Here’s a piece of random M*A*S*H trivia that sounds hard to believe: of the entire main cast of Robert Altman’s 1970 film, only one main actor carried over as a regular on the TV show. It wasn’t Elliott Gould. Not Donald Sutherland. It wasn’t Tom Skerritt, Sally Kellerman or even Robert Duvall, though they all went on to huge careers. The only one who made the cut was a 26-year-old from Bristol, Connecticut, playing a character nobody expected to remember or care about: Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly.
Gary Burghoff had already been ‘Radar’ for a year before most of America knew the character’s name.
And before that, he played Charlie Brown. Burghoff was the first actor to ever play the role on stage in the 1967 Off-Broadway production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Two of the most beloved, put-upon, quietly heartbreaking characters in all of American pop culture were played by the same relatively unknown guy from Connecticut. That’s not a coincidence; that’s a very specific type.
When the TV series premiered in 1972, Burghoff was the only familiar face in the new ensemble. He was the connection between the film that critics loved and the show that would become a cultural phenomenon. He stayed for seven seasons, and then, when his contract came up for renewal, he didn’t negotiate.
He just walked away.
He Walked Away From $4 Million and Took One More Thing With Him
The show’s producers were caught completely off guard. They reportedly offered him $4 million to come back. He turned it down because he wanted to go home. There was no ask for more money, and there was no dramatic dispute with the writers or the cast. He simply chose to walk away.
Burghoff later described his reason as “occupational burnout.” He once wrote that for those entire seven years on the show, not one new person in his life ever called him Gary. They called him ‘Radar’. His marriage was feeling the pressure, and he had a daughter that he felt he wasn’t spending enough time with. In his seventh year on the show, he kept thinking about a biblical passage that describes six years of labor and then rest.
So he decided it was time to rest.
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“Radar is one of my favorite children,” he’d said of the character. “He’s what I wish I could be.”
His farewell two-parter aired in October 1979. The writers decided to send the character home to his family’s farm in Iowa. He got an honorable exit, the kind of goodbye the character Radar deserved. In his final scene, Burghoff wanted to let all his tears flow. But, director Charles S. Dubin suggested he hold them. Burghoff watched the dailies and knew the director had been right. He asked to reshoot it. The restrained version, a soldier doing his best to hold it together, is the version that aired. Hawkeye found Radar’s teddy bear on the empty cot. Half the country cried.
Burghoff wasn’t on set when they shot that part. He’d already said his goodbyes.
When the series finale, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” finally aired on February 28, 1983, it drew what’s still considered the most-watched scripted finale in television history — 105.9 million viewers, more than the Super Bowl had that year. Burghoff had already been gone from the show for four years by that point. He watched the ending at home, the same way everyone else did that night.
After M*A*S*H, Burghoff devoted his life to his faith, moved close to his ex-wife so they could co-parent their daughter together, and started painting wildlife seriously. In his storied life, he’s filed patents for fishing equipment and even written a memoir. He’s made a few TV appearances over the years, turned down the rest, and kept on living quietly.
Now, he’s 83 years-old, and there’s no comeback tour.
Here’s a little-known piece of trivia most of those 105.9 million viewers never knew. Burghoff was born with Poland syndrome, a condition that left three of the fingers on his left hand significantly smaller than the rest. He hid it for his entire seven seasons on M*A*S*H with clipboard angles and careful camera positioning, year after year. Nobody on the set talked about it publicly, and nobody in the press wrote about it. The character on television that notices everything spent seven seasons making sure no one watching looked too closely at the actor playing him.
That’s the real secret, and most people who watched every single episode never noticed it.
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