‘M*A*S*H’: Alan Alda auctions boots, dog tags from the show

DALLAS –

The combat boots and dog tags Alan Alda wore to portray the wisecracking surgeon Hawkeye on the beloved television series “M*A*S*H” meant so much to him that when the show ended 40 years ago, he kept them.

But he’s now ready to let go of the pieces, in service of another passion: his center dedicated to helping scientists and doctors communicate better. Heritage Auctions is offering the worn boots and military identification tags July 28 in Dallas.

Alda, 87, said he wore the boots and dog tags during the show’s 11-season run that centered on a Korean War medical unit. Alda’s character, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, was a talented surgeon who helped relieve the stress of working in a war zone with quick jokes and jokes. When the show ended in 1983 with an episode written and directed by Alda, it drew the largest American audience for any television show in history.

The boots and dog tags, which he got from the costume department, “impressed me every day we shot the show,” said Alda, who won five Emmys for his work on the sitcom.

During his long career, Alda has also been a writer and filmmaker and has worked on Broadway and starred in films. He currently hosts a podcast about communication called ‘Clear+Vivid’.

“There’s an old belief among actors that when you put on the character’s shoes it’s easier to believe you’re the character and I think the boots had that effect on me,” Alda said.

After receiving the dog tags, Alda realized that they did not bear his character’s name, but the names of two men he thought were probably real soldiers.

“I saw those names every day,” he said. “It was an interesting experience putting them on. I wasn’t dealing with props. I was dealing with something that connected me with real people.”

The dog tags included the names of Hersie Davenport and Morriss D. Levine. An investigation by the auction house revealed that both men were discharged from the United States Army in 1945. According to the Heritage Auctions research, Davenport died in 1970. Levine, whose first name was misspelled on the dog tag with an extra “s,” died in 1973.

Joshua Benesh, Heritage’s chief strategy officer, said the boots and dog tags have “incredible” provenance since they’ve been with Alda since the end of the series.

“It was pretty exciting that what he chose to keep was something that endured him episode after episode, season after season, throughout the run of ‘M*A*S*H,'” Benesh said.

Alda said he kept both items on a shelf in his office and then put them in a closet. It seemed logical to him to auction them off after all these decades. “I saw this as an opportunity to put them back to work,” he said.

The money raised from the auction will go to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York, a center he helped start to help scientists and doctors communicate better through improvisational exercises and communication strategies .

While hosting the long-running PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers,” Alda realized how much his skills as an actor and improviser prepared him for interactions with scientists. The essence of improvisation, he said, is being connected to the person you’re talking to.

Alda, who announced in 2018 that he had Parkinson’s disease, said he uses some of the same acting skills to cope with the effects of the disease. The disease, he said, is “kind of like improvisation: it gives you something you didn’t expect.” But, he said, “if you work at it, you’ll get somewhere.”

“It’s an opportunity. I solve a lot of puzzles and a lot of problems just by putting on my shirt and stuff that I normally wouldn’t have to deal with,” said Alda. “But if I think of it as a game and see how I can win it this time, it’s more interesting.”