JamesG
07-06-2023, 06:53 PM
Alan Alda Kept his Boots and Dog Tags from "M*A*S*H" for 40 Years.
Now he'll Auction Them Off
by Jamie Stengle
July 5, 2023
The combat boots and dog tags that Alan Alda wore to portray the wisecracking surgeon Hawkeye on the beloved television series “M-A-S-H” meant so much to him that when the show ended 40 years ago, he kept them.
But he’s now ready to let the pieces go, in service of another passion: his center dedicated to helping scientists and doctors communicate better. Heritage Auctions is offering up the worn boots and military identification tags on July 28 in Dallas.
Alda said he wore the boots and dog tags for the 11-season run of the show centering on a Korean War medical unit. When the show ended in 1983 with an episode written and directed by Alda, it attracted the largest U.S. audience for any TV show in history.
The boots and dog tags, given to him by the costume department, “made an impression on me every day that we shot the show,” said Alda, who won five Emmys for his work on the sitcom.
After receiving the dog tags, Alda realized that they didn’t carry his character’s name but the names of two men he thought had likely been real soldiers.
“I saw those names every day,” he said. “It was an interesting experience to put them on. I wasn’t dealing with props. I was dealing with something that put me in touch with real people.”
The dog tags carried the names of Hersie Davenport and Morriss D. Levine. Research conducted by the auction house revealed that both men were discharged from the Army in 1945. According to Heritage Auctions’ research, Davenport died in 1970. Levine, whose first name was misspelled on the dog tag with an extra ‘s,’ died in 1973.
Alda said that he kept both items on a shelf in his office, and then stowed in a closet. Auctioning them off after all of these decades made sense to him. “I saw this as a chance to put them to work again,” he said.
The money raised from the auction will go to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York, a center he helped start to help scientists and doctors communicate better by applying improvisational exercises and communication strategies.
https://apnews.com/article/mash-tv-auction-alan-alda-a68b956e3311f59ae8be516b927ce881?taid=64a5f84d5e5078000177810c&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter
Now he'll Auction Them Off
by Jamie Stengle
July 5, 2023
The combat boots and dog tags that Alan Alda wore to portray the wisecracking surgeon Hawkeye on the beloved television series “M-A-S-H” meant so much to him that when the show ended 40 years ago, he kept them.
But he’s now ready to let the pieces go, in service of another passion: his center dedicated to helping scientists and doctors communicate better. Heritage Auctions is offering up the worn boots and military identification tags on July 28 in Dallas.
Alda said he wore the boots and dog tags for the 11-season run of the show centering on a Korean War medical unit. When the show ended in 1983 with an episode written and directed by Alda, it attracted the largest U.S. audience for any TV show in history.
The boots and dog tags, given to him by the costume department, “made an impression on me every day that we shot the show,” said Alda, who won five Emmys for his work on the sitcom.
After receiving the dog tags, Alda realized that they didn’t carry his character’s name but the names of two men he thought had likely been real soldiers.
“I saw those names every day,” he said. “It was an interesting experience to put them on. I wasn’t dealing with props. I was dealing with something that put me in touch with real people.”
The dog tags carried the names of Hersie Davenport and Morriss D. Levine. Research conducted by the auction house revealed that both men were discharged from the Army in 1945. According to Heritage Auctions’ research, Davenport died in 1970. Levine, whose first name was misspelled on the dog tag with an extra ‘s,’ died in 1973.
Alda said that he kept both items on a shelf in his office, and then stowed in a closet. Auctioning them off after all of these decades made sense to him. “I saw this as a chance to put them to work again,” he said.
The money raised from the auction will go to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York, a center he helped start to help scientists and doctors communicate better by applying improvisational exercises and communication strategies.
https://apnews.com/article/mash-tv-auction-alan-alda-a68b956e3311f59ae8be516b927ce881?taid=64a5f84d5e5078000177810c&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter