Groucho Being Groucho

Butterfly said:
Funny!

You know I guess I just realized that when he was in MASH, Alan Alda was channeling Groucho! Mannerisms, facial expressions, intonations, the whole bit. And HE was funny at it, too!
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Alda did indeed channel Groucho - it seems like almost every episode has him doing the voice and the eyebrow wiggle. With MASH's excellent script I often wonder how much of it was just improv ...
 
SifuPhil said:
Alda did indeed channel Groucho - it seems like almost every episode has him doing the voice and the eyebrow wiggle. With MASH's excellent script I often wonder how much of it was just improv ...
Click to expand...

I imagine a good bit of it was -- MASH is one show that will never grow old for me. I was working in Army HQ in Heidelberg during many of those years that MASH was on, and so much of what happened on the program resonated with us. We weren't under attack, or anything, of course, but just the general Army snafus -- like once sending me 16 paper cutters when I had requisitioned 16 cases of paper. Who needs 16 paper cutters, anyway??? So I ended up with 16 paper cutters and no paper to cut! I never could get them to take back the paper cutters (because according to them, I didn't HAVE 16 paper cutters, I had 16 cases of paper) so I just had somebody shove them in the back of a storage closet. THEN, when I tried to get the paper we needed, they gave me a lot of flak about being over my limit of paper!! I ended up having to scrounge paper from wherever I could, a la "wanna trade some paper for a bright new Army paper cutter?" "Well, we'll take two paper cutters off your hands for half a case of paper if you'll take half a case typewriter ribbons for typewriters we don't have off our hands." Like stepping through the looking glass.
 
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