Back in September, I reported that Alan Alda would be receiving a special Founders Award from the International Emmy Awards. The awards ceremony was held last night. Here’s an excerpt from a CBS News article about the ceremony that includes a quote from Alda:
At the end of the ceremony, [Ryan] Murphy returned to the stage to give the special awards to [Norman] Lear and Alda. In accepting his award, Alda, who played the wise-cracking, anti-authoritarian Army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, said Lear opened the door for a show like “M*A*S*H because on “All in the Family” he showed that “now we could be funny about things that were serious.”
Alda, the only person ever to win U.S. Emmys for acting, writing and directing in the same series, said “M*A*S*H owed a special debt to the Korean War veterans who shared their personal stories.
“These are the people who really lived through the stories we told decades later – the men and women in those hospital tents who went through the cold of winter and the blood and the pain, the loneliness, and seeing their patients die, some of who were only a couple of years away from being children,” Alda said.
Potter (from If There’s a Will there’s a War): “Way to Go Pierce!”