M*A*S*H - The Strange Story Of Radar's Teddy Bear & What Happened To It
From 1972 to 1983, "M*A*S*H" featured an eclectic cast of characters, including Alan Alda's Benjamin "Hawkeye" Pierce, Loretta Swit's Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, and Gary Burghoff's Walter "Radar" O'Reilly. Yes, nicknames were big at the CBS medical dramedy's 4077th surgical unit, but one "character" who remained nameless was Radar's teddy bear.
First appearing in the Season 1 episode "I Hate a Mystery," the bear, which was added to the show after an actor found it on the set, is discovered under Radar's bed during a room search by Colonel Blake (McLean Stevenson). The stuffed bear made cameos throughout the series as a comforting security blanket for Radar, but was never given a moniker. While Burghoff and the nameless bear left "M*A*S*H" after seven seasons, a similar bear is added to a time capsule in the series' penultimate episode, "As Time Goes By." In a poignant scene, Hawkeye famously holds up the substitute bear and says, "This is my contribution. Radar left me this. Let it stand for all the soldiers who came over here as boys and left as men."
Fast forward several decades, and Burghoff revealed that the missing prop had been in the possession of a set designer. In 2007, the actor told The Orlando Sentinel, "Actually, it disappeared for 30 years and then turned up at an auction two years ago. A medical student bought it for $11,500. He was kind enough to sell it back to me." In 2014, Oak Auctions posted a listing for the original "M*A*S*H" teddy bear. An accompanying handwritten note penned by Burghoff gave new details about the toy, including the fact that the actor had secretly nicknamed it "Tiger."
M*A*S*H's showrunner later admitted the teddy bear go too much screentime
More than 50 years after that very first teddy bear appearance, "M*A*S*H" fans continue to talk about the significance of the stuffed animal in the Korean War-set series. Head writer and co-creator Larry Gelbart even responded to questions about the bear in a "M*A*S*H" discussion group in 2000. But his feelings about the bear weren't what you might think.
In a post to the altv.tv.mash group, Gelbart wrote, "I have to confess that while I thought giving Radar a teddy bear as a form of security blanket, I think we went too far with it and it got awfully coy ... When we allowed him to go public with it to everyone in the camp, I think we went too far, the device becoming far too coy." In another post, Gelbert referred to Radar's "immature need for his security bear."
But Gary Burghoff embraced his character's childlike side — and he claimed Gelbart did, too. In response to a question on TV comedy writer Ken Levine's blog, Burghoff praised Gelbert for helping him mold company clerk Radar into a "more innocent, naive character" in contrast to the rest of the show's cast. Burghoff also noted that Gelbert once said Radar was his favorite to write for because the others, many of them doctors and medical personnel, were too intellectual, saying, "I think he liked the fact that the character lacked guile and he could write from his own honest 'child's-self' as opposed to having to create 'clever' intellectual hyperbole."