List of M*A*S*H characters


This is a list of characters from the M*A*S*H franchise created by Richard Hooker, covering the various fictional characters appearing in the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors and its sequels M*A*S*H Goes to Maine and M*A*S*H Mania, the 1970 film adaptation of the novel, the television series M*A*S*H, AfterMASH, W*A*L*T*E*R, and Trapper John, M.D., and the video game M*A*S*H.
M*A*S*H is a media franchise revolving around the staff of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital as they attempt to maintain sanity during the harshness of the Korean War.

Overview

Main characters

Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce

Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce was played by Donald Sutherland in the film, and by Alan Alda in the television series. A principal character of the series, where between long sessions of treating wounded patients, he is found making wisecracks, drinking heavily, carousing, womanizing, and pulling pranks on the people around him, especially Frank Burns and "Hot Lips" Houlihan. In the novel, he serves as a moral center and author's alter ego, chiding Trapper John for calling Major Houlihan "Hot Lips", which Pierce never does. Although just one of an ensemble of characters in author Richard Hooker's MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, in the television series, Hawkeye became the center of the MASH unit's medical activity. In the television series, he becomes the Chief Surgeon of the unit early in the first season. Alan Alda is the only actor to appear in all 256 episodes of the series.
Pierce was born and raised in New England, most often mentioning Crabapple Cove, Maine, as a place that his family had a summer home and with a few references to Vermont. His father graduated from medical school and settled as a doctor in Crabapple Cove in 1911. His mother is deceased and he has a sister, and he is close to his father. In the novel and film, Hawkeye is married with children, but in the TV series, he is a bachelor and something of a ladies' man
He was given the nickname "Hawkeye" by his father, Benjy, in the novel and in the series from the character in the novel The Last of the Mohicans, "the only book my old man ever read". His birth name is taken from a member of Hooker's own family named Franklin Pierce.
Although he had a rather unremarkable boyhood, by his own admission he had had several experiences he never forgot. Once when young, he fell overboard in a pond and nearly drowned as a result of a cruel practical joke, leaving him with lifelong claustrophobia. When he was 14, his father was angered to find him in bed with a girl and smoking a cigarette. When he was 12, he discovered his father was dating a female bookkeeper; to keep his father's attention all to himself, Hawkeye selfishly ruined their relationship so they couldn't marry.
He attended the fictional Androscoggin College. In the book and the film, Hawkeye had played football in college; in the series, he is non-athletic. After completing his medical residency ; he had a common law marriage with a nurse, Carlye Breslin, but they broke up after a year. In 1950 he was drafted into the US Army Medical Corps and sent to serve at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. He became Chief Surgeon instead of Burns because Hawkeye specialized in cardiothoracic surgery in addition to general surgery, whereas Burns was only qualified in general surgery. Alda said of Pierce, "Some people think he was very liberal. But he was also a traditional conservative. I mean, he wanted nothing more than to have people leave him alone so he could enjoy his martini, you know? Government should get out of his liquor cabinet".
Pierce has little tolerance for military red tape and protocol, feeling they get in the way of his doing his job, and has little respect for most Regular Army personnel. He never wears rank insignia on his fatigues, usually wears a bathrobe instead of uniform, never polishes his combat boots, and only wears his Class A uniform when he believes appearance can achieve greater good, but does not wear any of the decorations to which he is entitled. On occasion, he assumes temporary command of the 4077th in the absence or disability of Colonels Blake or Potter.
As a surgeon, he does not like the use of firearms and he refuses to carry a sidearm as required by regulations when serving as Officer of the Day. When he is ordered by Colonel Potter to carry his issue pistol on a trip to a ROK aid station and they are ambushed on the road, he fires it into the air rather than at their attackers. This was after he told the gun "You're fired." He is also a chronic alcoholic, for three years in Korea drinking every day three times more heavily than the average person and also drinks 12-year-old Scotch whisky and Seagrams the latter so heavily that in the episode "Bottle Fatigue" Klinger decides to buy stock in Seagrams.
In the series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", Hawkeye experiences a mental breakdown when a Korean woman suffocates her infant child in response to his frantic demand that she quiet her child lest enemy soldiers hear it and discover them. In talking to psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Freedman he first says that the woman had suffocated a chicken, until Freedman led him to admit the repressed memory the horror of a mother smothering her own baby. He recommended that Hawkeye return to the 4077th for the end of the war to come to terms with what he had endured. In real life, Pierce would have faced a Section 8 discharge due to his emotional breakdown, having served in Korea for at least two years in a MASH unit.
In an episode earlier in the series, Hawkeye is mistakenly reported dead. He boards a Quartermaster Corps bus/hearse which has dead soldiers aboard, saying he has just about had his fill of war, and admits he is tired of seeing death every day. In one episode, a temporary replacement surgeon from Tokyo General Hospital, who cut his teeth performing meatball surgery under impossible conditions in the Pusan Perimeter at the start of the war, does indeed crack under pressure and probably received a Section 8 due to his emotional breakdown that prevents him working as a combat surgeon.
When the Korean Armistice Agreement is announced, he states his intention to return to Crabapple Cove to be a local doctor who has the time to get to know his patients, instead of contending with the endless flow of casualties he faced during his time in Korea. He is depicted doing this in Hooker's two sequels, M*A*S*H Goes to Maine and M*A*S*H Mania.

