Because of something I posted the other day, I received a few messages from people thinking I'd said the late McLean Stevenson was an awful person. That sure wasn't how I felt the few times I encountered him. I didn't like my very brief stint working on The McLean Stevenson Show for reasons explained here…but those problems had little to do with Mr. Stevenson. I didn't even meet him during that period.
I actually met him a couple of years before that, back when he was still Henry Blaking it on M*A*S*H. As I've mentioned here, I used to occasionally wander the halls of NBC Burbank. Sometimes, I had a legit reason to be there; sometimes, I snuck in. That's impossible these days at any studio but back then — we're talking 1970-1976 here or maybe a bit later — it was not difficult. You just had to act like you had a reason to be there and knew where you were going. If you did, you could get in to watch them tape Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In or one of Bob Hope's specials. I'd visit The Dean Martin Show and watch people who were not Dean Martin rehearse — because he didn't do that — or I'd see The Flip Wilson Show being assembled. My favorite stop was Stage 1 where they did The Tonight Show. I'd try to get there around 2:00 when the band rehearsed and I cannot tell you how wonderful that band sounded in person. And of course, the best moment was later in the afternoon when they rolled tape and Johnny made his entrance.
One day, I was over there on actual business and I went by to hear the band. On my way out, I paused in the corridor outside where the big nine-cubicle set for Hollywood Squares was sitting, apparently undergoing repair work. A man walked by and said to me, "They're reinforcing the upper tier for when Orson Welles is on the show." The man who said this to me was McLean Stevenson, who was guest-hosting for Mr. Carson that evening. I think he thought I was someone he knew but anyway, we got to talking and I told him I was going to watch that evening. To my surprise, he said, "You want a preview of my monologue?" I said sure and he said, "Come on."
As he led me into Stage 1, where the band was just leaving from its rehearsal, he said, "I'm not sure about this bit I've got for this evening. Tell me if you think this is funny." I took a seat in the audience, he stepped over to Johnny's monologue position — a little star embedded in the floor — and did his routine just for me. I don't remember much about it except that he said something about how if his jokes didn't work, you'd never see his face again on the show. He followed this with a pretty awful joke, reacted like the audience had just groaned, and then he reached behind himself, pulled a paper bag out of his waistband and put it over his head. He did the rest of the monologue that way, finally peeking out at the end for some reason I don't recall. "You think that's funny?" he asked me. I did and I told him so…and that night on the show, it went over pretty well. But that was about the extent of our conversation. I was not yet working in the TV business and felt a little shy about making anything resembling a suggestion.
Around 1986, I spent a month I wish I could get back as a story editor on MacGyver. Now that I think of it, instead of making the joke about hating to work on The McLean Stevenson Show, I should have substituted MacGyver. Some day, I'll tell you why. Anyway, one day in the Paramount commissary, I found myself in the cafeteria line next to McLean and I reminded him about our Tonight Show moment — which he vaguely remembered — and told him I'd written on his first sitcom — which he preferred to forget but had to talk with me about. We wound up sharing a table for a very long lunch, discussing what went wrong with that show from his perspective and mine.
That was the first show he did after leaving M*A*S*H in what some industry onlookers have suggested was one of the stupidest career moves in the history of television. He didn't see it that way. To him, it was more a matter of taking a very promising gamble that didn't work out…and getting out of a work situation where he wasn't very happy.
I don't want to pretend I'm recalling his exact words with reasonable accuracy so I'll just summarize what I remember him telling me. He wasn't happy on M*A*S*H. Unlike the other members of the initial cast, it was not his first series. He'd played supporting roles before and was looking to move up to leads. Originally, he'd auditioned for…I don't recall if it was Hawkeye or Trapper but it was one of those. Offered the supporting role of Henry Blake instead, his instincts told him to decline but his agents urged him to take it and the producers assured him that if the pilot became a series, Henry Blake would be more than a supporting role. When the show did become a series, Henry Blake did not become more than a supporting role…and often when he did get some great scenes, they'd wind up being cut. (A few years later, I repeated all this to Larry Gelbart, who was the guy in charge when Stevenson was on M*A*S*H. Gelbart said it was an accurate account: "When an episode runs three minutes over, you have to look for the easiest place to cut three minutes. The easiest place was usually Mac because he was rarely involved in the main storyline.")
