We were sitting on a stage at a cast reunion panel discussion a few years ago, and someone in the audience asked a question about our favorite behind-the-scenes pranks. Everyone immediately looked at me, and I just had to laugh because my mind instantly went back to one specific afternoon during the filming of the show.
When you spend that many years working on a television set, especially one with the kind of heavy, dramatic undertones that MAS*H frequently had, you find ways to keep things light. We were a family, and like any family, we spent a massive amount of time waiting around between scenes while the crew adjusted the lighting or moved the cameras.
On this particular day, we were shooting an episode that required a rather unusual prop to be sitting right in the middle of the set. It was a plain, wooden military coffin, meant for a somber scene we were scheduled to shoot later in the afternoon.
Because the crew was taking a long time to reset the stage, a few of us were just lounging around, trying to find a comfortable place to relax. I was incredibly exhausted that day, having been up since the early hours of the morning, and the heavy canvas cots in the tents just weren’t cutting it.
I looked over at that wooden box and thought to myself that it actually looked surprisingly comfortable and spacious compared to the actual furniture we had on the set. Without thinking much about the bizarre optics of it, I decided to climb inside, pull the lid shut to block out the harsh studio lights, and take a quick nap.
I figured someone would yell for me when they were ready, but instead, the set grew completely quiet as the crew finished their adjustments ahead of schedule. The director walked back into the compound, completely unaware that one of his main actors was soundly sleeping inside a prop.
He gathered the rest of the cast, called for action, and began filming a completely different, highly emotional scene right next to where I was hidden.
And that’s when it happened.
I woke up in pitch darkness, completely disoriented and totally forgetting where I had decided to take my nap. All I knew was that I was confined in a tight space, it was hard to see, and I could hear muffled voices speaking in very serious, hushed tones just a few feet away from me.
In my half-asleep state, I panicked a little bit and instinctively pushed the heavy wooden lid of the coffin straight up with a loud, echoing bang.
The lid flew open, and I sat straight up like Dracula rising from the grave, blinking furiously against the sudden blast of bright studio lights.
The timing could not have been worse because Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers were right in the middle of delivering a deeply moving, dramatic dialogue about the tragedies of war. Alan was mid-sentence, pouring his heart into a poignant line, when I suddenly erupted from the wooden box right in his line of sight.
The entire set went dead silent for a fraction of a second as everyone tried to process what they were actually seeing. Alan froze, his mouth still open to finish his sentence, staring at me with a look of absolute, unadulterated terror before he realized it was just me.
Then, the situation completely devolved into absolute chaos.
Wayne Rogers was the first one to lose it, letting out a loud bark of laughter that echoed through the entire soundstage. Once Wayne broke, the dam just burst, and the entire cast and crew completely collapsed into fits of uncontrollable laughter.
The director threw his hands up in the air and yelled cut, but he was laughing so hard he could barely get the word out. The camera operators were literally shaking behind their equipment, wiping tears from their eyes because nobody expected a dead body to suddenly come to life during a dramatic take.
I just sat there in my military uniform, looking around the room, feeling incredibly foolish as the entire production came to a grinding halt because of my afternoon nap. Alan was leaning against a tent pole, shaking his head and laughing, telling me that I had nearly given him a legitimate heart attack on camera.
Every single time we tried to reset the scene and start filming again, someone would look at the coffin, think of me popping out of it, and immediately start giggling. We lost at least thirty minutes of shooting time because nobody could keep a straight face long enough to get through a single line of dialogue.
The makeup department had to come out and fix everyone’s faces because people had literally laughed their makeup off during the aftermath. Even the crew members who were usually very stoic and focused on the schedule were completely useless for the rest of the afternoon.
It became one of those legendary stories that the cast and crew would bring up for years afterward whenever we needed a good laugh during a tough shoot. Whenever someone was running late or couldn’t be found on set, the standard joke was always to go check the coffins to see if I was sleeping inside one of them.
Looking back on it now, it really sums up what made working on that show so incredibly special for all of us. We dealt with heavy, difficult subject matter on screen, but behind the camera, there was this beautiful, joyful resilience that kept us going through the long hours.
That kind of spontaneous, genuine humor was the glue that held the entire production together and turned us into a real family.
What is your favorite behind-the-scenes television blunder of all time?
