The Interview: Rosalind Chao

Thanks to a comment left on this very blog, I learned that actress Rosalind Chao was on Twitter. As soon-lee as I read that, I hopped on and asked her if she would be willing to do an interview with me for the blog. Ms. Chao generously agreed, so I hope you all enjoy this talk with someone who holds a unique place in M*A*S*H history:

AfterM*A*S*H: How did you get the job as Soon-Lee on M*A*S*H? Was it an audition?

Rosalind Chao: I auditioned for Burt Metcalfe, Alan Alda, and Gene Reynolds. I was their first choice but almost lost the role. They found out how young I was (graduated from high school at sixteen and was in college at the time) and cast someone else. My agent told me that if I told them that I was 26, the role was mine. I agreed and because of all the press, etc. surrounding the show, the eight or nine-year age bump has followed me through through the years.  I guess that is my penance for fibbing!

AM: Was the character always planned to be part of the upcoming spin-off, as far as you knew? Or was it initially just for the last two episodes of M*A*S*H?

RC: I was originally hired for the last episode (which was filmed first) and the second to the last episode (which was filmed last). They started talking to me about AfterM*A*S*H the week before the last episode aired.

AM: You were coming into the series at a very unique time--right as all the characters were saying goodbye, and then when all the actors were saying goodbye, after a decade of working together. What was the set like? Was it a happy place?

RC: They were a wonderfully warm group of people who clearly were fond of each other. I remember tears being shed at the table read through of the final episode. It was a lovely set. The shoot of the final episode was beset with delays because of the Malibu set burning down. There were other delays because of weather, etc. but through it all...the mood and the vibe stayed pleasant and professional throughout. They were a classy group of actors and crew...a real family. I am lucky that they welcomed me in!

AM: How did you find working with the cast? How as Jamie Farr in particular, since the majority of your scenes were with him?

RC: Jamie is so generous and kind! I was a bit shy and very socially
awkward. I couldn't even bring myself to sit with the cast on my first day of shooting the final episode. He brought me to the rest of the cast and made sure I always had a chair to sit with them.

I was so lucky to learn from this group. Alan Alda was a wonderful director who taught me so much from beginning to end. (In post production, he even taught me the fine points of looping.)

Even throughout AfterM*A*S*H this group was classy and generous with their knowledge. Above all, they were so patient. I was inexperienced and a bit gauche but they never made me feel it. 

AM: That's great to hear that the cast was so welcoming. Aside from the obvious career considerations of being offered a regular role on a network TV series, did the good experience with the M*A*S*H cast factor in your decision to take on AfterM*A*S*H?

RC: Yes, absolutely! It was at the core of my decision...in spite of all the things I was juggling at the time.

AM: What was the media attention like for you during the final M*A*S*H taping? Here you were, a very young woman, and all of sudden you're in the single most watched TV episode of all time!

RC: Oddly enough, I was unrecognizable in my real life despite the fact that more people watched the final episode than any other show in TV history.

I was at the gym the morning after the airing and two women at the lockers were talking about the episode. There I was stripped down...literally...and they didn't recognize me.

However, when AfterM*A*S*H started airing and I was on the cover of People and TV Guide and on Johnny Carson five times...the attention was disconcerting. I was very shy and stayed home a lot ;-)

AM: Wait a minute--you were on The Tonight Show five times?!? With Johnny?!? What was that like?!?

RC: Johnny Carson was a delightful host who could always find a way to help his guest shine and take the 'laugh'. He made the guest look good and I always knew that I was going to have a great time as his guest.

AM: I remember reading that groups of people from the show got together to watch the M*A*S*H finale as it aired. Where were you that night?

RC: They had a cast and crew party for the final airing.

AM: How was it during the early days of AfterM*A*S*H? Did you feel more confident since you were now one of the stars of the show?