Further troubles erupted between Stevenson and the business folks at Twentieth-Century Fox, which produced the series. He found himself arguing over a dilapidated dressing room, over a lack of respect (he felt) for the cast's time and comfort, and other matters of that sort. One morning when he showed up at the correct early-morn time on location, no one else was there, there were no toilet facilities, there was no coffee, etc. He began complaining and began hating the company for which he worked — though never, he was quick to note, the co-stars or creative folks. Then there was the matter of money. It is customary on a hit show for the cast to renegotiate its deal upwards and indeed, Alan Alda and most of the others did. McLean said that when he asked for the same percentage increases, he was refused and it was made clear to him that they didn't think he had much to do with the show's success at all. Gelbart also confirmed most of this to me.
During this period, Mr. Stevenson was exploring other avenues. He guested amusingly on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and was soon guest-hosting. Turned out, he was pretty good at it. (That was his summation but also mine.) At that point, as I knew from other sources, there was a very strong possibility that Mr. Carson would be stepping down. He didn't, of course, but he was making noises like he would and NBC was quietly discussing replacements. McLean Stevenson was one of those under serious consideration.
Then NBC offered him a deal that paid him many times what M*A*S*H would have paid him over the next few years and included the possibility of The Tonight Show. If he'd known how much longer M*A*S*H and Carson would be on the air, he might have elected to stay put…but eight more years for M*A*S*H and seventeen more for Johnny seemed pretty darned inconceivable at the time. If he took the peacock's offer, he could escape a production company he hated and which seemed to not be too fond of him. He could make a lot more money, at least for the foreseeable future…and he could see if it was possible for him to ascend to leads and starring roles.
The NBC contract might have segued into The Tonight Show and if it had, then leaving M*A*S*H would have seemed like canny career management. It might also have been seen as such if it led to a hit TV series of his own…which it didn't but at least on that first one, that did not seem to me to be because of any failing on his part. I can't say why his subsequent shows like Hello, Larry and In the Beginning didn't click…though I will note that both of those were series that were developed without him and that in both cases, he stepped into the leads at the last minute to try and save the proceedings. That rarely bodes well for a program.
I have fond feelings for McLean Stevenson for two reasons. One is that in our brief encounters, he seemed like a helluva nice guy. That doesn't necessarily mean he always was. I know some pretty awful human beings who can be civil and charming for whole hours at a time. But it's hard to not judge someone by your personal experiences.
And secondly, there's this: Show business is a field that requires taking the occasional gamble. It's hard to gain without a risk…and when a risk doesn't pay off, there are always plenty of folks around to grin and say, "I knew that would never work." If they gave Oscars for Monday Morning Quarterbacking, I know folks who'd have more than Meryl Streep does. If Johnny Carson had flopped on The Tonight Show, there are those who would have said, "I knew he should never have left that game show of his." Or if The Simpsons had failed, half the people in TV I know would have said, "Why didn't they ask me? I could have told them cartoons in prime-time never work!" Matter of fact — and I think I told this story here once before — around the time the M*A*S*H pilot was made, I heard a top TV executive say that "…trying to turn that movie into a weekly situation comedy is the stupidest, most sure-to-fail idea I've ever heard."
I could forgive the last guy. That was just a bad prediction but at least he made it before the results were in. Then again, if you listed every single new TV series that was about to debut and sight-unseen predicted its failure, you'd wind up with a not-unimpressive batting average, probably no worse than industry analysts who went show-by-show, studied the scripts and pilots and made considered projections. I'm not faulting bad predictions; just the saying of "I told you so" when you didn't tell us so. I wince when I see people mocking McLean Stevenson for departing the cast of M*A*S*H after its third season. He was a very talented performer and I've always thought he deserved better.
