It was the moment that floored M*A*S*H fans 50 years ago, becoming widely regarded as one of the most shocking TV deaths of all time.
Now five decades on, lead actor Jamie Farr, 91, has opened up about the season 3 finale that shook devoted fans to their core.
The episode in question, entitled Abyssinia, Henry, concluded with the sudden and unexpected death of one of its most beloved characters, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake – brought to life on screen by late actor McLean Stevenson.
Stevenson’s co-star Farr, who portrayed Corporal Maxwell Klinger in the hit show, shared his thoughts on the heart-wrenching moment in a recent interview with PEOPLE, revealing the cast had no prior warning of the scene to come.
“We did not get the ending of that. We did not know that Colonel Blake was gonna die,” Farr recalled.
“We waved goodbye to [Lt. Col. Blake] at the helicopter when he was taking off to go stateside.
“We finished that and we all went home afterwards. And then we got a call, all of us did. They said there’s an added scene and that they needed us in the OR.”
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“And we went, ‘What? The what? What do you mean added scene? We said goodbye.’ And what happened was that they took us aside, they didn’t tell the extras or even the camera crew that they had that extra page where the airplane was shot down and there were no survivors.”
A television staple of the 70’s, M*A*S*H followed the fictional 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, and their antics while attempting to maintain their sanity during the Korean War.
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Colonel Blake’s death was the genre-bending moment that officially tipped the scales from “comedy” to “dramedy” for the long-running series, which spanned 11 seasons, one feature film and one TV spinoff.
Despite being a fictional death, there were lasting affects for both the show, its fanbase – and the cast itself.
According to Farr, the ensemble remained “stunned” for a while, “because we had never lost any of our characters.”
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“To have somebody that’s a main character like that actually get killed was something that was shattering to everybody.”
But he admitted it was a necessary depiction of the realities of war – around which the show was centred.
“People that you love die in war. They thought it would enforce the thing that M*A*S*H was about, the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital saving lives,” Farr said.
“They thought that was a good way of doing it because Mac, his character, Colonel Blake, was such a lovable character.”
McLean Stevenson passed away while recovering from surgery for bladder cancer in 1996.
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