The television series M*A*S*H premiered on CBS in 1972, and fast established itself as one of the best and most popular series in TV history.  But before there was a sitcom, brilliantly developed by Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds, there was a movie, brilliantly directed two years before by Robert Altman. It had a slightly meaner tone than the TV series, but was full  of Altman’s trademark overlapping dialogue, visually frenetic staging, improvised moments, and waves of very dark comedy. In this film, Donald Sutherland starred as Korean War  surgeon Hawkeye Pierce, Elliott Gould was fellow surgeon Trapper John, and the antagonistic couple of Frank Burns and “Hot Lips” Houlihan was played by Robert Duvall and Sally Kellerman. On TV, those four roles were immortalized by, respectively, Alan Alda, Wayne Rogers, Larry Linville and Loretta Swit. And in this 1970 movie, who played the part of “Radar” O’Reilly, portrayed so memorably in the CBS series Gary Burghoff? Watch for him – in the film, Radar is played by a young actor named… Gary Burghoff, the only actor to appear in both the original film and its TV spinoff. Oh, and one other fun fact in this compare and contrast exercise: The TV series title, an acronym for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, has asterisks, as in M*A*S*H. The movie title does not. And for this entry, that’s my final MASH note…