The time I met Corporal Klinger

by Sam Richardson

When I was promotion director at KTBC-TV in Austin, CBS, our mother network, would give us the opportunity prior to the fall season to bring in stars from their lineup to promote their shows. Promo directors would put together some sort of itinerary and propose it to the network, kind of like a bid.

My efforts produced two star junkets: one with Adrienne Barbeau, who played the daughter on “Maude”; and, two, Jamie Farr, who played Klinger on “M.A.S.H.” The events I scheduled were to get as much publicity as possible for the shows in our market.

Adrienne’s visit was for the most part uneventful, except that her appearance on our noon talk show didn’t sit that well with the hostess. Adrienne was pro-choice and mentioned her efforts in a West Coast clinic to assist young women who wanted an abortion. Not the best thing to be talking about when promoting a network sitcom and with a very conservative talk show hostess. But it was an interesting interview, anyway, and Adrienne was beautiful and charming throughout the rest of the day.

Jamie’s visit was less than remarkable. He was a great guy, fun to work with, but my itinerary fell short of his expectations, I think. I arranged to have him meet with some drama students at the University of Texas, where he sat up on a stage and a student audience asked him questions. He seemed to like being on stage. Then he appeared on the TV station’s noon talk show, and later we had lunch with an entertainment editor for the Austin daily newspaper.

The talk show didn’t go well. Jamie, who had considerable star power on network TV, was on with three other people, none of whom were entertainment professionals, and all of whom were talking about different topics. It was a scattered presentation, and Jamie only got in a little time to talk about M.A.S.H. and didn’t enjoy having limited time. I couldn’t blame him.

After the lunch interview with the entertainment writer, I took Jamie and his aide to the airport. Unfortunately, the only company vehicle available was a beat-up, cramped Subaru that the news department had worn out. And it was uncomfortable, just a tightly engineered little Japanese car with no A/C.

On the T.V. interview, Jamie had mentioned that the cast and crew of M.A.S.H. was going to Korea to film some new episodes. During our brief conversation on the way to the airport, I said something to him like, “Well, this fall and winter, when you’re freezing in Korea, you might wish you were back in Austin.”

“Not really, man,” said Jamie. “Not really.”

Touché and end of conversation. At the airport Jamie and his aide politely thanked me for my efforts and were off. I still watch M.A.S.H. in reruns and think it is the best comedy show in television history. And corporal Klinger is one of the best ever characters. I still laugh at Klinger’s antics and still laugh when I think of Jamie’s parting comment about our publicity junket in Austin.

“Not really, man … not really.”

I might have hit a few home runs as promotion director at the station, but for the most part was unhappy in that job. I was eventually relieved of those duties and settled into the role of art director. Later I went out on my own as a free-lance artist, writer, ad hack, teacher, and publicist. Some of the off-the-wall events I publicized, or helped publicize, were The Great World’s Fair at Luckenbach, the World’s Largest Pot of Chili, the Cowboy Country Club, and Headliners East. I was much better at promoting events like that than network T.V. shows.

In the latter case, Headliners was the ultimate neighborhood bar, and we were always doing promotions. Our regular clients ranged from members of the State Legislature to local media people. If we had brought Jamie in to be roasted as our Big Shot of the Month at Headliners he would probably have had a much better time in Austin.

At least he could have had a few drinks and met some Austin beauties, things he could have remembered fondly when cast and crew were shivering in Korea.