The working title for this film was MASH, without the asterisks between the letters. M*A*S*H, which is an acronym for Mobile Auxiliary Surgical Hospital, opens with a written prologue that includes a section of General Douglas MacArthur’s famous 1951 farewell address to the United States Congress after he was relieved of duty in Korea and the quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower, "I will go to Korea," a campaign promise made during his successful bid for president that same year.
       The opening title sequence shows a line of helicopters returning from the battlefield to the 4077th MASH unit with wounded soldiers strapped to each side. In the closing credits, the cast’s names, rather than being written onscreen, are recited by actor David Arkin as “Sgt. Maj. Volmer” over footage of their respective characters. At the close of the film, Volmer announces that M*A*S*H was that night’s film and invites the audience to “follow . . . combat surgeons . . . operating as bombs and bullets burst around them, snatching laughs and loves between amputations and penicillin.”
       Dr. H. Richard Hornberger wrote the novel MASH, upon which the film was based, as a fictional account of his experience as a Korean War Army surgeon. According to a 24 Nov 1997 People article, Hornberger, who wrote under the pen name Richard Hooker, had conservative, Republican political views that differed greatly from the liberal-leaning film and subsequent television series based on the book.
       As noted in a 12 Jul 1968 DV article, Twentieth Century-Fox purchased the film rights from Hornberger several months before the book’s publication and assigned the film to producer Ingo Preminger, as his first feature film producing effort. A 16 Jul 1968 HR article noted that Fox signed Ring Lardner, Jr. to write the screenplay. However, in a documentary included as added content on the 2001 DVD release of the film, Preminger claimed that Lardner had been asked to read the galleys for the book and then presented the idea to him.
       By early January 1969, Fox hired Robert Altman as director. After Fox cast rising stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland in Mar 1969, Altman choose the remaining cast from actors with whom he had worked previously, including Michael Murphy and Tom Skerritt, and from various theater groups, among them, the American Conservatory Theatre and the comedy groups Second City in Chicago and The Committee in San Francisco. The production began on 14 Apr 1969 at the Twentieth Century-Fox Ranch in Malibu, CA, with the Japanese golfing scene shot at a nearby golf course, and the Kokura, Japan, street scenes shot on Fox’s back lot.
       In the director’s commentary included as added content to the DVD, Altman stated that he preferred the ranch’s isolated location, which encouraged Fox to concentrate their attentions on their high-budget war films in production at the time, Tora! Tora! Tora! and Patton (see below). Altman thought that by keeping quiet and under budget he would be able to exercise more unrestricted creative freedom to develop the politically charged film. Unlike many war films about World War I and World War II, M*A*S*H did not make specific references to battles or dates in the Korean War, so that the film could be an allegory for America’s then current involvement in the Vietnam War.
       According to an 8 Mar 1970 LAT article, Altman used a zoom lens and a fog filter to obtain the camp’s “dirty” look, an aesthetic which at first displeased the studio. In the 18 Feb 1970 LAT review, Altman noted that the film was shot mostly with a long lens to allow the actors to play one to another, rather than directly to the camera, thus enhancing dialogue authenticity. The director also allowed everyone in the cast to view the film dailies, a practice not regularly allowed by the studio.
       The ensemble cast largely improvised dialogue from Lardner’s basic script and scene structure. For example, actress Sally Kellerman noted, in a 22 May 1970 Entertainment World article, that the original role written for her character “Hot Lips” contained only a few lines from which she created a main character. Because Fox refused to hire many non-speaking extras, Altman, who wanted a bustling camp atmosphere, was forced to create at least one line for each person who appeared onscreen.
       Altman’s alterations to the original script and his creation of substantial roles for lesser known actors became points of contention during and after the production. In a 29 Jul 1997 NYT letter to the editor, Altman denied Lardner’s earlier claims that the director had rewritten the script and thus ruined the film, and explained that the film was an improvisation stemming from Lardner’s structure. In the 2001 DVD documentary, Lardner addressed comments he had made throughout the years regarding Altman altering his script, noting that, upon Altman’s request, he made rewrites to the script, but the director largely ignored these changes. Also on the DVD documentary, Gould stated that he had made a mistake when, during shooting, he asked the studio to fire Altman. According to an 18 Jan 2002 LAT article, unknown to Altman, Gould and Sutherland had asked Fox to fire the director during production because of his insistence on treating bit players with the same consideration as the stars.
