MASH 08 MASH Goes to Hollywood

by Richard Hooker+William Butterworth

  (* Biologists and botanists place different meaning on the term “fertilization.” To botanists it implies applying some organic (or chemical) substance to the root structure of a plant; to biologists it does not. Hence the phrase “Biologists Have More Fun.”)

  The Biology vs. the Theater controversy came to a head following Zelda’s graduation as B.S. (cum laude) and M.S. (summa cum laude) and her announcement that, if it was all right with Mommy and Daddy, she would just remain in school and shoot for her Ph.D.

  It was not all right with Mommy and Daddy. Mommy announced, somewhat hysterically, that unless Zelda began her career right now, all she could hope to be was a character actress, and she, Bonita Granville Spinopolous, had no intention whatever of being known as a character actress’ mother.

  Then she threw a Chef Pierre frozen New England boiled dinner, aluminum tray, corned beef, soggy cabbage and all, at Mr. Spinopolous together with the announcement that it was all quite clearly his fault.

  Mr. Spinopolous, who had twenty-five years before learned that the only way to deal with his wife under such circumstances was to flee, fled, taking Zelda with him. They rode around Chicago, and finally Mr. Spinopolous stopped the car overlooking Lake Michigan.

  He was as disturbed as his wife by Zelda’s announcement that she wanted to remain in school and become a Ph.D. He faced the bitter truth that Zelda (who was nearing twenty-four) was getting a little long in the tooth, and unless she was soon impaled with Cupid’s arrow, he was liable to have an old maid on his hands.

  All that he really expected from his daughter was that she bring some suitable young man home, someone to step into his shoes in the business and someone with whom his beloved Zelda could cooperate in the production of a grandchild, preferably male.

  Perhaps his wife was right. Perhaps Zelda would find a man in Hollywood. That was better than nothing, and nothing was what Zelda had turned up with at the University of Chicago.

  “You’re going to have to plan for your future, Zelda,” he said, finally.

  “I know what I want, Daddy,” Zelda said. “I want to be a biologist!”

  “Sometimes, baby,” her father said, “you don’t get what you want in life. I never wanted anything out of life but to open a little restaurant, maybe with a little bar in it, and look what happened to me.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” Zelda said. “I never knew that. You never said anything!”

  “You don’t complain about things you can’t change, Zelda,” her father said. “You just go along. I think you’re gonna have to go along with your mother.”

  “I don’t want to be an actress!”

  “I didn’t want to be what I am, baby,” he said, “but you learn to live with things. You try it for a year, and if you don’t like it, you can go back to college. O.K.?”

  They drove back to the house.

  “Zelda and me talked it over, cupcake,” Mr. Spinopolous said to his wife, who had, after smashing all the breakable objects in the living room in a little pique, collapsed on the couch with a bottle of gin.

  “And?”

  “Zelda’s gonna give it a whirl for a year.”

  “A star is born!” Mrs. Spinopolous cried, getting somewhat unsteadily to her feet. “Watch out, Hollywood, here comes Daphne Covington!”

  “Who the hell is Daphne Covington?” Gus asked.

  “Who ever heard of a star with a name like Zelda Spinopolous?” Mrs. Spinopolous replied.

  It was at this point that the difference between Mrs. Spinopolous and other stage mothers became apparent. The others were forced by circumstance to grovel at the feet of third-assistant second-unit directors, to fawn over women whose second cousin, once removed, had been a college roommate of an assistant producer, anything to bring their child to the attention of someone in show business who could give the kid a role.

  Mrs. Spinopolous did not have this problem. On the following morning, her husband summoned into his office his advertising director and had a word with him.

  He wanted, he said, to get his daughter into show business. If possible, he wanted her to get into show business, something nice, right here in Chicago, for he didn’t like the idea of sweet Zelda having to go to either Hollywood, California, or New York City, which were, he had heard, hotbeds of depravity and sexual hanky-panky completely unsuited to a young lady of good Greco-Polish background.

  “I’ll get right back to you, chief,” the advertising director said. “You got anything specific in mind?”