RC: I never felt a lack of confidence as an actress during the M*A*S*H finale because they made me feel like one of them. I was just a bit shy on my first day. I felt very comfortable on AfterM*A*S*H as well. It felt like a true ensemble with a wonderful crew as well.

AM: It seems like fairly early on there was a lot of tinkering to AfterM*A*S*H by the network (characters leaving abruptly, roles being recast, etc.). Did any of that filter down to the cast? Did any of you feel pressure that the show didn't seem to be connecting with audiences?

RC: There was a lot of tinkering. I remember one or two of the new cast members being concerned about whether they would get written out. But Jamie and Harry always kept the mood light and there was not room for much neurosis.

AM: Can you talk a little bit about working with Harry Morgan? You only had one or two scenes with him in M*A*S*H, but on AfterM*A*S*H you got to interact with him a lot more.

RC: Harry was a true professional and a delight to work with. What a wonderful actor he was! I absolutely adored him!

AM: AfterM*A*S*H kind of has a horrible reputation as spin-offs go, but after watching them all over again a year or so ago I realized that is patently unfair. Do you remember what you thought of the material at the time? Did the show seem to be working as far as you and the rest of the cast were concerned?

RC: That's a good question. No, I don't remember much about that. People seemed happy. Of course, I remember wanting more to do!

AM: You've been involved with two of the most successful and iconic TV franchises of all time--M*A*S*H and Star Trek [as Keiko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]. I've read that some writers have left M*A*S*H off their resume because it dates them, even thought its such an impressive credit. You've clearly been busy working all these years, but has this ever been an issue for you? Did M*A*S*H (and later Trek) open doors for you?

RC: Is that true...? The writers have left M*A*S*H off their résumé because of ageism? That is sad.

My situation is different because I was obviously so young when it was filmed. However, as I mentioned, my agent's and my age 'fib' to get me the job has had long term consequences for my online profile...hence for casting. I always laugh when casting people bring me in for a job expecting me to be a little old lady in her 50s or 60s! So...yes...it has been an issue but It usually gets straightened out once I get in the door. There's not much I can do about it so I roll with it. Besides, it was worth it...given the opportunity to be a part of TV history.

As far as Trek is concerned, I am impressed with the loyalty of the fans of the series. I was first selected many years ago after (auditioning for Gene Roddenberry) to test for one of the series regular roles on TNG and passed on it!  I didn't have the foresight to understand how it would register with the audience. Also, I was in London at the time with no desire to return. I was a little naive. Fortunately, it still worked out. Although, I did turn down DS9 to be a regular as well...so I guess I didn't learn from my mistakes. I guess I had a fear of commitment to Sci-Fi. ;-)

But it was still a happy ending because I was able to do other things as well as work with the wonderful Star Trek franchise.

AM: Are there specific things about acting that you learned from your M*A*S*H experiences, things that you later took to other projects? (other than the finer points of looping, of course! :)

RC: Another great question! I have learned the importance of professionalism and generosity to the entire cast and crew. The M*A*S*Hstars treated everyone like an equally valuable member of the team. As a result, the 'team' roots for the 'stars' every time they step up to the plate. Acting is a team sport. I have worked on many other films and TV shows as a guest and recurring in my years and have carried the importance of that on every job. I have been lucky enough to work with many other actors who have the same philosophy.

AM: What do you have coming up? Any future shows or films we can look for you in?

RC: I will next be appearing in a new CBS show [Intelligence] starring Marg Helgenberger (CSI) and Josh Holloway (Lost)!

I cannot thank Rosalind Chao enough for doing this interview! I still remember watching the final episode of M*A*S*H as it aired live, so getting the chance to talk to someone who was part of that historic event was a real thrill. She couldn't have been nicer and (as you can see) was a great interview! We wish her the best of luck on all her new projects!

 

M*A*S*H 1978 Emmy Ad

20th Century Fox took out this ad (presumably in Variety), crowing about M*A*S*H's eight Emmy nominations for season six! I find the iconography a little grim, myself (and generic; this could be for any hospital/doctor-based show), but...

