President Ford Visited M*A*S*H's Set And It Was A Very Eerie Experience
By the late 1970s, "M*A*S*H" wasn't just a hit television series, it was an institution. This was the pre-cable age, when viewers's entertainment choices were mostly limited to whatever was on network television, so something as seemingly innocuous as a sitcom could drive cultural conversations. "I Love Lucy," "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "All in the Family" achieved such prominence, as did variety shows like "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" and "Saturday Night Live."
So if you were a celebrity eager to become or remain relevant in the public eye, booking an appearance on one of these series was a capital idea. Failing that, just hanging around the set was a way of feeling like you still had juice. While "M*A*S*H" was one of the highest-rated television shows on the air, it was basically the Studio 54 of soundstages (minus, as far as we know, loads of cocaine and the presence of, per the judgment of a New York state civil jury, sexual batterer Donald Trump).
Hollywood and British royalty came through the 4077th operating room
"M*A*S*H" shot a good deal at the Fox Ranch in Malibu, California, but if you wanted to drop in on the exploits of Hawkeye, Klinger and Hot Lips, you paid a visit to Stage 9 on the Fox studio lot in Century City. And, according to The Hollywood Reporter's 2018 article timed to the 35th anniversary of the show's legendary finale, big-time celebrities of all stripes dropped by the 4077th's interiors for a looksee.
How big-time? Jane Fonda and television comedy pioneer Sid Caesar were spied on the outskirts of the sets. Henry Morgan, a veteran actor who came up through Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg's industry-altering Group Theatre before embarking on a successful movie career in the early 1940s, used his cachet as Colonel Sherman T. Potter to give buddies like Ralph Bellamy and Dana Andrews a tour of the show's sets. Prince Charles even peeked his inbred visage into the 4077th's operating room.
It was like a funeral
But for the mostly American cast and crew, there was, ostensibly, no greater honor than the time former President Gerald Ford turned up with his Secret Service detail during one of the series last few seasons. We know it was late in the run because The Hollywood Reporter's account of his visit is related by G.W. Bailey, who joined "M*A*S*H" in 1979 before attaining onscreen immortality as the easily duped Lt. Thaddeus Harris in Warner Bros' "Police Academy" franchise.
According to Bailey, Ford was greeted with an eerie silence. "It was like a funeral," he said. "No one spoke." But once the former, never-formally-elected president vacated the set, Henry Morgan alleviated the awkwardness by booming, "How come nobody's yelled 'f***' in the last two hours?"
On the plus side, no one had the occasion nor the power to pardon disgraced former President Richard M. Nixon.