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Gary Burghoff: M*A*S*H
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During the M*A*S*H frenzy Burghoff, who is an accomplished jazz drummer, was booked into Vegas. The engagement was a disaster. Today if you are part of a hit series you're apt to get a spin off into your own time spot. Back then booking agents viewed Vegas as a natural extension for a TV series star. Most of the time the reasoning proved faulty.
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Burghoff received Emmy nominations for seven of his eight years on M*A*S*H. In 1977 he won the Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Unfortunately, it was the one year he didn't attend the awards ceremony...he was fishing. The presenter was M*A*S*H star Alan Alda, who said he was glad Burghoff could not appear because "it gives me an opportunity to tell the world what a wonderful, gifted and outstanding person Gary Burghoff is -- something he, of course, would not say about himself."
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Burghoff turned down other offers that followed. Unfortunately, leaving M*A*S*H couldn’t save his marriage. In the late 1970s, Burghoff moved back to Connecticut, his boyhood home, and began life as a single parent of his 4-year-old daughter.
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An interesting detail about Burghoff is that his left hand is withered and misshapen with the fingers being very short - no cause is known about it though it is presumed to be a birth defect. In M*A*S*H he is often seen carrying a clipboard or other object in order to conceal the defect.
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