CBS Tried To Censor M*A*S*H, So Larry Gelbart Decided To Poke The Bear
It plays pretty tame by today's standards, but when "M*A*S*H" premiered on CBS in 1972, it pushed the network envelope in terms of language and operating room gore. As the series got deeper into its run, it occasionally eschewed the use of a laugh track (primarily on episodes that were not aiming for the funny bone).
It took "M*A*S*H" a season to become one of the biggest hits on television, but even when it did the network censors had a job to do, and they did it by the book. They were especially strict when it came to anything that might be perceived as off-color humor, which meant they went well beyond the verbiage rattled off by comedian George Carlin in his classic "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" routine.
This often rubbed series developer Larry Gelbart the wrong way, especially since the show's inspiration was Robert Altman's very R-rated 1970 feature film. "M*A*S*H" had to retain some semblance of that movie's edge, but the censors could be impossible to deal with. Ultimately, Gelbart got fed up with what he viewed as unreasonable requests, and decided to make their life as difficult as they were making his.
Steering M*A*S*H into virgin territory
In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Alan Alda, who won five of the series' 14 Primetime Emmys throughout its 11 season run (three for acting, one for directing and another for writing), said that Gelbart bristled when a censor struck at the use of a word that has a sexual connotation but was not being deployed in a sexual manner.
According to Alda:
"The most striking example to me was early in the series. Radar [Gary Burghoff] is explaining to somebody that he's unfamiliar with something. And he said, 'I'm a virgin at that, sir.' With no sexual context. It was just that he'd never done something before. And the CBS censor said: 'You can't say the word 'virgin.' That's forbidden.'"
This ticked off Gelbart, which prompted him to mess with the censor. As Alda recalled, "So the next week, Gelbart wrote a little scene that had nothing to do with anything. A patient is being carried through on a stretcher. And I say, 'Where you from, son?' And he says, 'The Virgin Islands, sir.'"
Again, once "M*A*S*H" rocketed into the Nielsen ratings' top 10 and started winning Emmys, the series got a little more leeway and, for a network sitcom, formally adventurous. And that's why the show is every bit as watchable today as it was during its initial run.