You know, people always ask me about the dresses. They ask about the high heels, the feather boas, and the Toledo Mud Hens caps. They want to know if I ever got used to the feeling of nylon stockings in the middle of a dusty California summer. But when I sit down for these interviews and someone mentions the name Harry Morgan, my mind doesn’t go to the costumes. It goes to the man who was the absolute anchor of our show.

Harry was a different breed of actor. He came from that old-school Hollywood era where you showed up, you knew your lines, and you didn’t miss a beat. He had worked with everyone from John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart. When he joined us in the fourth season as Colonel Potter, we were all a little intimidated. We were this rowdy bunch of rebels who had been together for years, and here comes this seasoned legend who was the definition of professionalism.

He was so good it was almost frustrating. You couldn’t rattle him. Alan Alda, Mike Farrell, and I—we used to try everything. We’d pull faces behind his back, we’d whisper jokes right before the director yelled action, or we’d try to make him trip over a word. Nothing worked. Harry would just give us that iconic Potter look, deliver his line perfectly with that gravelly voice, and walk away. It became a mission for us. We had to find the breaking point.

One night, we were filming a long, grueling surgery scene in the O.R. It was well past midnight. The air conditioning on Stage 9 was barely a suggestion, and the smell of the set—that mix of dust, sweat, and fake blood—was getting to everyone. We were exhausted, and the tension was thick because we were all desperate to wrap for the weekend. Harry had this incredibly long, somber monologue about the cost of war. It was a heavy, dramatic beat, and the camera was positioned for a tight close-up on his face.

The rest of us were standing around the surgical table, masked up, playing the supporting surgeons and nurses. We looked at each other over our masks. No words were needed. We just knew. This was the moment. The lighting was set. The room went quiet.

And that’s when it happened.

Harry started the scene. He was in the zone. He had that beautiful, focused intensity in his eyes. He began the monologue, talking about the families back home and the young boys on the table. It was pure Harry Morgan magic. While he was deep into the emotion, focusing entirely on the camera lens, Alan Alda gave the secret signal.

Very quietly, without making a single sound that the microphones could pick up, every single one of us standing around that surgical table dropped our trousers. One second we were professional actors in full medical costume, and the next, we were standing there in our surgical gowns, masks, and nothing but our boxer shorts and bare legs underneath. We didn’t move an inch. We didn’t laugh. We just stood there, pretending to operate with the utmost seriousness.

Harry didn’t see it at first. He was looking at the “patient” on the table. But then, the blocking required him to look up and address the room. He moved his eyes, ready to deliver the next heavy, emotional line, and he saw it—a sea of hairy legs and mismatched underwear surrounding the most serious scene of the week.

Harry stopped mid-sentence. His eyes went wide. He looked down at Alan’s legs. Then he looked at mine. I think I was wearing some particularly loud, patterned socks that day, and Mike Farrell was standing there with a completely straight face, looking like a professional surgeon from the waist up and a guy at a beach party from the waist down.

The set was dead silent. You could hear the hum of the lights. Harry’s jaw started to work. You know that little twitch in his cheek he’d get when Colonel Potter was supposedly getting angry? It started doing that, but it wasn’t anger. It was the absolute, agonizing struggle of a man trying to maintain his dignity while looking at his co-stars in their underpants.

He tried to push through. He actually managed to get out one more word. I think it was “soldier.” But it didn’t sound like Harry Morgan. It came out as a high-pitched squeak.

Then, the dam broke.

Harry Morgan, the man who never missed a take, let out this roar of laughter that echoed through the entire soundstage. He didn’t just chuckle; he doubled over. He had to grab the edge of the surgical table to keep from falling. Once Harry went, the rest of us lost it. We were howling, gasping for air, leaning on each other for support.

The director, Gene Reynolds, who was watching on a small monitor that only showed Harry’s face from the chest up, was totally confused. He came running out from behind the curtain, screaming, “What happened? Harry, are you okay? What’s the matter?”

Then he looked down. He saw six actors standing around a “patient” with their pants around their ankles. He just stared for a second, put his head in his hands, and started shaking. The crew was the next to go. The cameraman actually had to step away from the eyepiece because his body was shaking so hard with laughter that he was vibrating the entire camera rig.

It took us nearly forty-five minutes to get back to work. Every time we’d try to reset the scene, Harry would look at us, catch a glimpse of a bare knee, and start giggling again like a schoolboy. We had finally cracked the unbreakable Harry Morgan.

But the best part wasn’t just the laugh. It was what happened to the energy of the show after that night. From that day on, Harry wasn’t just the “legend” we worked with; he was one of the boys. The wall of professional intimidation was gone. He realized that we weren’t just a bunch of kids messing around; we were a family that used that kind of absurd humor to survive the long hours and the heavy subject matter we dealt with every day.

He started giving it back to us, too. You had to watch your step around Harry after that. He became the biggest prankster on the set. He’d hide your props, or he’d whisper something absolutely outrageous to you right as the camera was zooming in for your close-up. He had this mischievous glint in his eye that stayed there for the rest of the series.

That moment in the O.R. became legendary. It was the night we officially “baptized” the Colonel into our chaotic little family. When I watch those old episodes now, I don’t see the fake blood or the surgical masks. I see the legs. I see the look on Harry’s face when he realized he couldn’t win against our nonsense.

We weren’t just making a TV show; we were creating a bond that would last for the rest of our lives. Harry stayed with us until the very end, and he never let us forget that night. He used to say it was the most unprofessional thing he’d ever seen, and simultaneously the funniest thing he’d ever experienced in fifty years of show business.

It’s funny how a little bit of shared silliness can make a job feel like a home. I think that’s why MAS*H still resonates with people today—you can feel that we actually liked each other. You can see it in our eyes. Even when we were being ridiculous, we were being ridiculous together. Standing in an O.R. set with your pants down is a very effective way to build a lifelong friendship.

I miss that man every day, but whenever I see a pair of surgical scrubs, I can’t help but smile. It’s the small, absurd moments that keep the big, serious ones from weighing you down too much. We needed those laughs just as much as the characters did.

Who was your favorite character to see get rattled on the show?