Monday M*A*S*H Discussions offers fans the opportunity to offer their opinions on a wide variety of topics relating to M*A*S*H. Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section. My hope is these discussion posts will continue to elicit comments in the weeks and months after they’re initially published. Have a suggestion about something you think might be worth discussing? Let me know and maybe it will become my next Monday M*A*S*H Discussion topic.
Today’s topic is: Do you have any M*A*S*H items on display?
Is Your M*A*S*H Collection on Display?
Five months ago, we discussed our collections of M*A*S*H memorabilia. Today, as a follow-up discussion, I’m curious to know if anyone has any M*A*S*H items on display in their house or their office or anywhere, really. I shared my own collection of M*A*S*H memorabilia in April. One of my favorite items is a CBS poster commemorating the series finale. I purchased it on eBay over a decade ago. It arrived in its original shipping tube with a CBS sticker on it. After looking at it once, I put it back in its cardboard tube where it stayed until late last year when I finally decided to have it framed.
It cost several hundred dollars to have the poster professionally framed. That’s why I put off having it framed for so long. Rather than buy a cheap plastic frame and risk damaging the poster, I waited until I could afford a nice frame. I wish I had waited another few months because a family member received a 60% off coupon that would’ve saved me a lot of money. But the poster looks very nice in its poster, which is hanging above the couch in my family room.
In addition to the poster, I have a black-and-white CBS press photograph hanging in my office in a cheap frame. And a black-and-white CBS press photograph from AfterMASH. Also, I bought a frame to display some of my M*A*S*H trading cards, although I haven’t had a chance to set it up yet.
Let’s Discuss
Am I the only M*A*S*H fan with items on display in my house? Or do you have a poster hanging on your wall or an action figure sitting on a shelf? If not, are there any items you wish you had on display for all to see?
Hit the comments with your thoughts.
Most of my M*A*S*H stuff I have put away or at least out of direct display. The only real exceptions I can think of are a M*A*S*H vodka dispenser box and sealed VHS copies of the movie and the first season, which I have as part of a menagerie of quirky things I’ve collected over the years. On top of the dispenser box is a small (somewhat battered) toy M*A*S*H chopper, and to the left of all that is a vintage ashtray that isn’t technically M*A*S*H, but still related: it says “Get well soon, your doctor just got drafted,” and has a caricature of an army doctor. No date but probably Vietnam-era, and since it’s lying flat, underneath it I put an early-1950’s “Pocket Guide to Korea,” which again, isn’t technically M*A*S*H but still fits.
I have something similar on my wall, I’m pretty sure I showed you guys before, I got from a memorabilia store – a mounted plague, the left side is an 8×10 glossy of the cast circa Season 8 out in front of the Swamp, the upper right corner is a card detailing the show’s broadcast history, timeslots, and cast, and the bottom right corner is a small photo of Alan, Wayne, and Loretta leaning over the hood of a jeep.
I have 2 albums with all of my autographs organized with the story of the acquisition of each one – all of the regulars of M*A*S*H and AfterMASH. I have a poster which most of the cast signed – McLean wasn’t alive and Stiers doesn’t sign, but everyone else did – framed and on the wall.
Most of my pieces are stored in boxes (…sadly…). But I do very proudly have hanged up in my living room a framed original painting of a cougar head (since a cougar was my high school mascot). And I enjoy asking people if they can make out the signature of the artist at the bottom corner. It’s “Loretta Swit”! (Got that on eBay at a stunningly low price just a few years ago, along with a few others of her paintings. Honestly, I paid more for -shipping- than I did on the actual framed paintings! For autographs alone, they were a bargain!)
Nothing on display, but I have the first three seasons on DVD, a copy of _The Complete Book of MASH_ and a Fr. Mulcahy action figure. I also used to have a set of MASH dog tags that they sold back in the early 80s. I may still have them somewhere but I don’t know where.
Not sure if this would be considered memorabilia, but I have Mixed Blessings, which was Mr. William Christopher’s autobiography that my parents bought me last Christmas, as well as a M*A*S*H* fanfiction I wrote and printed this year about what happens when Father Mulcahy FINALLY falls in love with an nun that he had helped when she was a little girl and he had just became a priest. I wrote it before I watched “Nurse Doctor”, and I ship him with Gail Harris now.
Someday, I’ll print out from the internet a copy of a picture of Father Mulcahy that Bill Christopher autographed , as well as one of John Dye, who played Andrew, the kindhearted and handsome angel of death on “Touched by An Angel” and both of those will be hanging on my bulletin board along with my autographed picture of Russell Johnson, who played the professor on Gilligan’s Island.
Yep, I’m just an eighteen-year-old girl who watches old tv shows and has to print off autographed pictures from the internet because all the cute actors she has crushes on are dead now. Where are all the cute, gentlemanly actors these days?