FYI: Of the eight nominations, M*A*S*H won none that year. And what the heck is Loretta Swit doing being nominated as Best Supporting Actress? Who was the female lead on the show, Nurse Bigelow?

M*A*S*H Ad - "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen" Special

How big a cultural event was the final episode of M*A*S*H? So big that some local stations put together their own specials just about that single show!

I've never seen this special (it certainly didn't air in my neck of the woods), but I'd love to. I wonder if its online somewhere, in some dusty corner of the internet...

AfterM*A*S*H Ad - "Snap, Crackle, Plop"

Another awkwardly-staged ad, this time for AfterM*A*S*H's third episode, "Snap, Crackle, Plop."

More awkward is CBS' then-network catchphrase, "We Got The Touch." Do they have the power, too?

M*A*S*H Ad - "Margaret's Marriage"

A very awkwardly-staged ad for Season 5's final show. I guess someone decided they needed to have Frank in the ad, so a weird shot of Burns got pasted in there between Hot Lips and Penobscott!

20th Century Fox Ad

Here's an ad, aimed exclusively at people inside the industry: 20th Century Fox trying to convince local affiliates to buy syndication packages of M*A*S*H, Trapper John MD, and The Fall Guy. I find the tag line interesting, in that Fox is almost daring affiliates not to buy these shows, by suggesting that whatever programming they do put on against these three shows is doomed to fail!

On a side note: whoever shot that promo pic of the M*A*S*H cast forgot to ask David Ogden Stiers to take off his very non-period-accurate shades!

Daytime TV Ad

Interesting daytime programming line-up this CBS affiliate Channel 2 together--a giant block of soaps, with M*A*S*H right in the middle!

I tried pinning down when this ad might have run, by using the one soap I hadn't heard of--Love of Life--assuming it had a shorter run than the rest. But according to IMDB, LOL ran from 1951-1980, just shy of thirty years! Show's what I know.

In any case, I was partly right in my detective work--since LOL ended in 1980, and nobody ran re-runs of soaps, that would peg this ad as somewhere in the very late 1970s, after M*A*S*H went into syndication but while Love of Life was still on the air.

One last thing about Love of Life: from 1966-1967, one of its cast members was Robert Alda--father of Alan, and of course guest-star on M*A*S*H as Dr. Anthony Borelli!

1975 Variety Ad

Here's a unique little item, an ad 20th Century Fox ran in the 11/7/75 edition of Variety promoting the Season Four episode "Quo Vadis, Capt. Chandler?"

This seems like an extraordinary expense for the studio to take, just for one episode of a TV series. Fox must have thought M*A*S*H did something really special this time--which, of course, they did.

M*A*S*H on VHS

In the dark days before DVDs and streaming, everything was put on VHS. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions (the original Dark Shadows, for one), TV shows that had very long runs didn't get put onto VHS, I guess because most studios figured people didn't want to own dozens, hundreds of cassettes. So, for the most part, you got a lot of "Best of" compilations, and that had to do.

But 20th Century Fox obviously thought there was some sort of audience for M*A*S*H, so they put the entire series out through Columbia House Video, where you subscribed to the series for a flat rate, and you got sent tapes of the shows every month or so.

A friend of mine, another obsessive M*A*S*H fan, signed up, and while it was being able to see these shows uncut, whenever we wanted, it was enormously frustrating because the shows weren't put out in order! If you read the ad above (click to see a bigger version), you'll see that they decided to release tapes by theme. At least, that was the idea--the first volume contained Season One's "M*A*S*H The Pilot", Season Two's "Radar's Report", and Season Three's "Bulletin Board"--about an random as it gets.

Actually, strike that--it did get more random. If memory serves, there were other tapes in the series that season hopped even more severely, so you had different mixes of cast members across one tape. A truly bizarre decision, because who else would buy these but die-hard M*A*S*H fans? And what die-hard M*A*S*H fan would want to see the episodes all jumbled up like this?

