What is it?
Herz, Peggy. TV People. New York: Scholastic Book Services, 1974.
Why should M*A*S*H fans care?
In the 1970s, Scholastic books that featured compilations of Peggy Herz’s interviews with popular celebrities and TV stars were popular sellers for the Scholastic Book Clubs. This volume features two interviews with two M*A*S*H stars instead of only one!
As a M*A*S*H fan, what part(s) should I read?
As I mentioned, there are two M*A*S*H interviews in this volume, and those are with Loretta Swit and Gary Burghoff. The interviews are fairly short reads at approximately ten pages each, but fans of the others shows featured will enjoy the vintage interviews.
TL;DR Review
Peggy Herz strikes again with a compilation volume of her interviews with the stars of TV in 1974. TV People contains 15 interviews with popular actors at the time including Michael Landon, Richard Thomas, Valerie Harper, and Ron Howard. For M*A*S*H fans, this book is a little different than the others I have reviewed by Herz in that it features interviews with two M*A*S*H actors: Loretta Swit and Gary Burghoff.
Full Review
This month, we have another book by the prolific Peggy Herz from Scholastic. As a magazine editor for Scholastic, she frequently interviewed celebrities for the classroom magazines. Scholastic realized they could also offer these interviews in books through their classroom Book Clubs. Over the last half dozen months, I have reviewed several books just like this one with a collection of interviews from popular actors. This book, TV People, is from 1974, and it includes chapters featuring 15 different actors, including two M*A*S*H actors: Loretta Swit and Gary Burghoff.
Looking back at some of the other Scholastic books by Herz that I have reviewed, this book contains more interviews than those. With 15 interviews, Herz covers a variety of popular 1974 shows ranging from Little House on the Prairie (Michael Landon), Happy Days (Ron Howard), The Waltons (Richard Thomas), and Rhoda (Valerie Harper). There are also interviews with Don Meredith, Freddy Prinze, Clifton Davis, Kurt Russell, James Garner, and David Hartman. As with her previous books, each biographic interview is approximately eight to ten pages, and she tended to focus not only on what the actor was doing in 1974, but how they got to where they were. This would be have been very interesting to young readers and teenagers who read these magazines in school and bought these books from the Book Clubs.
For M*A*S*H, Herz featured two lead actors from the series in TV People. Her chapter on Gary Burghoff is the same that appeared in the 1975 book TV Close-Ups that I featured earlier this year. Herz primarily discussed Burghoff’s early career as a musician and on Broadway before transitioning to his time on M*A*S*H, in both the film and the television series. But the other M*A*S*H chapter is about Loretta Swit. This is the first (and I believe only) Scholastic book I have in the collection to feature Swit. Herz discusses Swit’s early life in New Jersey and how she moved to New York to pursue acting in theater productions. Then, the conversation turned to M*A*S*H and how she got the role of Major Margaret Houlihan, and her vision for Margaret as a character. Interestingly, Herz also interviewed producer Gene Reynolds about Swit, and several quotes from him are in the chapter as well. In 1974, M*A*S*H would have only been in its second season, so it is interesting to read her vision for where the character could go. There are several other fun anecdotes about her time acting before M*A*S*H and her life after getting the role of Margaret.
So far, this is the only of Herz’s books that I’ve seen featuring two actors from the same show. There were times when actors who had worked together in the past appeared in the same book, but having two from the same series at once was unusual. It is also the first time that I noticed Herz reusing one of her previous interviews for a book (even though her interview with Burghoff first appeared in this book). I am sure this happened in other instances just as I am sure variations of what we see in this book, and Herz’s other book, made it to the pages of Scholastic magazines in the 1970s. Nevertheless, I really enjoy these books! Not only because of my connection to Scholastic, but also for Herz’s writing and interviewing style. She wrote in a way that could be enjoyed by both kids and adults, and that gave these books wide appeal. I am sure there were many parents who picked up and read these books after purchasing them for their children through the Scholastic Book Clubs because they were also interested in learning about their favorite actors. Today, these interviews are relics from a time when a select group of television shows and actors heavily influenced popular culture, and they are from the era when the shows originally aired giving them a different perspective from today’s remembrances. These Scholastic books are fun time capsules, and there are more to come.
The M*A*S*H Historian 