Written by: Jennifer Kathleen Gibbons
In any successful acting team, they have to have chemistry.
They need to keep funny lines coming.
They need to not overstep the other’s lines, to let the other have their turn.
We’ve seen this with Abbott and Costello, Cagney and Lacey (Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly) and the Gilmore Girls (Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel). In its first three seasons, MASH had the perfect team with Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) and Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers). And they had big shoes to fill: the television show was based on the hit movie of the same title (with Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye and Elliot Gould as Trapper) but Alda and Rogers knew this: they couldn’t intimate what Sutherland and Gould did.
They had to make the roles their own.
Rogers had the most experience in television: He was a regular on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and also had guest-starred in The FBI, Gunsmoke, and The Fugitive.
He didn’t look at all like Gould; in fact, blonde and lanky, he was Gould’s opposite.
Trapper John was just as good as Hawkeye in the operating room, but usually Trapper was at his best pulling schemes with Hawkeye. Be it making up a private who donates his pay for good works (Tuttle) operating on an intelligence officer while being told not to (Deal Me Out) or trading Henry Blake’s antique desk for Hydrocortisone (To Market To Market), the two of them were determined not to let the war get them down. They were in Hell, but by God they were going to make Hell a better place while they were there.
Like Hawkeye, Trapper was a ladies’ man. But there was one hitch: he was married. There was no way he was going to leave his wife because he did love her. But this was war. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, which meant in Trapper’s case sleeping with any available nurses. I’ve lost track of how many nurses he was with (they were all different actresses but they all had the same last name of “Able”). Several times he did passionately kiss Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit) but alas, she only had eyes for Frank “Ferret Face” Burns.
Rogers was at his best in the episode called Kim, which aired early in the second season. A little orphan boy came in for emergency surgery. Everyone took a shine to him, but he bonded with Trapper most. Henry warned them that as soon as Kim was well, he would go back to the orphanage. The next scene showed Trapper drinking and writing a letter to his wife, saying via voice over: (courtesy of IMDB) “…At first I thought it was the war, and this stinking place that made me… well… love him, I guess. But now I know it’s more than that. The reasons aren’t important. We think his parents are dead. Henry Blake wants to send him to an orphanage, and I hate the idea so much, I can’t stand it.”
The scene cut to Hawkeye reading the letter aloud and drinking: ” ‘I want us to adopt him, honey. He’d be the son we never had. I know the girls would be out of their little minds to have a brother. This is a decision we both have to make. Think about it carefully. You know my feelings, now it’s really in your hands.’ That’s beautiful.”
“Okay, it’s beautiful,” Trapper acknowledged, “but is it a mistake?”
“How can you make a mistake giving a kid his life?” Hawkeye raised his martini to Trapper. “You’re all daddy.”
Rogers knew he couldn’t be good old smart alecky Trapper John. He had to risk being vulnerable to his wife and to Hawkeye. The risk worked. When Hawkeye raised his glass to Trapper we were ready to grant the adoption then and there.
Like McLean Stevenson, Rogers was ready to leave at the end of the third season. He was told at the beginning that he was going to be the star of the show, but he was finding Alda was getting all the best lines. While Stevenson got his bittersweet sendoff, we never saw Rogers leave. In fact, the producers sued Rogers for breach of contract, but Rogers had them fooled: he never signed a contract. On the season premiere Welcome to Korea, Hawkeye comes back to the camp after R&R. Radar tells Hawkeye the news: Trapper received his discharge papers to go home. He also asked Radar to give something to Hawkeye: A big sloppy kiss. Outraged, Hawkeye tags along with Radar who has to pick up the new doctor, but misses Trapper’s plane. But never fear Hawkeye. BJ Hunnicutt will ease your pain.
Rogers (along with Stevenson) did regret later leaving the show early. Unlike Stevenson, Rogers continued to have success with roles, doing several TV movies (Having Babies II, The Girl Who Spelled Freedom, and It Happened One Christmas). He also had a recurring role in Murder She Wrote as shady private eye Charlie Garrett and had a big movie role as lawyer Morris Dees in Ghosts of Mississippi.
He later left acting to devote himself full time to his business pursuits.
He became a regular on the Fox News show Cashin’ In, and testified for keeping the banking laws unchanged under the Glass–Steagal Act of 1933.
Yet when word came out Rogers died the last day of 2015, it wasn’t for his business sense he was lauded for, but of course, Trapper John.
Nobody could forget his wisecracks, his way with the ladies.
Or that grin that told people he got away with something, and he wasn’t going to tell you what.