And also, if memory serves, they never even finished the series--at some point DVDs came in, pushing VHS tapes into the dustbin of history. I wonder how many M*A*S*H fans got left in the lurch?

M*A*S*H Air Freshener

Sometimes merchandisers went a little overboard in their desire to hop aboard the M*A*S*H gravy train just as the show was ending its record-breaking run. After all, would you want your car to smell the 4077th? From what Hawkeye and some of the others said in the occasional episode, it was a pretty gamey place.

AfterM*A*S*H Ad - "Klinger Vs. Klinger"

This was a TV Guide ad for AfterM*A*S*H's second episode, "Klinger Vs. Klinger." Nice to see that, at least in the beginning, CBS was genuinely interested in promoting the show. That of course wouldn't last.

Entertainment Weekly - 5/12/13

Entertainment Weekly recently released their "100 All-Time Greatest" issue, where they rank the 100 best TV shows, movies, albums, books, and plays.

Of course, when a major pop culture arbiter such as EW does something like this, there's always a bunch or bunches of people who walk away from it mad, angrily tossing the magazine across the room in disgust that their favorite show didn't rank higher ("Where's 'Manimal', dammit?!?")

And while I of course consider M*A*S*H to still be the greatest TV series of all time--still, thirty years after it went off the air--there are a handful of shows (IMO, The Sopranos, Mad Men, The Simpsons, Mary Tyler Moore, The Wire) that I think deserve to breathe that same rarefied air, so if any of them had gotten the top spot, I wouldn't have thought much of it.

But look at the graphic and you can see where M*A*S*H placed--#31. Gadzooks, #31? Here's a list of some of the other shows that EW deemed greater achievement than M*A*S*H:

• Seinfeld (#3)
• Buffy The Vampire Slayer (#8)
• The Office (U.K.) (#14)
• Lost (#24)
• The Abbott & Costello Show (#28)
• E.R. (#30)

Now, you can argue those are all great shows (though I'd say Seinfeld has curdled like bad milk), but the idea that they deserve to be on any list, in any known universe consisting of sentient beings, above M*A*S*H is so bizarre that I lack the words to fully express how I feel. I mean, sure, the British Office was great, but...what did they do? Like, eight episodes? M*A*S*H practically had more one-hour episodes than The Office's entire run.

And while no one is a bigger fan of Abbott & Costello than me, their greatest fame came from their movies, not the TV show. I'd be hard pressed to find anyone below a certain age who even knows A&C, and if they do it's thanks to "Who's On First?" I bet a lot of people who are fans of their movies don't even know they had a TV show.

So while I started this post acknowledging that lists like this are always pretty meaningless, it still gripes my cookies (to borrow a phrase from Henry Blake) that the show whose final episode is still the highest-rated single episode of all time, and is still running on several networks in syndication, was put so far down. To angrily quote another 4077th veteran: "Boy!"

iM*A*S*H

Swamp Rat Richard Bensam caught this out-of-left-drift reference to M*A*S*H. Apparently Siri, the voice of the iPhone, will respond to certain user inquiries with famous quotes, including one from Hawkeye Pierce! Nice catch, RAB!


Bonus Points: Can anyone name which episode this quote is from?

 

"Rickles" - 1975

Why am I posting the opening musical number ("I'm A Nice Guy") from the 1975 TV special Rickles? Well, play the clip and pay close attention at around the 2:55 mark. Truly surreal.

M*A*S*H Ad: "Fallen Idol"

I found a couple more TV ads for the show while reading some articles on the passing of Allan Arbus. This one, for SSN 6's "Fallen Idol" is pretty accurate, but I wonder: where does "Alan Alda and Harry Morgan star" come from? As per the show's credits, Alda and Mike Farrell were the top two stars of the show, so whose decision was it to replace Farrell's name with Morgan? Not that it's inaccurate in any way, but I am curious as to how it was decided to do that.

