As Corporal—later Sergeant—Maxwell Q. Klinger on M*A*S*H, Jamie Farr brought laughter to millions and fame to the Toledo Mud Hens as he incorporated his hometown of Toledo, Ohio into the Klinger character.
On his web site www.jamiefarr.com, Farr explains the nexus between actor and character: “Klinger’s back story was, in part, my back story. I came from Toledo. So, too, did Klinger. I never forgot some of my old neighborhood haunts, like Packo’s Hot Dogs. Neither did Klinger. I rooted for a minor league baseball club called the Toledo Mud Hens. So, too, did Klinger.”
Indeed, Farr often wore a Mud Hens jersey and donned the team’s cap as a wink and a nod to his hometown. Consequently, Toledo and Mud Hens became household names to a national television viewing audience.
Like his fictional counterpart, Farr saw the Mud Hens play at Swayne Field. Noah H. Swayne donated the land for the ballpark. Wayne’s father was United States Supreme Court Justice Noah H. Swayne, appointed by President Lincoln.
John R. Husman’s article for the Society for American Baseball Research web site discusses Swayne Field’s genesis: “Swayne Field was privately financed and as fine and modern a baseball park as there was in America when it rose out of an old fairgrounds in west Toledo. It was the largest baseball playing field in the world. Construction of Swayne Field began on March 6, 1909. Less than four months later, baseball was played there. The concrete and steel plant was the apparent brainchild and investment of William R. Armour and Noah H. Swayne, Jr.”
M*A*S*H ran on CBS for 11 seasons—from 1972 to 1983—giving Farr ample opportunity to promote his Toledo heritage and Mud Hens fandom. From the beginning, Farr was in the cast as a member of the United States Army Mobile Army Surgical Hospital #4077 during the Korean War. First, though, he had a supporting role. In the early seasons, Klinger tried to get a section 8 discharge requiring an assessment of him having a mental disorder. His modus operandi was wearing women’s clothes to persuade doctors, especially psychiatrists, to authorize the discharge. It never happened.
Gary Burghoff played Corporal Walter Eugene “Radar” O’Reilly, the Company Clerk for the 4077th. After Burghoff departed the show, Farr stepped into his shoes as Klinger took over the clerical duties that kept the 4077th operating. Before M*A*S*H, Farr found regular work as a guest star on network television shows, including Room 222, The Flying Nun, Family Affair, Gomer Pyle: USMC, Get Smart, Garrison’s Gorillas, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Death Valley Days, My Favorite Martian, and F Troop.
Farr got his show business break as Santini, a mentally challenged student in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, starring Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier as a teacher and a rebel student, respectively, in an urban high school. Farr said, “For its time, Blackboard Jungle was pretty shocking, so shocking that MGM thought it best to put a pious disclaimer on the screen at the beginning of the film stating that all schools were not like this—so as not to alienate hundreds of thousands of school teachers all over America.”
A version of this article appeared on www.thesportspost.com on May 1, 2014.