M*A*S*H M*O*N*D*A*Y*S Welcomes You!!

Yankee Doodle Doctor Season One ~ Episode 6

There are a couple of spots in this episode where cast members barely hold it together during some funny scenes. I’ll be sure to point them out for a good laugh. It’s wonderful to see how genuinely funny the cast thought each other was. I will always love that about the show and it’s truly endearing to me.

Here are a couple where Margie Strassman just barely holds it together when Trapper is mugging hard.

And one more where Radar nearly busts out laughing after getting bonked on the head with a giant hammer.

Trivia

Walter ‘Radar’ O’Reilly’s (Gary Burghoff’s) left hand was actually slightly deformed and cleverly hidden during his appearances by either having him hold something in his hand or have it in his pocket.

I must say right at the outset

that the history surrounding this episode is somewhat epic for me personally. Be sure to check out the In Memoriam section at the end of this post.

What is really captivating to me is that Ed Flanders (Lieutenant Bricker) plays a no-nonsense film director for the army in this episode. In real life he was equally a person of little compromise which led to a stormy relationship with St. Elsewhere which garnered him many recognitions and awards. His life ended tragically by suicide on February 22, 1995. Sadly missed.

I hope you and I will all remember the lessons

we see here. A man with the world at his feet, so it would appear, but suffered from depression related to losing the love of his life in divorce, health issues and financial problems relating to his California ranch. He reached for the stars, he became one and left us. Don't take success in life too seriously, or even success on steemit or other platforms too seriously.

Please remember to be kind to yourself.

Thanks for reading and feel free to stop by the MASH 4077 anytime, especially if you are feeling down and out. I try to make myself available to chat daily with anyone in need.

You are not alone in this world and in this life.

In case no one told you today, you are loved and you are beautiful

MASH DISCORD

Synopsis

Lieutenant Bricker (Ed Flanders) arrives at the 4077th to film a documentary about MASH units, on the recommendation of General Clayton (Herb Voland). However, when Trapper and Hawkeye find out it is little more than propaganda, they wreck it and make their own version.

After replacing most of the film with absurd footage taken from around the camp, Hawkeye appears in the recovery room, explaining that no war is glamorous. The general orders all copies of the film burned, except one. He says that they need something to laugh at when the war ends.

This episode starts off the opening shot

with General Crandall Clayton arriving in a jeep and announcing himself. As it turns out he’s filming a movie for the military and recommends the MASH 4077th as part of the film. As the film crew embeds in the 4077th to make their documentary, Frank can only see his name in lights and will do anything to be in it.

After agreeing to be in the documentary

but pretty unhappy with the film crew’s invasive and disruptive approach, Hawkeye and Trapper plot to add some extra footage to the finished film.

Employing Radar is always a plus. The unobtrusive, enormously resourceful corpsman is always able to be in the right place at the right time because no one takes him seriously. Except Hawkeye and Trapper!!

Radar’s job is to distract the director, Duane William Bricker, while Hawkeye and Trapper destroy the documentary film reels, ruining every reel.

After reshooting the entire film as a gag

comedy Hawkeye finally gets to the point of what he feels the documentary should have focused on in the first place. Hawkeye’s displeasure is focused on the documentary’s skewed perspective of the MASH surgeons as heroic, life giving figures. Hawkeye’s focus is on the reality of war and and that there really are no promises. The lives of the wounded hang in the balance between the killing field and the MASH surgical units.

“Three hours ago this man was in a battle. Two hours ago we operated on him. He’s got a 50-50 chance. We win some, we lose some. That’s what it’s all about. No promises. No guaranteed survival. No saints in surgical garb. Our willingness, our experience, our technique are not enough. Guns and bombs and anti personnel mines have more power to take life than we have to preserve it. Not a very happy ending for a movie. But then no war is a movie.” Hawkeye

This episode was really special for me with Nurse Cutler’s appearance by the wonderful Marcia Strassman. Don’t forget to visit her memorial in the Chapel on the MASH discord.

