Why The Creator Of M*A*S*H Chose To Walk Away From His Own Show
At the conclusion of its fourth season in 1976, "M*A*S*H" finished a disappointing fourteenth in the Nielsen ratings, a sizable step down from ranking fourth and fifth in the two years prior. It wasn't the show's fault. The series was still one of the most critically acclaimed sitcoms on television; it earned eight Primetime Emmy awards for that season and won two. The reason for the ratings slip was some puzzling time slot shuffling by CBS, which moved "M*A*S*H" from its Tuesday perch to Friday, a notoriously off night for TV viewing. When the series' audience precipitously declined, the network moved it back to Tuesday halfway through the season, where it quickly recovered. All, it appeared, was well with the 4077th.
Except it wasn't, at least not with series creator Larry Gelbart. The veteran TV comedy writer was getting sick of the medium and feeling hemmed in by his hit series. It had been 14 years since he co-wrote the Broadway musical smash "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," and he was frustrated that he hadn't been able to build on that success. Though he'd won an Emmy in 1974 for Outstanding Comedy Series, he was concerned that he was becoming Larry "M*A*S*H" Gelbart. So he shocked the network, his cast and his crew and walked away.
Success can be a trap
In an interview with Ed Solomonson for "TV's M*A*S*H: The Ultimate Guide Book," Gelbart revealed that, despite the show's enormous success, he was in pretty lousy shape mentally and physically. As he told Solomonson:
"Perry Lafferty, who was the vice president in charge of entertainment for CBS on the west coast, and an old friend, said, 'Every time I saw you during this period,' because there would be frequent meetings at CBS, he said, 'I thought you were going to die.' I looked so bad. I was so haggard, involved, obsessed, possessed."
How obsessed was Gelbart? While on set, if he saw so much as a loose thread on one of the actors' costumes, he'd walk up to them and bite the errant string clean off (Stanley Kubrick would be proud). Though the series was based on Robert Altman's brilliant 1970 film (which itself was based on a novel by Richard Hooker), Gelbart believed the series was "my baby."
It was at this point the writer-producer knew he needed to step away.
The best of Gelbart was yet to come
Unsurprisingly, pretty much everyone involved with the show lobbied Gelbart to stick around, but he couldn't be persuaded. "[O]nce I knew I had to go, I had to go. Four years was more than plenty." With that in mind, how did he feel about his run on this legendary series? Per Gelbart:
"I did my best and I did my worst and everything in between. I didn't want to repeat myself. I didn't want to be the best 'M*A*S*H' writer in the world and only be able to write for that one set of characters. I wanted to try other avenues of expression, which I did, and there was no anger, there was no heat, there was no conflict, there was no contention. I couldn't have been treated more respectfully by everybody."
He made the right call. Two years after departing, he received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay for writing the George Burns blockbuster "Oh, God!" Later on, he was robbed of the same award when his brilliant screenplay for Sydney Pollack's "Tootsie" (on which he shared credit with Murray Schisgal) lost to John Briley's mediocre biopic "Gandhi." He slipped up when he returned to the 4077th for the homefront spinoff "AfterMASH," but bounced back nicely a decade later with his Emmy nominated script for the made-for-HBO movie "Barbarians at the Gate."
Amazingly, Gelbart never explicitly won a major award (be it an Oscar, Emmy or Tony) as a writer (his M*A*S*H win was for his role as a producer). Perhaps if he'd stuck with his "baby" of a sitcom, he would've received a "he's due" Emmy for one of the later seasons. But then we probably wouldn't have gotten "Oh, God!" or "Tootsie," and that would've been a crime.