  “I’ll leave it up to you,” Gus said.

  The advertising manager, in the cant of the trade, got on the horn and telephoned the executive vice-president, advertiser relations, of the Amalgamated Broadcasting System in New York. The executive vice-president was candidly informed that although Zelda had had training as a child in tap, ballet, and elocution, she had absolutely zero professional experience.

  “Not to worry,” the executive vice-president said. “I’m sure something can be worked out. I’ll get back to you.” He broke the connection with his finger and then told the operator to get Mr. Wesley St. James on the West Coast hot line.

  “Wes-Baby,” he said, “the network’s got a little ol’ problem we think you can help us with.”

  “Such as?”

  “We have to find employment for a dame.”

  “I understand,” Wesley St. James replied. “I’ll scratch your back, Fenwick, and you scratch mine later, right?”

  “Let me lay it out for you,” Fenwick said. “Wesley St. James Productions brings in thirty-nine and two-tenths percent of the total ABS advertising revenue, right?”

  “You got it, Fenwick.”

  “And who is the major advertiser on Wesley St. James Productions?”

  “Chef Pierre’s Frozen Delights,” Wesley St. James instantly replied. “They spend . . . God knows ... a lot of money!”

  “Right,” Fenwick said.

  “And do you know what would happen if Chef Pierre’s Frozen Delights cancelled their advertising with us, Wes-Baby?”

  “I don’t know. Why would they want to do that?”

  “If Chef Pierre cancelled, Wes-Baby, ABS would scratch Wesley St. James Productions. Nothing personal, of course, but that’s the way the cookie would crumble.”

  “But why would they want to do that?”

  “I think they would do it if, for example, Wesley St. James Productions couldn’t find a starring role for Chef Pierre’s one and only daughter.”

  “Is there really a Chef Pierre? I thought that was just made up.”

  “He’s a Greek,” Fenwick said, “named Gus. But that’s neither here nor there, Wes-Baby, is it?”

  “What does he want?”

  “He wants his little girl to star in a Wesley St. James Production, something decent, Wes, I think I should mention that, and laid, you should excuse the expression, in Chicago.”

  “Chicago! Why Chicago? Nothing’s going on in Chicago but Mayor Daly, and he’s hardly what you could call boffo in the daytime drama department.”

  “That’s what Gus wants, baby. And what Gus wants, Gus gets.”

  “I get your point. I’ll get back to you, Fenwick.”

  “Quickly, Wesley. Say within a week. A nice, new show. Clean, uplifting, prestigious.”

  “Can this chef’s daughter act?”

  “Does that matter, Wesley?”

  “I suppose not,” Wesley St. James replied. The line went dead in his ear. He left almost immediately for New York. He needed time to think. He had been in tighter spots before; he would think his way out of this one, too.

  Chapter Ten

  There is, on the wall by the chief nurse’s station of the Spruce Harbor Medical Center, a large device known as the doctor board. It has a more formal title, of course, something like the Handy-Dandy Executive Model Medical Professional Personnel Locator, but it has been known since its installation as the doctor board.

  The name of each physician admitted to the hospital staff is listed o
n the board in small white letters. So are the names of the registered nurses, the pharmacists, and some other professionals in whose whereabouts at all times the hospital has an interest.

  Behind each name are spaces into which little plugs are fitted as appropriate. There’s a fine of holes marked “IN,” another line marked “OFFICE,” another marked “VACATION” and a final line marked “OTHER.” The final line is followed by a plastic surface on which the listee is required to write his or her whereabouts if she or he is not “IN,” at the “OFFICE,” or on “VACATION.” To maintain a certain nose-to-the-grindstone image insofar as patients, visitors, and other nonprofessionals who can look at the board are concerned, certain euphemisms are used.

  “LABORATORY,” for example, meant that the listee could be found, if necessary, at Stanley K. Warczinski’s Bide- a-While Pool Hall and Saloon, Inc. “DEPT. OF HEALTH" meant that the listee, armed with a weighted club, was chasing a small white ball around the links of the Spruce Harbor Country Club, “BOARD MEETING” meant that the listee was in the office of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Pierce, chief of surgery, slurping martinis and should not be summoned to the practice of medicine for anything less than a major catastrophe, in which the risk of having him apply a Band-Aid might be justified.

