It was summer 1979. I had always told myself and others (for reasons that even in dotage I really can't adequately explain since I had little desire for its inherent contentiousness) from the age of 14 that I was going to be a lawyer. I had just then finished law school--although my heart was being tugged in a very different direction, concurrently to the idea of working in radio because of my introduction to the Fordham College Radio Station WFUV, and writing speculation scripts for the then many great comedy series on TV because I had been a cast member on the WFUV show Diploma City, written by my college friend, Lenspeaks. I had even compulsively written a few scripts which were produced on the show. I had already fallen in love with Los Angeles on my first visit in 1977. The year 1979 was my third visit and I planned, if somehow I could develop the chutzpah that was not a quality natural to me, to move there. I would have to pass the Bar in New York, and then in California and get a job to do it, but in a rarity for me, I was optimistic I was capable of it. I had long since fallen out of love with New York in the Koch years, and needed a dramatic change. Los Angeles was in the late 70s and 80s a very different place from New York, even more then than it is now--having now become a crowded, often dirty city, like the New York of 1981 I ultimately ran from.
Lenspeaks was my travel buddy. We were then writing partners hoping that one of the scripts we had to show our abilities (including for MASH, then long popular in the culture) would launch us out of the regular working world into a little writing cottage on one of the studio lots. He had already made the acquaintance of another Fordham alum, Thad Mumford, (see an earlier blog entry on him after his too early death in 2018), who, having read our stuff, was very encouraging. Thad offered to show us one of the studios we would have killed to work out of (well, I would have; well, ok, not literally; it was a fantasy that had some promise of reality), this one where MASH was made, Twentieth Century Fox on Pico Boulevard. Thad was a writer, and later a producer, along with his late writing partner, Dan Wilcox, on the show. It's been 46 years so I know the details of my memory are less vivid; but not the feeling of that day, one of two aspiring Hollywood writers getting a personal look at how the script sausage got made. As we were walking in not far from the front gate where the Hello Dolly! elevated train station still sat completely (Len says that a portion is still there but I can't see it as I pass by in my car these days) intact. Thad, Len and I approached a man eating a yogurt cup. I can't swear to it, but I have had the name stuck in my head from that day and time, and had not previously been that aware of him, and I have confirmed by Google that he was indeed on that lot at about that time, but it was Marshall Brickman, the writing partner of Woody Allen. Thad said some really nice things, the swell your head kind of things, about our bright futures in television. I can't give you exact sequence right now but I think one of the first things we did was to get a quick view of the writer's room, where Thad and his partner worked. The thing about studios I have always liked and the reason I know I would have felt at home on one of them (aside from having a great creative career for which I got paid), is that they feel like a college campus. Effectively, they are. And the little cottage in which Thad and Dan worked made me feel so comfortable. I imagined myself trilling away (this was pre-computers) on my typewriter in that great space, taking a break to enjoy the Commissary, which was our next (I think) stop, for lunch. I swear I remember Walter Matthau at a nearby table, but since Len doesn't remember that (he saw other folks on another visit of his own) maybe it's my imagination, along with the fact that I think I had a Cobb salad, because at some point, there, or elsewhere, I quipped about a Lee J. Cobb salad. (I know, buud a bum).
I am not sure how it happened but as we were walking to the set of the SWAMP, there she was, Loretta Swit, Hot Lips Houlihan herself, with a bit of an entourage that included a handsome man of about her age, that I somehow decided she was attached to in some way socially. I mention in passing that it has occurred to me it might have been her only husband, Dennis Holohan, whom himself was a lawyer trying his hand at acting, with whom I had acquaintance over the years in another arena entirely. However, I don't think she had met Mr. Holohan at that point in her life or career. He would later be on an episode of MASH himself, playing Margaret Houlihan's love interest. So, I can only say there was someone with her. We were briefly introduced. I remember her as prettier than she sometimes seemed on the screen, and breezier. She was in a good mood, and was ever too briefly introduced to us. I would have loved to chatter but everyone was moving toward the set. Along the way, we got a wave and hello from Harry Morgan, and somebody introduced us to David Ogden Stiers, but mispronounced his last name, which he corrected in the patrician manner one would expect of Major Winchester.
We spent the next I can't say how long watching the cast film part of an episode called, "Mr. and Mrs. Who", with guest actor, James Keane (from the Paper Chase TV show). I was entranced by the complete design, the detailed design of the SWAMP and the medical bay. I am always amazed by the talent of the artists who create the scene for the actors to do their part, the part that is always most noticed, but not always the most spectacular, although I was a fan of the talent of all these actors.
At a break, Len and I were able to say hello to fellow Fordham alum Alan Alda, Hawkeye himself. He looked exactly as he does on screen, then with a wash of black hair that fell onto his forehead and in the surgeon costume. When we told him we were also from Fordham, he asked what year we graduated, and upon our 1976! he said that we were babies compared to him a late 1950s grad.
I can't remember how we disengaged from our visit there, but it has always been a happy memory. Alas a television writing career was not mine to be had, and Len went on to another partner. Still, it is not small source of pride and delight that I had two connections with a groundbreaking show, one, a friendship with the late Thad Mumford, (we watched the last episode with him and his late love Roz Doyle in 1982 at his lovely little house) and a passing visit to a pretty big bit of television history.
RIP Loretta Swit and those who went before you from that time and place.
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