Truth to tell,seems like MASH killed a few careers. Only seen one cast member from that show on any other program since it ended. I guess some of them were too old for most starring roles when it ended,plus they were probably type-cast. That seems to be the curse of successful series for acting careers.
Allowing that the show ran eleven years, there may be some truth in that. (Alan Alda and Loretta Swit were the only members of the cast to appear in every season from beginning to end.) On the other hand . . .
* Wayne Rogers (Trapper John) had the last laugh when he was sued for breach of contract upon leaving after the third season---he'd never even
signed a contract. He didn't like the language of the so-called "morals" clause in the contract. He starred subsequently in the 1979-1982 television hit
House Calls, before a double second career as a television and film producer/writer and investment advisor.
* McLean Stevenson (Henry Blake) was apparently miffed at not having been
M*A*S*H's star and decided to leave over that and what he considered 20th Century Fox's callousness toward simple comforts on location. His subsequent run of starring turns in short-lived TV shows turned him into something of an industry gag, unfortunately, typically being the critic who once created "The Annual McLean Stevenson Memorial 'I'm Gonna Quit This Show and Become a Big Star' Award." In time, Stevenson would admit that walking away from
M*A*S*H was the biggest mistake of his life.
* Gary Burghoff, possibly the single most typecast member of the
M*A*S*H ensemble, left the show not because of ego or standing but because a) he felt burned out and that the long hours work on the show kept him too much from his family; and, b) he'd become close to McLean Stevenson and didn't feel comfortable working without him as the years passed since Stevenson's departure. Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicutt) actually tried to talk Burghoff out of leaving, unsuccessfully, even citing Stevenson's and Larry Linville's (Frank Burns) tanking post-
M*A*S*H careers in his effort.
* Larry Linville (Burns) quit for, apparently, a purely character reason: he thought he'd taken Frank Burns as far as the character could go after finishing his five-year contract, even though he was offered a new deal.
* Marcia Strassman (Nurse Cutler in the first season) left when she had a shot at a new comedy in the works---
Welcome Back, Kotter. (Where she was miserable thanks to a little deviousness on the part of the show's producer---he'd told Strassman and series creator/star Gabe Kaplan separately that one despised the other; only later did Strassman learn from Kaplan himself that he actually liked working with her and wanted more focus on the couple's home life on the show and thus more work for Strassman on it.)
