Scriptwriter Dan Wilcox died earlier this month (February 14) at the age of 82. Wilcox and his writing partner Thad Mumford joined M*A*S*H during Season 8 as executive story editors and writers. The pair wrote or co-wrote 15 episodes, starting with “Are You Now, Margaret?” in 1979 and ending with “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” in 1983. Other episodes the Mumford-Wilcox team wrote or co-wrote include “Goodbye, Cruel World,” “A War for All Seasons,” “Wheelers and Dealers,” “Bombshells,” and “As Time Goes By.”
The two also wrote the teleplay for “Nurse Doctor” with Sy Rosen, based on a story from Sy Rosen. They co-wrote the teleplay for “Lend a Hand” alongside Alan Alda and Jim Mulligan and Johjn Rappaport, based on a story by Alan Alda and Burt Metcalfe. And along with Burt Metcalfe, the two provided the story for “Death Takes a Holiday,” with Mike Farrell, John Rappaport, and Dennis Koenig writing the teleplay.
Mumford and Wilcox became producers on M*A*S*H during Season 10 and served in that capacity until the show ended.
Dan Wilcox got his start in television writing for Sesame Street in 1969, which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming in 1970 alongside a number of other Sesame Street writers. Wilcox first met Thad Mumford in 1971, when Mumford was working on The Electric Company, which like Sesame Street was produced by the Children’s Television Workshop.
In 1974, the two wrote their first script together for an ABC sitcom called That’s My Mama. Wilcox was part of the writing staff for syndicated late-night comedy America 2-Night in 1978, where he earned a Primetime Emmy nomination. He and Mumford became regular writing partners around that time, writing for shows like The Waverly Wonders, Angie, and Alice. They also co-wrote the fifth installment of Roots: The Next Generation.
Wilcox was nominated for an Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy in 1981 for “Death Takes a Holiday.” He was later nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series for M*A*S*H in 1982 and 1983 alongside several other producers. In 1980, Mumford and Wilcox won a WGA Award for “Are You Now, Margaret?” The pair were later nominated in 1981, 1982, and 1984.
Following the end of M*A*S*H, Wilcox continued writing with Mumford, writing an episode of Bay City Blues in 1983 and two episodes of The Duck Factory in 1984. The two then went their separate ways. Wilcox served as a producer on Newhart from 1984 to 1986. With Allan Burns and Shelley Zellman, Wilcox created a short-lived sitcom called FM that ran for 13 episodes on NBC from August 1989 to June 1990. He continued writing throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, penning episodes of Growing Pains (which he also produced from 1991 to 1992), Murder, She Wrote, The Jeff Foxwrothy Show, Cosby, and Becker.
According to his Internet Movie Database page, Wilcox’s last credited work in TV were segments of Play with Me Sesame in 2002 and 2004.
In 2014, Dan Wilcox and many other members of the M*A*S*H cast and crew were interviewed for a proposed documentary. Parts of these interviews later aired in 2015 on MeTV as part of a special three-hour “MeTV Remembers the M*A*S*H Finale” presentation. “It was sad,” Wilcox recalled of the series finale. “It was sad just walking into the room. So I remember being very sad. Proud of what was on the screen. But saying goodbye to something I loved. I still miss that show. I came to Hollywood to be a prostitute. To prostitute my talent. And that show showed me that I could still do it for love. And I tried never to lose that again, to make sure I didn’t work on something unless I had a reason I wanted to do it.”
(The proposed documentary finally aired earlier this year as “M*A*S*H: The Comedy That Changed Television,” but without any interviews with Dan Wilcox or other writers from M*A*S*H.)
In April 2016, Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford sat down for solo and joint interviews for the the Archive of American Television (now known as The Interviews: An Oral History of Television). Wilcox’s solo interview can be found here. Here’s a portion of their joint interview in which they discuss meeting, writing for That’s My Mama, and the controversy over credit for their episode of Roots: The Next Generation in 1979:
In February 2017, Wilcox received the 2017 Morgan Cox Award from the Writers Guild of America West. When Thad Mumford died in September 2018, Wilcox shared memories of his friend with Variety.
Obituaries for Dan Wilcox can be found at Deadline Hollywood and The Hollywood Reporter.
The partnership between Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford is noteworthy, as they went on to write scripts together for various television shows. Their first collaboration on the ABC sitcom That’s My Mama in 1974 marked the beginning of a fruitful writing partnership soccer skills world cup. It’s impressive to see their versatility as writers, transitioning from children’s programming to sitcoms and other genres.