gains many awards

Press, 13 April 1978, Page 15

gains many awards

“M.A.S.H.” which is screening again from TVI on Thursday nights, is in its sixth season with the channel. The highly-rated show has gathered a multitude of prizes and awards during the last five years. These include an Emmy Award, three nominations as the “Outstanding Comedy Series,” and the George F. Peabody Award for broadcasting excellence — the only prime-time series to be so honoured. The artists, craftsmen, and technicians who work on “M.A.S.H,” have collected enough kudos to fill an Army ambulance, or at least a brace of Korean War jeeps. Alan Alda (“Hawkeye”) has won the Super Emmy Award, and another Emmy for “Actor Of The Year.” He has won such assorted trophies as the People’s Choice Award as comedy actor; two Golden Globes from the Hollywood Foreign Press as best comedy actor; the Golden Apple Award of the Hollywood Women’s Press Club; the American Academy of Humour’s Comedy Award, and a nod from “Family Weekly”

magazine as the most popular actor of the year. The series received a total of 46 Emmy nomin-

ations in its first five seasons. The series’ action still derives from the grim work of the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and the attempts of the staff to forget it by unpredictable after-hours antics. The characters basically are serious people who turn to humour as relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the battlefield operating rooms. Alda plays Captain Benjamin Franklin (“Hawkeye”) Pierce, a top Army surgeon whose off-hours activities pulverise military decorum, and Mike Farrell is Captain B. J. Hunnicutt, a newer nominee for the title of the Army’s best and wackiest surgeon. Harry Morgan is cast as Colonel Sherman Potter, the harassed Regular Army commanding officer torn between pride and panic as his medics shatter military etiquette. Loretta Swit portrays Major Margaret (“Hot Lips”) Houlihan, the ambivalent nurse, torn between devotion to her new husband, Lieutenant-Colo-nel Donald Penobscott (Beeson Carroll) and her desire to be an example of sterile efficiency.

A new member of the cast this year is David Ogden Stiers. He portrays “Major Charles Emerson Winchester,” a pompous and ultra-wealthy Boston sophisticate but nonetheless an eminent surgeon. Gary Burghoff is “Radar” O’Rielly, the diminutive corporal whose weird gifts include ESP, 30-30 vision, and longrange hearing. Jamie Farr plays Klinger, the corporal who finagles for a Section 8 medical discharge by dressing in women’s clothes. William Christopher portrays Father Mulcahy, the priest who knows what is going on even while he is looking the other way.