In most of the Press Pass posts I write, I feature press releases or photos from CBS or 20th Century Fox Television because they used that medium to communicate to the audience. There is another type of media that I have featured less frequently, and that is the syndicated columnist. There have been several well known syndicated columns, and there were several columnists who specifically focused on television and entertainment. I previously wrote about a column by Gary Deeb, who was a Chicago based journalist whose articles appeared in newspapers across the country. He frequently wrote about M*A*S*H in the 1970s and 1980s, and he generally held M*A*S*H in fairly high regard, but he wasn’t afraid to criticize its shortcomings. He was not a fan of “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” but he praised the series for sticking to its virtues despite cast changes. Sadly, Deeb passed away in 2025, but his work lives on in the sharply written columns he wrote and the work he did for the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. This week, we are going to look at a Deeb column from 1975 in which he gives his first impressions of the new M*A*S*H cast in season four!
In September 1975, the episode “Welcome to Korea” kicked off the fourth season of M*A*S*H and introduced the new character, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt. It was a big moment for M*A*S*H because the previous season had ended with the death of Lt. Col. Henry Blake, and fans learned that Wayne Rogers had also departed the series over the summer hiatus. That left the writers and producers of M*A*S*H with the task of replacing two main characters in a single season. Deeb writes his thoughts about the introduction of B.J., he describes the drama of the Rogers’ exit from M*A*S*H, and he praised the ensemble cast that M*A*S*H created over the course of its first three seasons. Deeb wrote about the replacement members of the 4077th fairly positively, saying that the core elements of M*A*S*H still exist. In fact, he goes on to say that he thinks “the show will absorb the losses [of McLean Stevenson and Rogers] with little trouble.” He goes on to say that he doesn’t expect the essential elements of M*A*S*H to be “lost, stolen, or watered down.” But then, frustratingly, the article cuts off…
This is one of the challenges of being a collector of 50 year old memorabilia. The last pages of this printed column are missing. Deeb was clearly wrapping up his column, but the last page has been torn off this printed copy. Documents like this were ephemeral, and they weren’t meant to survive. So there is little surprise that the document was mistreated after Deeb’s column appeared in print. Thankfully, there are services such as newspapers.com which allowed me to find a full copy of this Deeb column when I writing my Headlines posts last year. Thanks to modern technology, I was able to complete this article in my collection by printing a scanned copy of a newspaper in which Deeb’s column appeared. Collecting M*A*S*H items can sometimes be frustrating. The information can be incomplete, and the documents are often missing information such as the place or date of publication. As a historian, researcher, and collector, I can tell you there is nothing worse than an article that cuts off mid
