So ridiculous that Alan Alda and the rest of the cast couldn't trade in their 1970s hairstyles to make it even remotely believable that this was set during the 1950s Korean War. This is one of the main reasons I could never get into this show, brilliant though the writing was.
Loretta Switt was the most unbelievable.
Ha! That's true. I watched some of my DVDs recently and never thought of this. I did wonder why Margaret Houlihan, an E.R. nurse, sported such long nails and a great manicure in a war zone! I do think her nails were pretty, just unlikely for a woman in her position.
Sometimes you just have to ignore the hairstyles. I guess some actors aren't concerned with realism. The actors on Happy Days had seventies hair and they were playing characters who lived in the crewcut fifties.
I watched Hogan's Heroes for a long time and never noticed (until I read it) that the actresses always wore sixties hairstyles and clothes. I was watching one episode in particular and I had to laugh. The guest character (part of the French underground) had long flowing hair, a miniskirt and high heel boots. I don't recall seeing Bette Davis in any of her forties flicks dressing like that!
Wow, you are so right.
I only remember watching reruns of this show late at night and I was too young to think of that at the time.
I have thought that about old westerns as well.
I think maybe it was The Long Riders that made me realize that that the1960s high hair and big makeup wasn't right in a lot of others
Yes, anachronistic hair, speech, and most of all the anachronistic late 1960s-1970s attitude compromised the show's quality. Also, the Klinger slapstick was way overdone and got worse as the seasons progressed, along with the sanctimonious injection of Alda's and Farrell's ideology into the show. Finally, dragging a three-year war out for eleven years just got tiresome. In the long run, Wayne Rogers, from before it all became excruciatingly self-important, and the great character actor Harry Morgan, in the later seasons, were the best things about the show.
shareYeah but the one where he dressed as Statue of Liberty for General MacArthurs visit was one of the funniest moments in television history.
shareMASH was trying to cash in on Milton Berle (Uncle Miltie) and NBC's troop sketch show Laugh In with Klinger. That sort of humor sharply fell out of favor by the mid-1970's. The good guy who does nothing wrong and the bad guy who does everything wrong type writing unfortunately did not fall out of favor before the show ended. It took Hill Street Blues and St Elsewhere to instill some realism in television that was sorely missing.
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Later Happy Days got the same way. Early on at least they tried to look 50s.
This is actually a common problem in film and tv when it comes to historical films, and has been a problem ever since the era of Silent Film. See, often the actors don't want to give up their current-day hairstyles, the production will do anything to cut the budget, and they go by the mantra, "Whatever. The audience is too stupid to know the difference anyway." The thing is, not everyone who watches tv is stupid, and there are people out there who study historical costume and hair. Learning what to watch out for kinda breaks the illusion that this show takes place in the 1950s. Most people excuse it because MASH was a very well-written show with memorable characters, writing, and stories.
shareI'll give this show a little more leeway on this front than some others, because the characters were all living in tents and didn't seem to have a barber in the camp. So men who lived in those circumstances might well have had hair that was longer than fashionable for the early 1950s, and the women's hair might have been as scraggly as Hot Lips' generally was.
That said, there *really* ought to have been times when someone had leave, and came back from Tokyo or Seoul with a proper 1950s haircut! Hot Lips should have looked like this for a few days, before her hair wilted again.
https://i.pinimg.com/474x/c9/a6/0f/c9a60fabe9c7261cac9ec5027d88ede8--s-hair-old-style.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e2/26/db/e226db00a6672d562bbbd0e41a02b8f2.jpg