       As noted in a 15 Jul 1979 NYT article, Altman’s trademark layering of various sound components was central to M*A*S*H’s chaotic, front-line atmosphere. According to the DVD documentary, Altman conceived of and recorded the frequent loudspeaker announcements during editing to use as transitional devices for the film. The director used overlapping dialogue and punctuated the film with the announcements and an English-language, Japanese radio show broadcast over a loudspeaker. The announcements listed mundane base restrictions and descriptions of the evening film screenings, including military films glorifying war, thus serving to highlight the film’s theme of the hypocrisy of saving lives as the war continued to create more victims. The radio station often played songs that ironically underscored the film’s plot. For example a Japanese version of the song “My Blue Heaven” is heard during a love scene and the uptempo “Sayonara,” which included the lyrics “I knew sometime we’d have to say sayonara” [the Japanese word for goodbye], is heard while “Frank Burns” is being driven away in a straight jacket.
       Altman’s thirteen-year-old son Michael wrote the lyrics for the film’s theme song, “Suicide Is Painless.” Although the singers for the opening credits version of the song have not been determined, the ballad version heard during “Painless Pole”’s mock suicide ceremony is performed by actor Ken Prymus as “Private Seidman.” Technical advisor Dr. David Sachs helped to create the bloody and authentic front line operations for which the film was both criticized and lauded. Sachs also had a minor role as a surgeon in the film. According to a 1 May 1969 DV article, a helicopter crash during production at the ranch resulted in injuries to pilot Van L. Honeycutt and stuntmen John Ashby and Eddie Smith, who were portraying injured soldiers strapped to the side of the helicopter. According to the director’s commentary, Altman then used this wreckage in subsequent scenes, including a sunbathing sequence near the landing area.
       Several National Football League players were featured in the film, including Buck Buchanan, Timothy Brown and Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs star Fred Williamson, who had previously acted on television but made his motion picture debut in M*A*S*H. Williamson, as “Oliver ‘Spearkchucker’ Jones,” leads the 4077th football team to victory. According to a 12 Jun 1970 HR news item, ABC Sports director Andy Sidaris sued Fox for failing to credit him for directing the football sequences in the film; however, the outcome of this dispute and the extent of Sidaris’ work on the film remains undetermined.
       The popular, irreverent black comedy and anti-war film M*A*S*H became the second top grossing film in 1970, earning $22,000,000; however, according to a 24 May 1970 NYT article, several feminist groups criticized it for portraying women as merely sexual objects to be humiliated or patronized. Altman noted in the DVD director’s commentary that he portrayed the misogynistic attitudes because they were the real conditions for females working the military at the time.
       According to a 17 Mar 1970 HR news item, the United States Army and Air Force banned the film from being screened on service installations because it “reflected unfavorably” on the military. On 1 Apr 1970, HR reported that the Defense Department reversed its decision. Modern sources have speculated that the reversal was caused by the fact that many soldiers watched the film off base.
       M*A*S*H won an Oscar for Best Screenplay (Lardner) and received the following Academy Award nominations: Best Supporting Actress (Kellerman), Best Directing, Best Film Editing and Best Picture. The film also gained international fame when it won the 1970 International Grand Prix of the Cannes Film Festival.
       The film was adapted into the television series M*A*S*H (CBS, Sep 1972--Sep 1983), an extremely popular comedy starring Alan Alda as "Hawkeye" and Loretta Switt as "Hot Lips." Gary Berghoff as "Radar" was the only actor from the film to continue with the series. Hawkeye's roommate and co-conspirator "Trapper John," a part originally played by Wayne Rogers on the series, was changed to "B. J. Hunnicut," played by Mike Farrell, after Rogers left the program in 1975. Although still set during the Korean War, the series had an anti-war sentiment initially directed at the Vietnam War, from which American troops were not withdrawn until 1973.
       In Sep 1979, CBS aired the television series Trapper John, M.D., a portrait of the character from the television series working as a chief surgeon at a San Francisco hospital twenty-eight years after his return from Korea. At the close of the television series M*A*S*H in 1983, several cast members, including Harry Morgan as Dr. Sherman Potter, Jamie Farr as "Max Klinger" and William Christopher as “Father Francis Mulcahy,” starred in AfterMASH (CBS, Sep 1983-Dec 1984), a dramatic series about civilian life in a veteran's hospital after the Korean War. Gould and Sutherland appeared in the 1971 Little Murders, in which Gould starred, and were cast as a comedic team in the 1974 film S*P*Y*S.
       In 2007, M*A*S*H was ranked 54th on AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies--10th Anniversary Edition list of the greatest American films, moving up from the 56th position it held on AFI's 1997 list.