  Three days after Spruce Harbor Flying Service’s Flight Six had flown Mr. St. James and Mr. Rhotten to Lost Crystal Lake, there was quite a stir at the doctor board. Doctors and nurses from all over the Spruce Harbor Medical Center came to look at the board (to confirm with their own eyes what rumor had quickly spread throughout the hospital), shake their heads, and shrug their shoulders in complete bafflement.

  It was obviously no error. The same two words were written after the names of both Dr. Pierce and his boon companion, fellow veteran of the Korean War, and partner in chest-cutting, John Francis Xavier McIntyre, M.D.

  It was agreed that it was some new kind of euphemism, a really brilliant stroke, and one which would certainly add to the nose-to-the-Hippocratic-grindstone image they were all so interested in fostering. The trouble was that no one could imagine (despite some really imaginative guessing) what the euphemism really meant, For what was written after the names of Hawkeye and Trapper John was “HOUSE CALL.” No one believed this, of course ... it was tantamount to heresy ... and everyone’s curiosity was aroused. Telephone calls were made to all the watering places, golf courses, pizza stands, and other establishments to which the two healers had ever been known to repair for a brief respite from the pressures of their medical duties. Neither surgeon had been seen recently in any of them. Finally, curiosity overwhelming him, T. Alfred Crumley, Spruce Hospital Medical Center administrator (who secretly hoped that he would catch the medical gentlemen doing something he could really sock them for), telephoned Mrs. Pierce to inquire as to the whereabouts of her mate.

  “All I know, Mr. Crumbum . . .” she began to reply.

  “That’s Crumley, Mrs. Pierce, C, R, U, M, L, E, Y,” he said, spelling it for her.

  “Isn’t that odd? I wonder why my husband always pronounces that Crumbum?”

  “I really would have no idea,” Mr. Crumley said. “As you were saying?”

  “All I know is that Dr. McIntyre came here carrying his medical bag, and my husband got his medical bag, and they got into Little Benjie’s swamp buggy ...”

  “Into what?”

  “Into the swamp buggy,” she repeated. “You know, that truck thing with the big wheels?” *

  (* The swamp buggy, a trucklike object with enormous wheels, had been the nativity gift to the infant B. F. Pierce of Colonel Jean-Pierre de la Chevaux. The details surrounding the incident have been superbly reported in M*A*S*H GOES TO NEW ORLEANS (Pocket Books, New York, 1975).)

  “I recall the vehicle you describe,” he said. “And?”

  “They drove off in it, that’s all I know.”

  “And you have no idea where they were going?”

  “None at all, I’m afraid,” she said. “I did hear them saying something about a smoked ... or was it ‘pickled’? ... ham in the deep woods.”

  “Would you ask them to telephone me immediately, should you hear from them?” Crumley asked.

  “Certainly, Mr. Crumbum . . . Oops! Sorry. Force of habit.”

  Mr. Crumley broke the connection without saying anything else at all.

  What had happened, of course, was that Drs. Pierce and McIntyre were in fact making what no one of their professional associates was willing to believe they would make, a house (more accurately, a log-cabin) call. They drove up Interstate 95 for about forty-five minutes and then left the superhighway through a gate marked NO EGRESS FOR UNOFFICIAL VEHICLES.

  “What do you suppose that sign means?” Hawkeye, who was driving, asked.

  “I have no idea what an egress is,” Trapper said, “but not to worry. My bride packed a lunch. We won’t need any egresses anyway.”

  “Besides,” Hawkeye said, “this is not an unofficial vehicle. This is an official de la Chevaux Petroleum Corporation swamp buggy.”

  They plunged through pine forests and swamps and finally emerged on the far shore of Lake Kelly. The vehicle drove right off the shore into the lake and then, sending enormous plumes of water into the sky from its huge tires, proceeded to sort of swim across.

