Born and raised in Crabapple Cove, Maine, Hawkeye was the son of Dr. Daniel Pierce. He did his medical residency in Boston (where he met Trapper John).
He is a
Draft ed
US Army Surgeon called to serve at the 4077th
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) during the
Korean War . Between long, intense sessions of treating critically wounded patients, he makes the best of his life in an isolated Army camp with heavy drinking, carousing, and pulling pranks on the people around him, especially the unpleasantly stiff and callous
Major Frank Burns and
Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan .
Although the
Robert Altman film followed Hooker's book somewhat in structure, much of the dialogue was improvised and thus departed even from
Ring Lardner, Jr. 's screenplay. The screenplay itself departed from the book in a number of details (e.g. Frank Burns became a major instead of a captain, and was identified with the zealously religious officer that Pierce and bunkmate
Trapper John McIntyre got removed from their tent and, subsequently, the camp) but on the whole left the main characters and the mood intact.
Perhaps the main difference in the character's development from the book, to the big screen and finally to the small screen comes in Hawkeye's marital status. The Hawkeye of the book is married but faithful whilst in Korea, as far as the reader is concerned. He offers several doctors love advice, "Jeeter" Carol for example, extolling the virtues of extramarital sex but never partaking himself. The film version of Hawkeye is still married but has more leeway with his morals, arguing that he is far from home, no one is ever going to know and it will reduce stress for both involved. Finally, he becomes the womanizing and single Hawkeye of the TV series.
The television version of Hawkeye proved to be a somewhat different character: While his professional and social life was much the same, he also gradually evolved into a man of conscience trying to maintain some humanity and decency in the insane world into which he has been thrust. Some fans regretted the change in Hawkeye, feeling that he eventually became too self-righteous and sanctimonious for his own good and the good of the show, and profess that Hawkeye worked better as a sardonic goofball.
Developed for television by
Larry Gelbart , the series departed in some respects radically from the film and book. The character of Duke Forrest was dropped altogether, and Hawkeye became the center of the MASH unit's medical activity as well as the dramatic center of the series itself. In the book and the film, the Chief Surgeon had been "Trapper" John MacIntyre; in the series, Pierce had that honor. In the book and the film, Hawkeye had played
Football in
College (Androscoggin College, based on Hornberger's alma mater
Bowdoin College ); in the series, Alda's Hawkeye was hardly the football-champ type and even seemed proud of it and reveled in it, while his cohort Wayne Rogers' Trapper looked sturdy enough to have played football. He seemed to resemble
Groucho Marx , with his quick wit and 'madcap' antics, sometimes even affecting a Groucho-like
Schtick .
Interestingly, Hawkeye had been married in the book and the film; at the beginning of the series, he was married as well, but references to his marriage were eventually dropped and it was made clear that he was single. Presumably this alteration rendered his romantic dalliances (chiefly with nurses) more morally acceptable in the eyes of Gelbart and the other series officials. (In general, Gelbart tried to make the series less deliberately offensive and more "politically correct" than the film while nevertheless retaining some of its anarchic spirit.) Also, in early episodes, Hawkeye tells his father (Daniel) in a letter to say hello to his mother and sister, but in later episodes, he is an only child and his mother died when he was young. There is also a reference in an early-episode letter to his father that their home is in
Vermont and also in the Season 1 episode "Ceasefire", but all other references, including in the book and film, are to Hawkeye being from Maine.
The series established that Pierce's nickname of "Hawkeye" was given to him by his father. It comes from the novel ''
The Last Of The Mohicans '', which Pierce initially claimed was the only book his father ever read to him. In an episode in which Hawkeye believed himself to be in mortal danger due to heavy enemy shelling, he made out a will, and left Colonel Sherman Potter the edition of ''
The Last Of The Mohicans '' that his father had given him. "It was his favorite book," Hawkeye wrote in the will.
Note that his real name is the combination of
Benjamin Franklin and
Franklin Pierce .
At the end of the television series, with the truce, Hawkeye was the second to last to leave the dismantled camp with the announced goal of returning to his hometown of Crabapple Cove,
Maine , to be a local doctor who has the time to get to know his patients instead of the endless flow of casualties he faced in his term of service.
- A---S---H surgeons to help out at the "Finestkind clinic and Fishmarket", after a period of thoracic training under the watchful eye of "Trapper".
