Wednesday, December 30, 2015

in the MASH episode "Dear Dad" Radar mails home a Jeep, one piece at a time




Do you think anyone ever pulled that off? Sneaking an entire jeep, or any other vehicle, out of the Army and the war, and back to their family

4 comments:

  1. I wonder if the writers of that episode were paying tribute to a (I think) Johnny Cash song about a guy that worked in a Cadillac factory and built one with parts he smuggled out in his lunch box. "Had one square headlight"...etc. I remember a friend that worked in the GM factory in Van Nuys, and they would xray/scan lunchboxes and ghetto blasters. Maybe there was a kernel of truth to the idea.

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    1. I posted the Johnny cash song, and cars, in 2009 http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/you-may-not-know-what-this-is-but-its.html ... and hey, you still in Uncle Sams yacht Club?

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  2. Larry was a wonderful actor, and played that role perfectly. I hadn't heard that he was still discussing the role and Mash, so recently

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  3. The scheming Radar seen in this episode is soon replaced by a more naive Radar who wouldn’t think of trying to ship a jeep home part by part. Larry Gelbart discussed this in a December 2007 post to the alt.tv.mash Newsgroup:
    Once l became aware (through research) that some enterprising
    serviceman did in fact mail a jeep to his stateside home, one or
    several pieces at a time, l knew that we had to have someone do it in
    an episode – and who was more enterprising than Radar? After that, it
    became a matter of indicating very specifically where in the
    episode’s script Radar would be seen carrying a steering wheel or
    whatever jeep component or any other designated item and then somehow
    paying the whole business off. https://www.mash4077tv.com/.../episode-spotlight-dear-dad/

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