Radar O'Reilly

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Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O'Reilly is a fictional character in the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, the movie M*A*S*H, the television series M*A*S*H, the television movie W*A*L*T*E*R and two episodes of the series After M*A*S*H. He was portrayed in both the movie and the series by Gary Burghoff—the only movie actor to reprise his role in the series.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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Character background

The novel established that Radar was from the Ottumwa, Iowa area in south-central part of the state. He was from a farm family and his father was deceased. Radar's mother lived on the family farm and his Uncle Ed helped out on the farm and served as his father figure. Radar was often portrayed as a friendly young man from the Midwest. As a symbol of how young this man was when he got to Korea, he slept with a teddy bear. He related well to children and sometimes spent time with the Korean orphans in the area.

Cpl. O'Reilly had a rough start as clerk at the 4077th, where it seemed he couldn't do anything right. The unit's commander, Lt. Col. Henry Blake, took him under his wing. Eventually, the young man became an excellent clerk, often balancing out Lt. Col. Blake's occasional silliness, with the near-magical abilities to get whatever the unit needed, to anticipate the demands and even the words of his bosses, and to hear incoming helicopters before anyone else. These latter two earned him the nickname "Radar." Throughout much of the series he was more or less the glue that held the 4077th together, keeping the unit running like a well oiled machine.

Blake and Radar grew very close, and it was Radar who tearfully announced Blake's death over the Sea of Japan. While Radar needed some time to adjust to the new Col. Potter, he eventually became very close to Potter as well. Radar was very fond of animals and raised several during his duty at M*A*S*H. For Col. Potter's anniversary, Radar gave him Sophie, a mare that he, Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt rescued.

Radar idolized Hawkeye Pierce, but the two had a falling out after Radar was injured during a trip to Seoul which caused Hawkeye to leave the OR to throw up from a night of drinking ("To hell with your Iowa naivete...and while we're at it, the hell with you! Why don't you grow up... you ninny!" - when Hawkeye came to apologize, Radar's response was, much to the horror of the nurses, "Oh yeah? Well you can forget it. Just forget it! To hell with me, huh? To hell with you! How do you like that?!" and then threatened to punch Hawkeye if he ever said anything bad about Iowa again); their friendship developed more as that of two equals rather than hero worship.

His short stature was a frequent source of humor during his tenure, with Hawkeye and the other doctors teasing him for his lack of height. At one point, Radar actually bought boots from Klinger that came with lifts so that he could appear taller, and the boots almost made him eye level with Major Frank Burns.

Radar's character started off worldly and sneaky, a clerk who carried with him at all times a pocketful of passes for any potential scam that might arise. He was also not averse to drinking Col. Blake's brandy and smoking his cigars when the colonel was off-duty. This character was apparently not wholly to the writers' liking and he became much more naive and trusting, and cigars and strong liquor made him ill or dizzy. Under Col. Potter, his scrounging and semi-legal activities are strongly curtailed, seemingly out of respect for his commanding officer.

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Leaving M*A*S*H

Because Burghoff felt a need to move on, the Radar character was written out of the series at the beginning of the eighth season. Radar was given a hardship discharge after his Uncle Ed passed away so that he could go home and help out on the farm. When the unit is in dire straits because they have no working generators, Radar decides that the 4077th needs him more than his mother does. Pierce and Potter try to convince Radar that he is making a mistake, but it takes Klinger's swindling a generator from supply to convince him that the 4077th will survive without him. As a way of saying that Radar came to Korea as a boy and went home a man, he left his teddy bear behind (as Dr. Sidney Freedman predicted he would in the episode "War of Nerves"), leaving it with Pierce.

In the 1984 television movie W*A*L*T*E*R, Radar moves to St. Louis, Missouri, and joins the police department. Set in the mid-1950's, his mother has died recently, and he has sold the family farm. Leaving Iowa, and the "Radar" nickname (now just being known as Walter O'Reilly), he moves to St. Louis to start a new life, and joins the police department, where his gentle manner and resourcefulness make him good at dealing with the public.

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Teddy Bear

Radar's teddy bear had originally been found on the set by one of the actors. Throughout the series, Radar was known for sleeping with a teddy bear. This was added by the creators to symbolize Radar's youth and naivete; it was also the source of several jokes throughout the series--which collectively formed a recurring joke in itself. In the second to last episode (actually the last episode filmed), "As Time Goes By", Pierce added the teddy bear to a time capsule with several other items from the camp including Klinger's Gone with the Wind dress and a broken fan belt from a helicopter. On July 29, 2005, the teddy bear used in the series was sold at auction for $11,800.

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Trivia

  • Radar was only in his late teens, but Gary Burghoff himself was almost 30 at the time the series began. Audiences were generally fooled by his short stature, boyish appearance and prepubescent voice. By the time he left the series, Gary was clearly too old for the part, marked by the fact that he'd lost a fair amount of hair.
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External links

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