive in a stolen Jeep. They are insubordinate, womanizing, mischievous rule-breakers, but they prove to be excellent combat surgeons. Other characters include the bungling commanding officer Henry Blake, his hyper-competent chief clerk Radar O'Reilly, dentist Walter "Painless Pole" Waldowski, the pompous and incompetent surgeon Frank Burns, and the contemplative Chaplain Father Mulcahy.
Irritated by Frank's religious fervor, Hawkeye and Duke get Blake to move him to another tent so newly arrived chest surgeon Trapper John McIntyre can move in. The three draftee doctors (the "Swampmen", after the nickname for their tent) have little respect for military protocol, and pass time with pranks and heavy drinking. Frank, a straitlaced by-the-book military officer, bonds with Margaret Houlihan, the 4077th's head nurse and they develop a love affair. Radar and the Swampmen sneak a microphone into her tent and broadcast the pair's sexual encounter over the public address system, earning Houlihan the nickname "Hot Lips". The next morning, Hawkeye goads Frank into assaulting him, and Burns is removed for psychiatric evaluation. Later, when Houlihan is showering, the Swampmen pull the tent sides off and expose her, in order to settle a bet over whether she is a natural blonde. Houlihan confronts Blake for his weak leadership and threatens to resign her commission; Blake bluntly tells her she can do so.
Painless, described as "best-equipped dentist in the Army" and "the dental Don Juan of Detroit", fears an incident of impotence has turned him homosexual and he announces his intent to commit suicide. The Swampmen agree to help, stage a feast to evoke Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, arrange for Father Mulcahy to give absolution and communion, and provide him with a "black capsule" (actually a sleeping pill) to speed him on his way. Hawkeye persuades the gorgeous Lieutenant "Dish" Schneider – who has remained faithful to her husband and is being transferred back to the United States for discharge – to spend the night with Painless and allay his concern about his "latent homosexuality". The next morning, Painless is his usual cheerful self, and a smiling Dish departs for home in a helicopter.
Hawkeye and Trapper are ordered to Japan to operate on a Congressman's son, which they exploit as an opportunity to play golf. When they also perform an unauthorized operation on a local infant, they face disciplinary action from the hospital commander for misusing Army resources. Trapper uses anesthetic gas to sedate the commander. Using staged photographs of him as he awakens in bed with a prostitute, they blackmail him into keeping his mouth shut.
Blake and General Hammond organize a football game between the 4077th and the 325th Evac Hospital and heavily wager on the outcome. At Hawkeye's suggestion, Blake applies to have a specific neurosurgeon – Dr. Oliver Harmon "Spearchucker" Jones, a former professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers – transferred to the 4077th as a ringer. Hawkeye also suggests Blake bet half his money up front and keep Jones out of the first half of the game. The 325th scores repeatedly and easily, even after the 4077th drugs one of their star players to incapacitate him. Hammond confidently offers high odds, against which Blake bets the rest of his money. Jones enters the second half, which quickly devolves into a free-for-all, and the 4077th gets the 325th's second ringer thrown out of the game and wins with a final trick play.
Not long after the football game, Hawkeye and Duke get their discharge orders and begin their journey home – taking the same stolen Jeep in which they arrived.
Cast
Production
Development and writing The screenplay, by Ring Lardner Jr., is different from Hooker's original novel. In the DVD audio commentary, Altman describes the novel as "pretty terrible" and somewhat "racist." He says that the novel was used only as a springboard. Despite this assertion by Altman, most sequences are in the novel, with the main deletion being a subplot of Ho-Jon's return to the 4077th as a casualty. The main deviation from the script is the trimming of much of the dialogue.
In his director's commentary, Altman says that M*A*S*H was the first major studio film to use the word "fuck" in its dialogue.Altman, Robert M*A*S*H Collector's Edition (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment), "Director's Commentary" track. ASIN No. B000BZISTE. Released February 7, 2006. The word is spoken during the football game near the end of the film by Walt "Painless Pole" Waldowski when he says to an opposing football player, "All right, Bud, your fucking head is coming right off!" The actor, John Schuck, said in an interview that Andy Sidaris, who was handling the football sequences, encouraged Schuck to "say something that'll annoy him." Schuck did so, and that particular statement made it into the film without a second thought. Previously confined to cult and "underground" films, its use in a film as conventionally screened and professionally distributed as M*A*S*H marked the dawn of a new era of social acceptability for profanity on the big screen, which had until a short time before this film's release been forbidden outright for any major studio picture in the United States under the Production Code, in effect until November 1, 1968, when the Motion Picture Association film rating system replaced it. M*A*S*H was rated R in the United States by this system.