Trapper John McIntyre

Captain "Trapper" John Francis Xavier McIntyre appears in the novels, the film, the M*A*S*H TV series, and the spin-off Trapper John, M.D. series. He is one of the main characters in the M*A*S*H TV series during the first three seasons and the central character of the latter series. His nickname comes from an incident in which he was caught having sex with a woman in the lavatory aboard a Boston and Maine Railroad train: she claimed in her defense that "he trapped me!"
In the book and the film, Trapper John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, having played quarterback on the school's football team, and serves as thoracic surgeon of the 4077th. In the film, he has a dry, sardonic, deadpan sense of humor, while in the M*A*S*H television series he is more of a class clown. Trapper spends much of his time on the series engaging in mischief with Hawkeye Pierce, with the two playing practical jokes on Majors Frank Burns and Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, heavy drinking, and trying to seduce women. While Trapper expresses great love for his wife and daughters, he also fraternizes with the nurses a great deal with no pretense of fidelity. He admits frankly that his wife collects his pay for a special fund to pay private investigators who will spy on him, which will begin the second night he gets home from Korea.
In the film, Hawkeye and Trapper are given roughly equal focus, but in the TV series, the character devolved to become more of a sidekick to the character of Hawkeye. This frustrated Rogers, and in combination with a dispute over the terms of the original five-year contract, he quit the show shortly before production of the fourth season began; the character of Trapper was abruptly discharged from the Army and sent back to the United States. The character of B. J. Hunnicutt was created to replace him, with the two-part Season Four opener created to explain his absence.
The character returned to television in 1979 in the medical drama series Trapper John, M.D. Now played by Pernell Roberts, the character is depicted in the then-present day as the middle-aged Chief of Surgery at a San Francisco hospital. Regarding his family life, he is divorced from his wife; the only mention of his children is that he has a grown son. This version of the character is in continuity with the film rather than the TV series, but no other characters from either production appear in this series, making Trapper John the only M*A*S*H character to be depicted on-screen in the present day at the time of airing. In the first season, McIntyre's chief nurse, nicknamed "Starch", is said to have served with/worked for him in Korea, but never appeared in the novel, movie, or TV series. Trapper John, along with The Mary Tyler Moore Shows Lou Grant, thus became one of a handful of 1970s television characters to be successfully adapted from situation comedy to drama.

B. J. Hunnicutt

Captain B. J. Hunnicutt is played by Mike Farrell in the TV show. He replaced Trapper, both in his position within the unit and as an ally of Hawkeye Pierce and a foil of Frank Burns, appearing in all but one episode of the rest of the series. Although he glibly answers that the initials "B. J." stand for "anything you want", he tells Hawkeye that his name is not an initialism, but simply B. J., derived from the names of his parents, Bea and Jay.
Hunnicutt resided in Mill Valley, California, before he was drafted. He was educated at Stanford University and was a member of the Tau Phi Epsilon fraternity. He is a third-generation doctor in his family. He went through his military training at Fort Sam Houston. When he arrived at MASH 4077 in September 1952 he is 28 years old; later when he meets a medical college friend "Practical Joker" it is revealed that B. J. has been both married and practicing medicine for 10 years.
He is devoted to his wife Peg who writes many letters to him while he is in Korea. The couple has a daughter, Erin, who was born shortly before B. J. left for Korea. In contrast to the philandering Trapper John, B. J. remains generally faithful to his wife and daughter, saying that it is not because he thinks it's morally wrong to do otherwise, but "I simply don't want to." One time he accidentally had an unplanned one-night stand while comforting a nurse, and was also similarly tempted into having an affair with a visiting female journalist. The nine months he spends in Korea causes him to have an emotional breakdown because of the separation from his wife and child. He is also more reserved than his predecessor, often serving as the voice of reason when Hawkeye goes too far. Nonetheless, he also participates in and initiates practical jokes, such as secretly switching Major Winchester's clothing for that of other soldiers to make him think he is gaining or losing weight, or filling Frank Burns' air raid foxholes with water and then having the visiting Sidney Freedman yell "Air raid!". On other occasions, B. J. encourages members of the 4077th to play jokes on each other, starting escalating joke wars for his amusement, with neither side knowing that he is the instigator. Unfortunately, this has often backfired on him when both parties he was pranking find out and retaliate. B. J. is also an inveterate, bordering on compulsive, punster.
While he assumes the same general disregard for military discipline exhibited by both Hawkeye and Trapper going as far as to grow out a moustache at the start of the 7th season in clear violation of Army uniform guidelines B. J. professes stronger moral values. For example, in the episode "Preventative Medicine" he refuses to participate in a scheme to have an overzealous officer relieved of command by performing an unnecessary appendectomy on him. He is a skilled surgeon, willing to take extraordinary measures to save a patient, such as in "Heroes", where he undertakes an experimental procedure he had read about in a medical journal, using a homemade, primitive open-chest defibrillator and open-chest heart massage. On another occasion, he gave away a Bronze Star he was awarded because he felt he did not deserve it.
He actively avoids the finality of farewells, but when the 4077th is disbanded in the series finale, he is last seen riding his Indian motorcycle away from camp, while Hawkeye sees from a helicopter that B. J. has arranged painted white stones into the word "GOODBYE", visible from the air. On an episode of St. Elsewhere, it was mentioned and implied by Dr. Mark Craig that B. J. Hunnicutt had remained in Korea where he was reassigned to another unit following the July 1953 deactivation of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital at the end of M*A*S*Hs finale and Dr. Craig also mentions serving in Korea with B. J. as his drinking buddy.