Plan B Forum

Just watched episode 'The Moose' from the early version.
One character who shared the tent with Trapper John and Hawkeye Pierce was Spearchucker Jones. He was a black officer. The wikipedia entry for the tv show lists this character for only the first season. Looking down the list of recurring characters in that source, I don't recall ANY other black actors.

Anybody enlighten me as to why the show became lily white? Was that just the way tv was back then?

snailgate.

There were other black actors who had minor recurring roles as nurses and other staff, and there were several episodes dedicated to issues of race, but you're essentially correct. I think it was just a function of being a show of its era. Although calling a black doctor "Spearchucker" was something I remember as jarring even when watching reruns in the late 70s.

According to the backstory, he had been a college athlete and was supposed by signed by a pro football team (the Philadelphia Eagles in the book; the San Francisco 49ers in the movie) before getting drafted into the army — as a neurosurgeon, no less!!  In both the book and the movie, the character explained that his nickname "Spearchucker" came from his prowess in throwing the javelin in college.

Why was his character quietly eliminated?  One reason offered was that the TV show producers felt that they wouldn't be able to write enough meaningful episodes for him if they were concentrating on Hawkeye and Trapper — and there is some evidence for this if one were to look at the fairly thin roles given to Spearchucker in his various appearances.  There was also the thought that there were too many characters being introduced, and this would have diluted the interest of viewers.  This same reason was also offered for the dropping of characters like Lieutenant Dish and possibly 'Knocko' McCarthy.

Another reason offered by some accounts was that, as the show became more popular, the network would eventually have had to drop the character anyway, as they couldn't afford to have a recurring character with a nickname that was a racial slur and highly offensive to some viewers, regardless of how the name came about.  There is also some support for this, as the network was known to have objected to the use of the nickname "Dago Red" for the chaplain in the pilot episode.

A third explanation had to do with the producers having heard or having found out that, in reality, the United States Army had no African-American surgeons in the Korean Conflict — at least, none which were stationed to a MASH unit.  This is in fact the most likely explanation, as postings to the alt.tv.mash newsgroup in the mid-1990s by no less a person than Larry Gelbart, the creator/producer of the TV series, stated that "There were no black surgeons attached to MASH units in Korea", and 1998, in response to a similar question, he wrote: "Extensive research indicated there were no black surgeons in MASH units in Korea.  We were not interested in empty tokenism.  We also had to cut down on the number of characters in the series for budgetary reasons."

But if someone wants to see racism in something, they will undoubtedly find it.

-"BB"-

Extensive research indicated there were no black surgeons in MASH units in Korea.

I don't buy it; if they were going for authenticity, the show wouldn't have lasted 6 or 7 years longer than the Korean war lasted; the show would have ended after 3 seasons.