Do You Know Radar From ‘M*A*S*H’s First Name?

When M*A*S*H hit the theaters in 1970, audiences were captivated by Robert Altman‘s black comedy about a mobile army surgical hospital stationed overseas during the Korean War.

When M*A*S*H leaped from film to television a few years later, only Gary Burghoff returned to reprise his role as Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly. And Burgoff’s portrayal of the character continued.

“In the original feature film M*A*S*H, I created Radar as a lone, darker and somewhat sardonic character; kind of a shadowy figure,” Burgoff said in 2012. “I continued these qualities for a short time until I realized that the TV M*A*S*H characters were developing in a different direction from the film characters.”

The television cast—Alan Alda as Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce, Loretta Swit as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Jamie Farr as the crossdressing Maxwell Klinger, and Mike Farrell as B.J. Hunnicutt, to name a few—adapted Radar’s original jaded point of view.

20th Century Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection
Courtesy: Everett Collection

Burghoff said that with help from the show’s executive producer, he began to “mold Radar into a more innocent, naïve character as contrast to the other characters, so that while the others might deplore the immorality and shame of war, Radar could just react from a position of total innocence.”

Burghoff also said that he decided to give the character something that was missing from the movie: a first name. Burghoff christened Radar as “Walter,” reportedly the name of a close friend who he thought was a perfect example of Radar’s positivity.

“I don’t think people realize what a creative team that was,” Burghoff said in an interview with The Forum (h/t MeTV). “We had some of the best writers in the industry. We had the round table where we would sit down with those scripts when they were fresh off the press, and we would talk about them and improve them together.”

Burghoff, 82, retired from acting in the mid-1990s. He came out of retirement for 2010’s Daniel’s Lot, but has not appeared in any film or TV show since.