Loved him on the show. Can’t feel bad for a guy who made millions and millions on his own after leaving a show.
I liked BJ, but I would have been fine if Trapper stayed the entire run.
I quite enjoyed his post-MASH show House Calls. Though mostly because of Lynn Redgrave.
So long, Trapper John. I had no idea he was 84. I see interviews with the MASH cast on MeTV. All of them look quite old.
Hard to believe he was 82. He looked quite youthful in MAS*H.
RIP Trapper John. He was such a great part of the show, it’s a shame the writers didn’t treat him as Hawkeye’s equal.
Sorry, BJ, but Trap was Hawkeye’s best friend. You were just there to fill a void left behind.
Whoops! Yeah, he was 82, not 84. He also played Tony Nelson in the TV movie I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later when Larry Hagman declined to reprise his role.
I told The Wife he looked a lot younger forty-some years ago.
I always thought Wayne was much younger than Alan Alda. But it’s the other way around. Alda is 79. Wayne was already 40 when MASH started. He didn’t look much older than 30.
He did a good job in the role of Trapper John. Apparently he was very, very good at picking stocks and investments.
So much so that he became a professional financial advisor after he retired from acting.
First piece of financial advice: Stay with a hot TV show no matter what.
He was in a TV commercial kind of recently, as an elderly beach-goer wriggling in the sand until the well-dressed pitchman came around and set up an umbrella for him. I forget what they were selling, probably a financial service of some sort.
Wasn’t he a regular on Fox News’s Cashin’ In (which was renamed The Cost of Freedom after the 9/11 attacks)? Or am I thinking of WWE’s JBL?
(quick check of the Internet…turns out they were both were, at one time or another)
The new company I went to work for had a guy named Christopher Lee. Within a year of my joining, that other, more famous Christopher Lee dies. (In fact, it was Christopher Lee who told me about Christopher Lee’s death).
Then another guy was hired, named Wayne Rogers. Within a year, the other, more famous Wayne Rogers dies.
I’m evidently a peculiar sort of jinx.
Right now the only thing keeping David Bowie alive is the fact that I don’t work with the guy I know named David Bowie.
Agreed. Trapper was one of my all-time favorite TV smartasses.
Rest in peace, Wayne.
Wow.
Hard to think of Trapper being gone.
Reruns keep people in a perpetual age, and when we actually see them in real time, they always seem so much older.
Last time I saw Jerry Seinfeld I almost fell over. He is going to be perpetually around 30, thin, with a head full of hair in my mind. I don’t know who that chubby, balding middle aged guy is.
RIP, Trapper.
Damn. Breaks my heart. Never understood how they were allowed to drink alcohol while on duty to perform surgery, but breaks my heart anyway.
I guess Alphonso D’Abruzzo will be the next to die.
Interesting trivia: Rogers was the CEO of the Kleinfeld Bridal shop featured on TLC’s Say Yes To The Dress, having led a group of investors who bought the brand when it was in considerable distress and built it back up.
Mince:
If the show has any truth to it, they weren’t technically allowed, but higher-ups looked the other way as long as performance wasn’t actually compromised. With the occasional enforcement crackdown when someone (Frank Burns when the real CO is absent, or a visiting general) gets a bug up his butt for some reason.
My first duty station in the Coast Guard in the 1970s, I was in the station firehouse. Quite often for "the noonday meal" hour, several of us would go to the enlisted club, get a pitcher or two of beer and some munchies and that was lunch. I don't think the higher ups knew (the senior chief probably did but he was next door in the chief's club, which he also left work 15 minutes to go to). In some cases, a different world.
You can find references to old time ballplayers like Jimmie Foxx (Ted Williams' book) or Bobby Layne (Art Donovan Jr on late night tv) carrying alcohol in their uniforms and drinking during games.
Depends on who is running it but Blake struck me as too weak to enforce and Potter as "okay but don't let it interfere with your work or I'll get you put in prison for life"