  “Dr. Smith doesn’t expect us,” Trapper said. “Have you thought about that?”

  “Well, perhaps he’ll be able to squeeze us in,” Hawkeye said. “Now that he’s temporarily given up his obstetrical and surgical practice.”

  “It fits all right with your sense of medical ethics that he practice psychiatry?”

  “He’s not really practicing psychiatry,” Hawkeye said. “It’s more on the order of being a male practical nurse.”

  “My God,” Trapper said. “Smell that!”

  Hawkeye dutifully sniffed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “That’s not the senator’s potato chip operation.”

  “Not unless some miracle has been worked,” Trapper said. “That really makes my mouth water.”

  The smell grew stronger and even more appetizing during the next ten minutes, as the swamp buggy crossed the lake and crawled ashore beside a log cabin. Hawkeye sounded the air horn, which played the first six bars of the Colonel Bogie March, and then shut the swamp buggy’s diesel engine down.

  State Trooper Steven J. Harris emerged from the log cabin.

  “You’re just in time for lunch,” he said.

  “The sign said we couldn’t have any egress,” Trapper replied. “Is that roast egress I smell?”

  “It’s roast venison,” Harris said. “That guy you sent me can really cook. You’re in for a treat.”

  “How is he?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Happy as a pig in mud,” Harris replied. “He seems to really like it out here. He’s been cutting wood. And cooking. And telling me stories.” Harris winked. “You really should hear his stories.”

  “Where is he?” Trapper John asked.

  Harris nodded over his shoulder. Boris, wearing a wool plaid shirt and canvas trousers, over which was a white apron, came out of the cabin carrying a large Dutch oven.

  “How they hanging, Boris?” Trapper called.

  “Hiya, fellas,” Boris said jovially. “Glad to see you.”

  “What’s in the pot?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Venison sauerbraten,” Boris replied. “Steve said he never had any venison sauerbraten.”

  “Neither have I,” Hawkeye said.

  “You’ll like it, even with that peasant’s palate of yours. Karajan’s chef taught me the secret. I was singing Tanhauser at the Vienna State Opera at the time, and since I obviously didn’t have to rehearse to sing that, I had some time on my hands. I naturally put it to good use.” Trooper Harris winked at Hawkeye to show that he understood.

  “You haven’t gotten homesick for Vienna, Boris?” Hawkeye asked.

  “Vienna, like Paris, will just have to suffer along without me for a whil
e,” Boris replied.

  “Well, what about your friends?” Trapper asked. “Won’t they miss you?”

  “The only friends I have,” Boris said, “excepting, of course, Hot Lips, Frenchy, and Hassan, are right here. The others are just parasites, bleeding me dry for their own selfish purposes.”

  “Well, what I’m saying is don’t you think Hot Lips, Hassan, and Frenchy will worry about you?”

  “Of course they will,” Boris said. “They are probably beside themselves with concern and worry. But they’ll just have to make the best of it. In due time, I shall write and explain to them why I found it necessary to temporarily turn my back on fame and fortune and to spend some time in the deep woods. They’ll understand. I haven’t written so far, because I know the moment they know where I am, they will rush here and beg me to return to my former life.”

  “You don’t miss the singing?” Hawkeye asked.

  “I haven’t stopped singing,” Boris said. “I could never do that. I sing for an hour every morning, just as the sun comes up.”

  “You really ought to be here for that, Doctor,” Trooper Harris said. “It’s really something.”

  “You like his singing, do you, Steve?”

  “Not only me,” Harris said. “This morning we had two elk, a moose, and two gray wolves. It was like a choir, almost.”

  “And no one,” Boris said, significantly, “coughed, rattled his program, or whispered to anyone else.”

  “Sing along with Boris, huh?” Trapper said.

  “You could put it that way,” Boris said. “But if you were wise, Trapper, you wouldn’t.”

  “Where’d you get the venison this time of year?”

  “I was out,” Boris said, innocently, “chopping wood for the stove. I was attacked by this vicious animal and forced to defend myself.”

  “And we didn’t want it to go to waste, of course,” Trooper Harris said.