During the frist year's episodes, one of the doctors was an African-American character named "Spearchucker Jones." After the first year, the character disappeared without an explaination. Why? It was discovered that there were no African-American Doctors assigned to MASH units during the Korean War.
Spearchucker Jones was a character from both the novel MASH by Richard Hooker and Robert Altman's movie. In each, the Spearchucker character, who was a stand-out collegiate athlete ("Spearchucker" refers to his javelin-throwing prowess) as well as a surgeon, is transferred to the 4077 to help them win a football game against a rival outfit. The TV show producers decided to drop the character after the first few episodes deciding they wouldn't be able to write enough meaningful episodes for Spearchucker if they were concetrating on Hawkeye and Trapper. The movie and book also had a third surgeon, Duke Forrest (played by Tom Skerrit in the film) who they decided to drop before they filmed the pilot, thinking there were too many characters for a 30-minute show. I read this in the "The Complete Book of MASH."
okay, but whatever happened to Captain Spalding, played by Loudon Wainwright III? I don't recall his character's dissapearance from the series ever being explained.
![[Slipups.com Logo]](/images/slipupslogo_small.gif)
