LORETTA SWIT NOTICED THE SILENCE FIRST… BUT GARY BURGHOFF COULDN’T SPEAK.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in a quiet, sunlit room, decades after the cameras had finally stopped rolling on Malibu Canyon. A handful of old friends sat around…
THE AUDIENCE SAW A MAN LAUGHING… BUT LORETTA SWIT KNEW BETTER.
It was a Tuesday afternoon in Malibu when the two old friends sat down on the porch, watching the waves roll in. The Pacific Ocean was a long…
THE NOISE IN THE MESS TENT DIED, BUT LORETTA SWIT COULDN’T MOVE.
It started with a casual question at a quiet dinner table decades after the helicopters finally stopped flying. Loretta Swit was sitting across from Mike Farrell, the two…
THE CAMERAS WERE ROLLING, BUT LORETTA SWIT WASN’T ACTING ANYMORE.
The soundstage at Stage 9 was usually freezing, a stark contrast to the painted Malibu hills that pretended to be Korea. But on that particular Tuesday night, the…
WHEN HARRY MORGAN BROKE THE ENTIRE CAST OF MASH
It was supposed to be a standard interview on a comedy podcast, but the conversation took a turn when the host asked a very specific question. He leaned…
HE PLAYED HOLLYWOOD’S ULTIMATE COWARD… BUT HIS REAL LIFE EMBODIED UNCOMPROMISING INTEGRITY
We live in a culture that struggles to separate the artist from the art, often projecting the sins of a character onto the soul of the person playing…
THE NIGHT JAMIE FARR ACCIDENTALLY TERRORIZED THE ENTIRE MASH PRODUCTION CREW
We were sitting in this small, dimly lit radio studio in Los Angeles for a podcast retrospective, and the host leaned forward with this look of pure curiosity….
THE DAY THE LAUGHTER STOPPED IN THE 4077TH MESS HALL.
The studio lights were blinding, but the air inside the soundstage felt completely freezing. It was well past midnight on a Tuesday, and the entire production had slowed…
HOW ALAN ALDA ACCIDENTALLY STARTED THE MOST EXPENSIVE MASH LAUGH RIOT
People always ask me if the set of MAS*H was as fast-paced and witty behind the scenes as it looked on television. We were dynamic, we were close,…
THE SCRIPT CALLED FOR TEARS… BUT GARY BURGHOFF ACTUALLY COLDLY FREEZE.
The Malibu Creek sun was beating down exactly the way it did fifty years ago, baking the dry brush and turning the dirt into a fine, choking powder….