1978 Alan Alda - Barbara Walters Special, On the MASH set

and finally the beloved wise cracking hero to millions of mothers fathers and their kids in one of television's most successful much more important most respected programs he's the sometimes writer orphan director and always the star of mash hawkeye himself alan alder hello it's a nice little place you got here thank you take a look around hold on these are the studios of 20th century fox where hello dolly which you see here was filmed 10 years ago now it's the home of charlie's angels starsky and hutch and mash allen is no stranger to film sets his father robert alder was a motion picture star when alan was a kid in mash allen plays a surgeon and a bit of a womanizer in private life he is a devoted family man and an outspoken champion of the women's movement his colleagues in this set consider him so straight so normal that virtually no one has a bad word to say about him he has personally won four emmys for mash which is now in its seventh year alan showed us the tent which is his home in that series makes you feel you're in a real place it really does standing in front of scenery no and the things are i mean this is old and scroungy looking it is in fact this place is infested with fleas does it feel like home when you walk in here and i please at home sorry a good portion of each show takes place in this room where the patients recover or don't doctor i have this funny pain do people expect you to uh to know do people come up and ask you medical questions and think that you're really a surgeon sometimes they expect me to have a friend who whose husband got sick and thought that she should call me i was the first one she thought of but i really don't like to do medical things you know i don't really know anything about it so i see at the interview this set is alan's home away from home his family actually lives in the small town in new jersey and to this day allen commutes 3 000 miles from hollywood to new jersey every single weekend he married young has been married to arlene for 22 years he's italian she's jewish a former concert clarinetist who recently became a photographer extremely devoted parents they have three daughters nearly grown in recent years allen has turned down all films but now he has three about to come out the senator which he also wrote california suite and this sure fire hit same time next year i know i'm an animal i don't know what came over me i mean i was uh what wait what was wrong with the first two times well the first time was a little fast and um the second time listen i really feel funny talking about this it was a very beautiful thing doris there was nothing ugly or disgusting about what we did then how come you look so down in the dumps because my wife is going to kill me well how's she gonna find out she knows already you said she was in new jersey it doesn't matter she knows in the film same time next year the man is very happily married but once a year he goes off and has this affair with another woman whom he loves the man lives in new jersey could this ever happen to you living in new jersey come on what that was a silly question what what what do you mean could it ever happen to me could you could you could you have another relationship could that man be you why would i want to do that i don't know why what then what did this man do i mean why does anybody do it well this guy is a character i play in the movie which i didn't even write it's really fun to see his uh his response to this this long term is 25 i can't understand why how he could do it oh sure i do i understand all people go through all kinds of uh mistakes they make all kinds of mistakes there's all kinds of aberrational behavior do you think having an affair with another woman is aberrational behavior is this a proposal well i just i hadn't thought of it a nice girl like me you've been married for 22 years yeah to ali that's right you very rarely give interviews but when i was reading the the few magazine interviews you've given it's as if you're some kind you and arlene of marvelous freaks because in show business you've been married for 22 years not only that but that you love her you don't cheat there's no scandal it's as if this it's almost what's wrong with you do you know what i mean i don't think you know i think the shoe is really on the other foot i mean that's what ought to be that's that's that's the way things ought to be people people make a promise to get married stay married and to live through thick and thin together and for better and for worse and sickness and health and then when things get tough they say oh well i didn't expect that that's not what i had in mind but i think a deal is a deal and and uh and that's if you're not married to the to the best person in the world we're very lucky we're both married to the two best people in the world but would you have stayed because a deal is a deal i think that we're living in a time when a deal is not a deal it's work it's work to have an intimate relationship with somebody we shouldn't be afraid of work work is working work brings pleasure work is the the successful completion work is wonderful and and there's nothing like the joy that you get from uh uh from uh from from being with someone that you've worked things out with over many years that's terrific i want to tell you something i said to arlene though because i had talked with her on the telephone we have not met yes and i said have you ever been jealous of alan and she said jealous of what and i it was like you're saying to me but you know just now but and i said well i mean other women haven't ever been jealous of other women you know what she did she laughed that's good that's nice in 22 years he's never given me any reason to i mean you work with beautiful actresses and but that's you know that's an interesting question i wonder and it's it's i don't mean to be silly i'm not really but it's often it's often asked of um it's often asked of actors if you were interviewing the head of the world bank is that mcnamara now yeah right so if you're interviewing mr mcnamara and you would you say to him you're in you're at the head of the the world bank you control billions of dollars don't you ever get tempted to take some of it home and would you say that to him no but you know what i thought you're going to say that i would not say to him you're the head of the world