Mash Not Funny for War Vets
In the opening weeks of 1970, there was nothing funny to be found in the quagmire of Vietnam. President Richard Nixon seemed to be keeping his promise of drawing down America's troop presence in Southeast Asia. But the U.S. bombings in Vietnam had increased and U.S. military involvement in Cambodia suggested that the war was not winding down but actually widening.
At home, the protest movement didn't just belong to the hippies anymore. Marches against the war had grown larger, and a wider cross section of the American public was taking part. People were talking about the war on television, at the local bowling alley, at the bar, at work. It seemed everywhere you turned, you were being exposed to someone else's opinion about the Vietnam War. Except in Hollywood.
Hollywood didn't have anything to say about Vietnam. Sure, there was Jane Fonda and several other actors who were vocally protesting the war. But the big studios avoided it like the plague. There were hardly any movies made about Vietnam. The one glaring exception was John Wayne's 1968 flick,The Green Berets, which was either considered an uplifting patriotic picture or a propaganda piece for the imperialist war machine, depending on which side of the argument one stood.
Making war movies during the Vietnam War was tricky business. The last thing Hollywood executives wanted was to bring the street protests and anti-war chaos onto the studio lot. Consequently, war movies released during this period were almost always about World War II…you know, the Good War. Less idealistic skirmishes like Vietnam were forbidden film subjects. But nobody said you couldn't make a movie about the Korean War.
On January 25, 1970, a sleeper of a film was released by 20th Century Fox that dared to put a modern, cynical spin on war, and even though it was set during the so-called forgotten war in Korea of 1950–53, it was widely interpreted as a thinly veiled critique on Vietnam.M*A*S*H, a black comedy about army doctors in Korea, was introduced to audiences with little fanfare, but it would become a cinema classic.
M*A*S*H was the story of a mobile army surgical hospital operating three miles behind the front lines in Korea in 1951. The brash young group of doctors and nurses cope with the incomparable and unsettling balance of sheer horror and crushing boredom by engaging in a series of frat-style pranks, flouting military authority, morality, and the law at virtually every turn.
The film was based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Richard Hornberger, writing under the pseudonym Richard Hooker. Hornberger had served as a surgeon in a MASH unit in Korea, and he had spent 12 years trying to put his story into words. Several publishers passed on the manuscript before William Morrow picked it up in 1968. Fox quickly snapped up the best-seller, and hired screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. to adapt it. Lardner, formerly one of the Hollywood Ten, made some changes to lighten up the book, which was viewed by some as racist and crude. Of course, the movie would later be accused of the same things.
Robert Altman was hired to direct, but only after the producers tried close to a dozen other directors. His freewheeling approach to the material, which included improvising with the cast and embracing a naturalistic view of the story, were characteristics that would later define Altman's signature filmmaking style. Lardner was supposedly upset that Altman did not use any of the script he had written, but Lardner's criticisms melted away when he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.
The ensemble cast featured mostly unknown actors, many of whom would go on to become big names in the 70s and beyond, including Donald Sutherland, Elliott Gould, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman, Fred Williamson, Bud Cort, John Schuck, and René Auberjonois.
Producers were keen to remind audiences that the film took place in Korea and not Vietnam, inserting a title card in the beginning of the film announcing the location and including several built-in Korea references via camp loudspeaker announcements throughout. The audience made a subconscious connection to Vietnam, though, thanks to the film's themes about the absurdity of war and our perverse ability to bureaucratize mass slaughter.
Despite the film's glib depiction of racism and misogyny, and being supposedly the first Hollywood movie to use the F-word,M*A*S*H was a huge hit. It was one of the highest grossing films of 1970, won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival (referred to at the time as theGrand Prix du Festival International du Film), and received five Oscar nominations. The theme song from the film, "Suicide is Painless," was also a hit. Co-written by Altman's 14-year-old son, Michael, the royalties from the tune would eventually earn the young lyricist $1 million, compared to his father's $70,000 fee for directing the film. In 1972, CBS adaptedM*A*S*H as a half-hour sitcom. It ran for 11 seasons and became one of the most popular shows in television history.
The legacy of the filmM*A*S*H was somewhat eclipsed by the television show. Altman, Lardner, and Hornberger all expressed negative views about the sitcom, which they believed went off in a completely different direction than what they were trying to do. Fair enough, but TV is TV, and cinema is cinema. The filmmakers can take comfort in the fact that they released a movie at a certain time in history when audiences were looking for something to lighten the emotional load of current affairs. Their efforts were heartily embraced, and for that reason among others,M*A*S*H will always be a film classic.
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Source: https://www.mrrickshistory.com/mash-the-horror-of-war-played-for-laughs/
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