M*A*S*H's Casting Director Devised A Sneaky Plan To Cast McLean Stevenson
Wild audition stories are a dime a dozen in Hollywood, but McLean Stevenson's "M*A*S*H" casting is one of the stranger bits of classic sitcom mythology. According to casting director Eddie Foy III (per MeTV), the actor who would go on to play beloved buffoon Colonel Henry Blake for three seasons of the long-running series first earned the part in an especially roundabout way. The casting department didn't simply have Stevenson audition but instead put him in an entirely different TV movie to get him on executive producer Gene Reynolds' radar.
"I remember McLean Stevenson, I got McLean to do [the series]," Foy recalled in an interview with the Archive of American Television. "In fact," he continued, "we snuck him in on a picture called 'Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones,' where he played an eccentric minister, and we showed it to Gene Reynolds. He said, 'I love the guy.' And we did it purposely to get him into 'M*A*S*H.'" As Jason Bateman once said, it's a bold strategy, but it did pay off. Reynolds was taken by Stevenson's performance in the now largely forgotten 1971 film about a shotgun wedding, and the actor ended up taking a central role in the new military sitcom that would eventually become one of the most-loved series of all time.
The casting director snuck him into a whole other movie
Originally an ABC Movie of the Week, "Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones" was adopted from the 1967 Ann Head novel of the same name. Stevenson pops up only briefly, playing the priest who marries youngsters Robert (Desi Arnaz Jr.) and Julie (Christopher Norris), but the bit part was enough to catch Reynolds' attention. Foy offers up no explanation for the strategy, but it's pretty incredible that an actor was put into a film simply to grab a chance to work on a TV pilot. Of course, plenty of actors still surely do this today, taking on roles to get more on their resume or catch the attention of the team behind the project they really want, but it's not often talked about so candidly. The "M*A*S*H" pilot likely earned some buzz well before it was cast, as it followed the successful Robert Altman film of the same name.
Steven wasn't the only actor who took a circuitous route to the series: Father Mulcahy actor William Christopher reportedly tanked his initial audition, but writer-producer and latter-season showrunner Burt Metcalfe convinced everyone to allow him a second shot at the spot. Foy, who passed away in 2018, told the Television Academy he pushed for eventual B.J. Hunnicutt actor Mike Farrell to be in the series from day one, recommended star Loretta Swit after seeing her on stage, and also helped get David Ogden Stiers the part of snooty surgeon Charles Winchester. "I was a big pusher for David because he had that marvelous, austere presence, and not many people knew that David Ogden Stiers was a brilliant stage actor," the casting director said.
Stevenson left a lasting impression on M*A*S*H
"M*A*S*H" ended up with an all-star lineup of talented actors, many of whom stuck with the series through its historic 11-season run. Stevenson famously left after the show's third season, reportedly due in part to his unhappiness with the relatively minor role he held on the show compared to stars like Alan Alda. The actor's farewell was a tragic one for Henry Blake: after he was happily discharged, the show's writers chose to reveal that the character's plane home was shot down.
The controversial narrative choice is widely cited as the first tragic death of a major TV comedy character, and it left audiences bereft and angry. But the loss of Henry Blake only hit so hard because of everything Stevenson had given to the role beforehand – and, apparently, we have a clever casting director and an ABC special to thank for that.