M*A*S*H: Movie Classic of the Baby Boomer Era

MASH, the movie that gave insubordination a good name, is director Robert Altman’s irreverent film about the hypocrisies of military life and the absurdities of modern warfare. Set in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War, MASH depicts the efforts of doctors to make sense of their lives while dealing with the chaos of treating badly wounded soldiers near the frontlines and their utter boredom when there are no bodies to patch up. Add the expected conflicts between career military personnel and those who were drafted and you have a recipe for satire of the highest order.

Reportedly, as many as 15 directors passed on the film before Altman got his chance. Working with a script by former blacklisted writer, Ring Lardner Jr., from a novel by the pseudonymous Richard Hooker, Altman fashioned a movie that featured gory operating room procedures, gallows humor, military pigheadedness, and sophomoric hijinks into a searing indictment of war. Altman understood that his sometimes anarchic style of filmmaking was perfectly suited to depicting battlefield bedlam.

Basing his screenplay on the semi-autographical exploits of three Korean War Army surgeons, Lardner devised an episodic story that emphasized the surgeons’ anti-authoritarian attitudes. Having experienced the malice of McCarthyism first hand, Lardner knew the price one could pay for bucking the system. Altman, a TV director known for his unorthodox methods, was more than ready to strike out on his own. Using Lardner’s script as his starting point, Altman assembled a talented but unheralded cast and crew to film what was supposed to be a low-budget war comedy. Fortunately, the director had other plans.

Altman housed the cast and crew on a studio backlot for several weeks. He encouraged them to improvise scenes, to speak naturally even if they “stepped on” other actors’ lines, to stay in character when off-camera, and other devices to foster informality and camaraderie. He shot using a zoom lens that allowed him to stand back from a scene and zoom in on a particular actor without having to re-set the camera. 

Not everyone was thrilled with his methods. Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland begged their agent to get Altman thrown off the movie before he ruined their careers. Lardner despised the ad-libbed lines and tried to get his name removed as screenwriter. Studio bosses at Fox, overwhelmed with piloting Patton, Tora, Tora, Tora, and Hello, Dolly into port, virtually ignored MASH until shooting was finished. What they saw then horrified them.

It was bad enough that Altman deliberately obscured that the movie was about Korea and not Vietnam, that the dialogue was almost impossible to decipher, and that the actors actually looked like they’d been in a war. By far, their biggest objection was to the scenes of operating room gore. They were certain the sight of that much blood would send audiences running into the streets. As time would show, just the opposite was the case.

The plot, such as it is, follows young doctors Capt. “Hawkeye” Pierce (Sutherland) and Capt. “Duke” Forrest (Tom Skerritt) at their new duty station at the MASH 4077th just three miles from the battlefront. Their lives are complicated by Major Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), a self-righteous and possibly incompetent Army doctor, and later by his female counterpart, head nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman). Hawkeye and Duke are soon reinforced by Capt. “Trapper John” McIntyre (Gould), their new “chest cutter” and Hawkeye’s old college football rival.

Almost every section of the movie provides a memorable scene. Beginning with the broadcast over the camp PA system of Houlihan’s and Burns’s lovemaking and the origin of her nickname as she calls out to Burns, “Kiss my hot lips!”; the irreverent farewell dinner modeled on Da Vinci’s The Last Supper for the unit dentist, “Painless Pole” Waldowski (John Schuck), who wants to commit suicide because of a sudden lack of performance with the ladies; the raising of the shower tent as Hot Lips bathes to reveal whether she’s a true blonde or not; the blackmailing of a colonel who interferes with the plans of Hawkeye and Trapper John to help a Japanese-American baby while on a junket to Japan by anesthetizing him and photographing him in bed with a prostitute; and the wild football game against the General’s evac unit which MASH 4077th wins with the help of drugs, Dr. “Spearchucker” Jones (Fred Williamson), and a trick football play.

Executives at Fox studios, nervous about the whole project, wanted the film totally re-edited. Producer Ingo Preminger insisted on a preview of Altman’s version in San Francisco. A few of the ticket holders walked out during the first operating room scenes, but by the time Houlihan became Hot Lips, the audience was applauding the mayhem on the screen. The studio released the film without changes and made $40 million in first release, making it the top box office comedy up until that time after The Graduate.

The success of MASH not only helped, rather than end, the careers of Gould and Sutherland (as well as Duvall and Kellerman), it also brought future opportunities to such Altman regulars as John Schuck, Bud Cort and Michael Murphy, and launched the careers of Rene Auberjonois (later of Star Trek fame) and Gary Burghoff, who reprised his role as Cpl. “Radar” O’Reilly in the TV series.

MASH won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival and won a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy). It was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Sally Kellerman), and Best Film Editing, winning for Best Adapted Screenplay. It resides at no. 54 on AFI’s 2007 Best Movie List, no. 7 on AFI’s 2000 comedy list, and was added to the National Film Registry in 1996. The movie was also the basis for the hit television series, M*A*S*H, which broadcast for a record-breaking 11 seasons.

MASH clocked in at 116 min. and received an R rating for sexual content. (There is also a PG-rated version running 112 min.) The film is available on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray and in widescreen and standard formats. Special features include an Altman commentary, various featurettes, and retrospectives by cast, crew and producers on two discs. Be sure to read the product description carefully to get the special features you want at the best price. 

“Suicide Is Painless” was written with music by veteran songwriter Johnny Mandel and lyrics by Robert Altman’s then 14-year-old son, Mike. An instrumental version of the song is heard at various points in the movie and is sung during the "Last Supper" of the dentist, "Painless Pole" Waldowski. The song was also used as the theme for the later TV series and made the charts both as a song and an instrumental. The elder Altman was paid around $75,000 for directing the movie; his son made over $2 million in residuals for his song lyrics.