By Sharon Oliver
Contributing Writer
REGION – Everyone has a hometown, including characters on television series. Over the years, script writers have sometimes favored the state of Massachusetts for some sort of representation. In one episode of “The Andy Griffith Show,” even Mrs. Wiley mistakenly thought mountain man Ernest T. Bass was from the Back Bay in Boston.
Early legal drama
Before there was “Boston Legal,” or “Ally McBeal,” where fictional characters lived and thrived in Boston, there was another legal drama based in the city called “The Young Lawyers.” The series ran from 1970 to 1971 on ABC and starred Zalman King, Phillip Clark and Judy Pace as law school students who help poor and indigent clients needing assistance at “Neighborhood Law Office.” The legal aid center was helmed by veteran actor Lee J. Cobb who played David Barett. The television pilot first premiered as a movie in 1969, featuring comic legend Richard Pryor.
There were other television series from the 1970s whose characters had roots in the Bay State. Perhaps the most surprising of all may be Carol Brady, the pixie blonde matriarch of “The Brady Bunch,” portrayed by Florence Henderson.
From The Brady Bunch to M*A*S*H
In an episode titled “A Fistful of Reasons,” youngest daughter Cindy is bullied because of her lisp. The stay-at-home mom confesses to her husband Mike that she too overcame a lisp while growing up in Swampscott. Aside from growing up in the North Shore, not much else is known about Carol’s background or family except that she has a brother, Jack, and sister-in-law, Pauline, who are the parents of Cousin Oliver who has made an appearance or two on the sitcom.
It has never been made clear whether Carol Brady was a divorcee or widow. Creator and executive producer Sherwood Schwartz had intended to present Carol as a divorcee, but ABC refused to allow her status to be revealed on the show.
On the other hand, Major Charles Emerson Winchester III of M*A*S*H consistently made his homesickness for Boston known. Played by David Ogden Stiers, the name Charles Emerson Winchester was derived from three actual street names in Boston. Despite his blue blood upbringing, Charles was a perfect foil for Hawkeye (Alan Alda) and B. J. Hunnicutt (Mike Farrell).
Photo/Wikimedia Commons
The pompous Charles Winchester was born in his grandmother’s house in Beacon Hill. As a Winchester, he was a proud member off the wealthy Boston Brahmins, which included the Dudleys, Saltonstalls, Winslows and Lymans. The Brahmins are a very real collection of aristocrats that were descendants of English landowners. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and worked at Massachusetts General Hospital where he was on track to become Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery prior to being drafted in the U.S. Army.
Winchester was far more intelligent and skilled than his predecessor Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville). Although he too was the butt of Hawkeye’s jokes and insults, Winchester often matched wits with Hawkeye. After the war ended and the 4077th was decommissioned, Winchester returned to Boston where he became Chief of Thoracic Surgery at a prestigious hospital.
According to the book and film, Hawkeye’s sidekick Captain “Trapper” John Francis Xavier McIntyre was a Bostonian who graduated from Dartmouth College where he also played quarterback on the school’s football team. Unlike his slightly more strait-laced replacement, B.J. Hunnicutt, Trapper was the heavy drinking, womanizing class clown type who loved playing practical jokes on Major Frank Burns and Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit). Trapper’s nickname stemmed from an incident where he was caught in a compromising position with a woman in the lavatory aboard a Boston and Maine Railroad train. The woman claimed that, “He trapped me!”
The married thoracic surgeon and father of daughters admits that his wife collects his pay for a special fund to pay private investigators who will spy on him the second he gets home from Korea.
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