M*A*S*H

Why ‘M*A*S*H’ Star Harry Morgan Said Show Was More Fun Than ‘Dragnet’

M*A*S*H was one of a kind. It was a different kind of show for a different kind of era. And, if you have had the opportunity to watch reruns of the program over the years you have may have noticed the show seemed fun to do for the cast.

Well, you wouldn’t be wrong. One of the stars of the show, Harry Morgan, recently revealed that doing that show was more fun than Dragnet.

For Morgan, the vibe and feel of M*A*S*H just suited him better. Fans may not have expected that to be the case, but that’s how the chips fell. A lot of it had to do with Jack Webb. Alan Alda from the show said of the dynamic, “He’s very reserved and courteous and hilariously funny. He told a funny story about the police show Dragnet. … So Harry who just loves to be impish would hold it down because Jack Webb was all business. He would get a show shot in half a day or something.”

It just worked for Morgan and Webb on the show. It was the right kind of dichotomy.

Harry Morgan on ‘M*A*S*H’

He continued, “He just shot them very fast. … So Harry made a joke at 9 o’clock in the morning one day, he said, and then at around 5 o’clock the same day, he made another joke and Jack Webb said, ‘Well if you’re going to keep fooling around like this!’ I mean, when you shoot those shows really fast. … I don’t know how Harry survived in that situation, because he was just bursting to be funny.”

Harry Morgan clearly loved a good time. He knew his friend Webb well and played off his serious style with a happy-go-lucky vibe that made working fun on the set. Sometimes you need that on a show. You need different types of personalities like the ones you saw between Mogan and Webb.

Alda finished by saying, “Harry was one of the most — and continues to be, for me — one of the most enjoyable people I’ve ever worked with. He could make you laugh, and you wouldn’t be able to write down what he said that made you laugh. There was just something about the way he said ordinary things. He had a little twinkle in his eye and there was a little attitude he had behind everything he said. We were laying on the floor laughing all the time at him. It was amazing.”

Morgan was fun on that set, you could tell. He didn’t have to try too hard to make the cast laugh. You could tell that he brought something different to MAS*H, which is super cool to learn all these years later.

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