Although a number of sources have reported that Lardner was upset with the liberties taken with his script, he denied it in his autobiography: "[...] But the departures weren't as drastic as he [Altman] made out; much of the improvisation involved a couple of scenes between Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould in which they rephrased lines in their own words. [...] For all of Bob's interpolations and improvisations, however, the basic structure of the movie is the one laid out in my script, and each scene has the beginning, middle, end that I gave it."
Filming and production Altman, relatively new to the filmmaking establishment at that time, lacked the credentials to justify his unorthodox filmmaking process and had a history of turning down work rather than creating a poor-quality product. Altman: "I had practice working for people who don't care about quality, and I learned how to sneak it in."Film Curator, North Carolina Museum of Art. "M*A*S*H (1970)" (Raleigh, North Carolina, 2001). Retrieved January 12, 2020. "Twentieth Century Fox had two other war movies in production, Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora!" Altman remembered. "Those were big-budget pictures, and we were cheap. I knew that if I stayed under budget and didn't cause too much trouble, we could sneak through."
The filming process was difficult because of tensions between the director and his cast. During principal photography, Sutherland and Gould allegedly spent a third of their time trying to get Altman fired, although this has been disputed.Prigge, Matt. "Elliott Gould talks Robert Altman and says he never tried to get him fired," Metro: Entertainment (August 4, 2014). . Altman later commented that if he had known about Gould and Sutherland's protests, he would have resigned. Gould later sent a letter of apology, and Altman used him in a number of his later works – including The Long Goodbye, California Split, Nashville, and The Player – but Altman never worked with Sutherland again.
Because of the context of the film being made – during the height of America's involvement in the Vietnam War – Fox was concerned that audiences would not understand that it was ostensibly taking place during the Korean War. Fox requested a caption that mentions the Korean setting be added to the beginning of the film, and PA announcements throughout the film served the same purpose. Only a few loudspeaker announcements were used in the original cut. When Altman realized he needed more structure to his largely episodic film, editor Danford Greene suggested using more loudspeaker announcements to frame different episodes of the story. Greene took a second-unit crew and filmed additional shots of the speakers. On the same night these scenes were shot, American astronauts landed on the moon."Enlisted: The Story of M*A*S*H" (making-of documentary), Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2001. 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. However, one of the PA announcements mentions that the camp movie will be The Glory Brigade, a 1953 Korean War film starring Victor Mature.
Music Soundtrack music Johnny Mandel composed incidental music used throughout the film. Also heard on the soundtrack are Japanese vocal renditions of such songs as "Tokyo Shoe Shine Boy", "My Blue Heaven", "Happy Days Are Here Again", "Chattanooga Choo Choo", and "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo"; impromptu performances of "Onward, Christian Soldiers", "When the Lights Go On Again", and "Hail to the Chief" by cast members; and the instrumental "Washington Post March" during the climactic football game.
M*A*S*H features the song "Suicide Is Painless", with music by Mandel and lyrics by Mike Altman, the director's then 14-year-old son. The version heard under the opening credits was sung by uncredited session vocalists John Bahler, Tom Bahler, Ron Hicklin, and Ian Freebairn-Smith; on the single release, the song is attributed to "The Mash". The song is reprised later in the film by Pvt. Seidman (played by Ken Prymus) in the scene in which Painless attempts to commit suicide.
Soundtrack album Columbia Masterworks issued a soundtrack album of the film in 1970 (all songs by Johnny Mandel unless otherwise noted): "Suicide Is Painless (Michael Altman, lyrics and Johnny Mandel, music)" "Duke and Hawkeye Arrive at M.A.S.H." "The Operating Theater" / "Happy Days Are Here Again" "Major Houlihan and Major Burns"