In Memoriam

Herb Voland

Herbert "Herb" Voland (October 2, 1918 in New Rochelle, New York - April 26, 1981 in Riverside, California), who also performed under his full name Herbert Voland, was an American actor, best known for his role as Brigadier General Crandell Clayton on the hit CBS-TV show MASH from 1972 to 1973.

Career

Voland started his professional acting career on the Broadway stage, but became known for portraying characters on 1960s and 1970s television that were most commonly gruff executives, huff-and-puff military brass or policemen; either in light sitcoms or crime dramas. Voland was also the father of television actor Mark Voland.
Herb Voland died of a stroke in 1981.

Ed Flanders

Ed Flanders as Lt. Bricker in the MASH TV series episode ""(Season 1, episode #6)
Edward Paul "Ed" Flanders (December 29, 1934 - February 22, 1995) appeared in the MASH episode "Yankee Doodle Doctor", playing Army film director Duane William Bricker. Bricker, commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Special Services, is making a documentary about MASH units and comes to the 4077th on the recommendation of General Clayton.

Flanders was a seasoned actor best known for his role as Dr. Donald Westphall in the NBC television series St. Elsewhere.

Biography

Flanders was born in Minneapolis, MN, the son of Bernice (née Brown) and Francis Michael Grey Flanders. Flanders began his acting career on Broadway before moving on to guest parts in television series. From 1967 through 1975, Flanders appeared in more than a dozen American TV shows, including six appearances on the CBS-TV series Hawaii Five-O (as six different characters). During this time, he was also prolific in TV movies. He also married actress Ellen Geer during this time; they later divorced.

In the late 1970s, Flanders moved away from small TV roles to take major credits in both TV and feature films, while continuing his stage career. In 1974, Flanders won a Tony Award for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Dramatic Presentation for A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill on Broadway, He also won an Emmy award in 1976 for the TV movie adaptation of A Moon for the Misbegotten.

St. Elsewhere

In 1982, he began his role in St. Elsewhere which was to earn him four Emmy Award nominations as Outstanding Lead Actor in a TV Series, winning the award in 1983. After a stormy departure from the series in 1987, he returned for two more episodes including the 1988 series finale. During a scene in which Westphall addressed the staff, Flanders began speaking extemporaneously about the quality of art and had to be edited for broadcast. His exit on St. Elsewhere as a regular cast member was titled Moon for the Misbegotten after the play that won him a Tony Award. The episode gained much publicity as Westphall left the hospital after "mooning" his new boss, Dr. Gideon (played by Ronny Cox). Flanders continued his working relationship with executive producer Bruce Paltrow. In the short-lived 1994 CBS series, The Road Home.

Other notable roles

In addition to his six-year role as Dr. Donald Westphall, Flanders is noted as the actor who has played President Harry Truman more times, and in more separate productions, than any other. He portrayed the former U.S. President in Truman at Potsdam, Harry S Truman: Plain Speaking, and MacArthur. In the last, Flanders, once again portraying Harry Truman, had second billing to Gregory Peck's lead as General Douglas MacArthur.

Flanders is one of a very short list of actors, including Jason Robards and Anthony Hopkins, who have portrayed two different Presidents.
In feature films, Flanders performed major roles in two dark movies based on novels by William Peter Blatty. In the first, The Ninth Configuration (1980), he plays Col. Richard Fell, a self-effacing medic at a secret U.S. army psychiatric facility who assists Marine psychiatrist Col. Vincent Kane (Stacy Keach).

Flanders also played nationally known journalist William Allen White in the 1977 made for TV movie Mary White. This movie was based on the famous eulogy White wrote about his daughter after her death in 1922 from being hit in the head while riding her horse. He also appeared in the 1979 made-for-TV-horror-mini-series Salem's Lotas Dr. Bill Norton. He also played news anchor John Woodley in the 1983 made-for-TV suspense drama Special Bulletin, about a group of environmentalists who threaten to detonate a nuclear weapon in Charleston, South Carolina.

Later Life And Death

Flanders continued working in telemovies in the early 1990s, but was suffering from depression, particularly after his 1992 divorce from his second wife, health issues with back pain from a road accident and financial problems with his ranch in northern California.

He tragically took his own life by a self-inflicted gunshot wound on February 22, 1995 in Denny, California.