Smittian said:
Neil Rattigan said:
I've read from a few sources where Larry Linville and Gary Burghoff were good friends off camera.
And Executive Producer Gene Reynolds had described Linville as kind and friendly. Alan Alda also remembered Linville fondly after his death.
That can't be true, because Rico says it's not, and we all know he's the authority on the subject. Remember, he once interviewed Nurse Kellye! There's no way Alda could have remembered him fondly AND pushed for his firing.
"and that's the bottom line.............because Stone Cold RicoGregg said so!"
Nice sarcastic touch, lol. Also nice beating of a dead horse, as far as I'm concerned.
Thanks though, for thinking of me. I'm flattered.
For what I hope is the last time, I'll comment. MASH as a production is dead and buried. I hope this topic soon reaches that status.
1) If you're going to use tired old WWE lines to insult me, you might try a catchphrase from the Undertaker or Kane. That would actually be clever. Much like the two wrestlers themselves (Mark Callaway and Glen Jacobs, respectively) are portrayed, you're trying to make me into some kind of monster that I'm not.
2) I never claimed to be an authority on MASH or any other topic. All I was doing was quoting a friend, a retired and well-known L.A. radio personality, who was a personal friend of Larry Linville. He told me what Mr. Linville had told him, and passed this information on to me only after Larry Linville's passing. I was only trying to share that information.
3) Amongst the information Mr. Linville shared with my friend was the fact that the big guardian angel in his corner was producer Larry Gelbart. When Gelbart left to start some projects of his own, Mr. Linville knew the end was near.
4) The interview I did with Kellye Nakahara in 1980 was admittedly a softball interview for a now-defunct entertainment magazine. No questions in the "politics of the set" category was asked. Considering the circumstances, if I had done that, the interview would have been over "quicker than a hiccup", to use another wrestling catchphrase.
5) As I mentioned in both an earlier thread, and THIS ONE, Mr. Linville mentioned to my friend that he and Alda did not get along. That doesn't mean that they were enemies. For five years, they worked together. How many times in one's life does someone meet somebody they don't like, but they go to class together, cover for each other when an authority figure is lurking nearby, perhaps play on the same teams together, work together, get the idea? It's really not a difficult concept.
6) Praise from others on Mr. Linville's work was in all probability sincere. Again, just because you and someone else are not getting along doesn't mean that you don't notice their talents and strong points. There have been people in radio that I couldn't stand, but I knew they were good, and if I had been asked about them for quotation purposes, I would have praised them.
7) Bringing Ms. Nakahara into this once again, I did not interview "Nurse Kellye". I interviewed Kellye Nakahara. There's a difference. I interviewed the actress, not the character. It's utterly amazing to me that there are adult people that can not differentiate between the two. When I did interview her, as an addendum, and not a direct answer to a previous question, she mentioned that Larry Linville was well-liked and respected on the set by the cast and crew as a whole. I still have both the cassette tape and my notes from that interview.
8.) My retired friend told me that Larry Linville was a very nice guy, and he knew him. I didn't. I imagine that everyone who's commented in one way or another didn't know him either. So why are people commenting like they did? At least I admitted both in this thread and the aforementioned earlier one that I never met him, and didn't know him. Isn't honesty something we've all been screaming for, especially within the last eight years?
To (finally) end this post with another overused wrestling catchphrase, this topic needs to Rest In Peace. Unless there's anything else.