bank and you've been married 22 years don't you ever get tempted to but you know i wouldn't ask it of him you wouldn't ask either question of them the fact that i work with uh attractive women uh doesn't mean that that i think they're they're there for the taking or that or that or that or that they're anything but fellow workers any more than mcnamara's uh money that he that he deals with every day is even jimmy carter said he had lust in his heart that was an unfortunate statement i don't think that just because he's our president i have to say make the same unfortunate statement he did i would rather that you told people about your schedule than i did why don't you take your wife and three kids and bring them here it is madness to get on a plane every week for two days no it's not man it's not so bad that's where my family lives that's where they uh that's where our roots are we've been there for 15 years the kids have grown up there when this show started we didn't know it was going to run for uh seven years seven years now this is our seventh year i get i go into a permanent state of jet lag in september and uh i come out of it in uh in january that's not so bad it's sort of a pleasant you have a little buzz all the time it's not bad you don't have to get drunk then you know i don't have to drink like other people do to forget their troubles do you make adjustments to be with your family oh sure you have to that's the way to do it how do you devote yourself to your work to your career to your work outside the home and at the same time devote yourself to your work inside the home now i think men and women both have this problem the way things are presently organized women have a greater problem because everybody just assumes that it's not man's place to work in the home to really devote himself to the to the running of the household to the rearing of the children well that's baloney it is man's place if if if raising children is so great how come men aren't doing it it is great they ought to be doing it and more and more they are alan you have said that the only cause that you will drop everything for is to work for the equal rights amendment yeah as long as women are not included in the constitution it's a constitution for men certainly many benefits flow to women too but women are excluded from the constitution as long as we don't have the equal rights amendment and women are a majority of the country to 53 percent how can they be excluded what kind of a craziness is this it doesn't doesn't conform to our notion of what america is it's not fair when people express surprise and perhaps other men in particular that you're a feminist does that seem to you odd are you surprised they're surprised i'm not surprised that that people think it's odd that a man is a feminist because we we accept in this country in this in our society a stereotypical view of men and women uh however i think the shoe is really on the other foot um the question is not why am i a feminist the question is why aren't all of us feminists let me ask you little things if if you and a woman are in front of an elevator do you let her go in first i think who's ever by the doorway or first should go through it or whoever near a door should open it for the next person unless there you don't stand back and let the woman walk in look women are not not disabled by being women does it make her less feminine i don't think femininity has anything to do with weakness or with dependency i don't think a woman is more feminine if she's more dependent in my opinion the clinging vine is a little aphorism for you in my opinion the clinging vine can become a venus fly trap as we sit here and i do an interview with you i realize that you do very few interviews you turn most of them down yeah why i don't like to see my life played out in front of me like i was some kind of a comic book character why did you become an actor if you didn't want to have a part of life sir madam i became an actor yeah so that i could act out other people's lives so that i could play characters and do good literature don't you want to be famous and be loved and have your fans like you and know you i want to be loved by the people who know me who know me intimately i want to be loved by my wife and children my close friends i can't be loved by the people out there as as as much as they think they know me i swear to you all you don't know me you don't know barbara walters you don't know president carter you don't know anybody public whom you only know through print and television you have a public image of them of us all famous people are not known as themselves they're only known by this outside shell and i'm not interested in having that played back at me as if it's my life my life is what i live this is i want to just do my work now the reason i'm on your show is to talk about your movie so that people will know that the movies are are coming out and and i i'm proud of those movies and i think people will enjoy them and i want people to see them now in exchange for that i'm happy to answer you know these other questions some of your dumb questions and i understand why you asked them too uh people are curious but i don't have to be the object of their curiosity i don't think that it's good for either of us for me to engage in that with them if i asked you now to describe for me your idea of the perfect life would it be i guess would have to be what i'm doing i'm an extremely fortunate person i i love my family um uh i i love my work i'm doing all the work that i wanted to do from the time i was a kid i wanted to be a writer from the time i was eight years old and i'm writing uh i i wanted to act from about the time i was nine and i'm acting i was put on shows i made movies in my backyard so i was directing and producing then too and i and i am now and i'm and to be able to just get better and better and feel and feel the um the tremendous pleasure that comes with achievement that i that i i sense in my life is is i think the perfect life i i wouldn't want to trade places with anybody i can think of

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Views: 27,697

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Id: rNDIPfMKues

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2020

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[u/Mouse1701]

Cool alda drives the jeep on the actual mash set at 20 century fox