Dear Allan

Dear Allan,

It was with great sadness that I learned that you had passed away on April 19, 2013. You lived to be 95, a great old age, but nevertheless I can't help but feel like it was much too soon.

I grew up with you as your character Dr. Sidney Freedman on M*A*S*H, and even though you only appeared on the show about once a year, in many ways he was my favorite character on the show. Sidney was brilliant, warm and understanding; yet he had a spine of steel: when faced with threats from the intimidating Col. Flagg, his response was a withering put-down, leaving the mad man to stand there, nonplussed (if only I could have responded to bullies in the same flippant, confident manner). You were an inspiration, and I don't think I was the only M*A*S*H fan who imagined a Sidney Freedman spin-off show. For my money, I could have watched you as that character for many, many more years after the 4077th packed up and went home.

A few years ago, it dawned on me that I frequently wait too late to make contact with people whose creative work is important to me. So I made an effort to try and track you down, if only just to get the chance to send you a letter and say how large you loomed in my life growing up. I called acting unions and agents; sadly no one ever got back to me and I never got the opportunity. I will always regret not being able to tell you how much Sidney Freedman meant to me.

I realize, of course, that you will never get to read this message, and that writing this blog post is probably a little crazy. But I figured who better than you would understand?

 

The Interview: Larry Hama

As I approached the commentary track for Season 5's "The Korean Surgeon", I thought it would be a perfect time to have a brief chat with comics writer/artist/editor, musician, and actor Larry Hama, who played one of the two North Korean soldiers in this episode!

I read Larry's answers to my questions on the commentary track for the episode, but I'm also running our talk here on the blog as well. This interview was conducted on May 19, 2012:

AfterM*A*S*H: How did you get the job on M*A*S*H? The show was at the top of the ratings at the time, I can only imagine how many hundreds of actors tried to get an audition for that show!

Larry Hama: I was in LA doing the west coast tour of Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Soon-Tek Oh, who was in a number of episodes suggested I get the Bessie Loo Agency on Sunset to rep me while I was in town (they handled many Asian performers in LA) so I went to talk to them and they set me up with an audition the next week. I did one reading and got the part. Apparently they had a hard time finding Asian heavies.

AM: All of your scenes are with Larry Linville, Gary Burghoff, and Jamie Farr. Do you recall any of the other cast being around the days you were filming? Did you get to meet any of them?

LH: I got to meet Alan Alda. He was extremely relaxed and friendly--a genuinely nice person who didn't seem to have any "star" attitude at all. Pretty much everybody involved with the production was that way. Very good vibes on the set!

AM: Did you talk much with Larry Linville between shooting? What was he like to work with?

LH: I got to talk with him a lot, since many of the shots were with him, Bob Ito and I in the Jeep. In order to do the shot before we kick him out, we had to back the jeep up around a bend in the road and wait for camera and sound to be ready. There were a lot of delays with aircraft passing overhead, so sometimes we were stuck there around the bend for quite a while, and we just shot the breeze. Larry Linville was a sweet and charming guy, and one of the most popular people on the set. Quite the opposite of what he played. I remember that Bob Ito asked me if I was auditioning for some new show that week, and when I asked him what the show was, he said it was a comedy about a medical examiner, and I thought "that will never fly." Bob went, and got the part of Sam on Quincy.

AM: Do you recall shooting any scenes that didn't make it into the show?

LH: No, they pretty much used what they shot.

AM: M*A*S*H frequently re-used actors for multiple roles, especially for Korean characters. Did you ever get the chance to try out for the show again?

LH: I went up to San Francisco to finish out the "Pacific Overtures" Tour, then went back to New York to start a rock and roll band and get back into comics, so I never read for another part on M*A*S*H.


Thanks to Larry Hama for giving us some insight into working on this episode of M*A*S*H!