Hooker said in an interview back in the 80s that he objected to its use for any political reason. He really just saw it as a story about a bunch of draftee doctors ahving as good a time as they could. It had to be a little bit anti-war, since no one really wanted to be there, but it wasn’t supposed to have any geoplolitical meaning.
If you didn’t see the poster or the DVD cover, you wouldn’t know the movie was left wing at all.
I dug out my copy of MAS*H yesterday and read about Frank Burns: He had worked for three years with his father before setting up a private practice, and now had a good income and a $35,000 house in the suburbs (probably worth about $500,000 today). He didn’t see how Hawkeye, who had spent those three years in a surgical residence at Mass General, being support by his wife and poker games, could think he was a better surgeon than Frank, who learned surgery from a father who didn’t know it.
Frank was the only successful private practice doctor who was drafted into teh unit. No wonder he was so bitter towards the rest of them.
Pity Linville’s dead. I’d like to see a reunion show with him and Alda:
Pierce: Yeah, we were pretty mean to you. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.
Burns: [delivers roundhouse punch that puts Pierce out for the count] Thanks.
Somehow, I never felt that way. Hawkeye, Trapper and BJ were mean to Frank, but only because Frank was equally mean, but in worse ways - abusing his outranking of them (and being even more abusive to the enlisted folk), getting them genuinely court-martialed for little things, being rotten to the natives. Frank wasn’t a patsy, he was a creep who hid behind the army.
Winchester was a thousand times more enjoyable to watch.
However, the best Winchester scenes wre with neither BJ or Hawkeye, but with Radar or Klinger. David Ogden Stiers was able to put just the right inflection of aristocracy in his voice when talking to the “earthy” ones. I remember once when Radar was excitedly telling him that he’d be inviting everyone to a dinner at his home in Iowa after the war, and Winchester, in that “disguised contempt” voice, said “I’ll be sure to run as soon as I hear that dinner bell (pause) a-clanging.” The delivery was just perfect.