Alan Alda: A Biography

This is a bit of a history paper and a bit of a study of Alan Alda and comedy. I wrote it for a history class. I hope you enjoy it!

Television, especially comedies and sitcoms, in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s “often tell us how to run our lives” (Berman, section. 1). There is a difference between a sitcom and comedy, so those terms cannot be interchanged. A comedy is very structured and has a high stature in the media. However, in sitcoms “The moral earnestness of sitcom seems to lessen its stature” (Berman, section 1) and those things are what make a comedy great. One of the greats of comedy, both physical as well as verbal, is Alan Alda.

            Alan Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo on January 28, 1936. However, he would take the name Alan Alda. He is the son of Flora Martino and the legendary actor, Robert Alda. Alda learned how to act partly from his father - a star in a traveling burlesque troop.

            Burlesque, in the 1930’s and 1940’s, was more comedy than anything. Those decades were the golden age of burlesque. Some of the best actors started their careers on the burlesque scene. Just a few of the actors who have graced the stages of a burlesque show include, Abbott and Costello, Jack Albertson, Mae West, and Red Skelton. This was where many of Hollywood’s best comedians started. It is no wonder the type of actor Alan Alda has become. Alda transformed comedy from the narrow, one-sided show to a well-balanced, complicated show. He did this by taking the skills he learned from burlesque and applying them to the characters. Alda perfected the use of one-liners, physical comedy and dialog in comedies by using those skills he learnt. To this day, comediennes and comedians are using those skills Alda demonstrated. 

            His life was never normal; he was always on the road. In addition, Alda’s mother was mentally unstable. At six years old, his mother tried to stab Alda’s father. It was not until then she showed signs of insanity; but, Alda states, “she must have shown signs of oddness before that” (Never, pg. 1). Humor can come out of the worst of situations, as well as the best. Alda learned that at a young age. His dysfunctional life helped to form the characters he would play.

            It was when Alan Alda was 6-months old when he first acted. Red Buttons, Phil Silvers and Rags Ragland, were all there and decided to put baby Alda into a highchair with a bell. Every time one of the actors got to the punch line, Alda rang the bell. Even then, he “upstaged the greatest comics” (Never, pg. 8). From an early age, Alda wanted to please people. Talking about a newspaper headline, which read, “Alphonse wants to act”, he states in his book that the headline could have read, “Alphonse wants to please” (Alda, pg. 9). The want to please people eventually led to his career in acting in plays, movies, and television.

            He gives a glimpse of his early years when he writes in his autobiography, “Photographs from my childhood are snapshots of dress-up and make-believe...and reality was what you decided it was”. His childhood was a complex one. It was almost like living in a Peter Pan world because he “grew up among people who didn’t seem to know what children were, because they were children themselves” (Never, pg 11). His early years really shaped who he is. With his father in the showbiz life and his mother mentally unstable, Alda could have either let the craziness control him or he could control the craziness. His life was full of madness; but Alda learned from the experiences and let them shape him enough to make him a well-balanced adult.

            Shortly after moving to Hollywood, Alda became ill with Polio and to cheer him up, his father gave him a black cocker spaniel (Never, pg 15). Before catching polio, Alda had been enrolled into a military academy. This was “an interesting departing from standing in the wings watching Miss Fifi take off her clothes” because there were rigid rules as well as more structure than Alda was ever used to (Never, pg 17). However, because of the polio, he was pulled out of the academy. In the spring, the Alda’s moved into the country, where after living there only two days, Alda’s cocker spaniel died, after eating Chinese food (Never, pp. 20-21). His father decided that they should have the dog stuffed. However, after bringing the dog home from taxidermist, it was realized that was a big mistake because getting him back was worse then its death (Never, pg 23). The dog had been the one companion, besides the doctors, while Alan Alda was ill. It had been a constant in his life until he died. Stuffing the dog was a way to keep the constant and to keep away the change; however, as Alda puts it “I wouldn’t be able to hold off change any more than the Hollywood taxidermist could” (pg 24). He learned that change is inevitable. After Alda made a complete recovery, he never went back to public school until around the seventh grade (Never, pg. 39) and “I grew wild, like the brush in the canyon” (Never, pg 25). Instead, he received a fine education in real life. He learned about nature, which would eventually lead him to learn about acting. What he learned from nature and real life helped Alda to become a balanced person as well as an actor. The wilderness made him not to fear taking risky characters in television and movies. 

One moral he learned, Alda gleaned from a rattlesnake. As a small boy, he came across a rattlesnake that he thought had choked to death on a mouse. Poking it, young Alda discovered it was not dead. The lesson he learned was “if a rattlesnake thinks he can swallow a mouse, he probably can. Don’t assume you think like a snake unless you are one” (Never, pg 26). From this, he surely learned how to easily get into a character, so that he could think like his character. At their first Christmas Eve in the Alda’s new home, Alan Alda discovered that Santa Clause was not real and no matter what, “no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t believe Beetlepuss Lewis was Santa Claus” (Never, pg. 27). However, this event made Alda love and appreciate all the comedians he knew; these people he identified with (Never, pg. 27).

            When Alda was nine, he knew he wanted to be an actor (Never, pg 33). He was aloud to join in some of the sketches and when he was not acting, he would study his father’s old skits (Never, pp. 30-31). Some of the dialog resembles things Alda later wrote for M*A*S*H. The dialog was quick and delivered the punch line quicker. After being on stage, Alda would go shoot, or at least watch craps and here he “got the best of my early education” (Never, pg. 32). He learned how to act and do comedy from Fred Allen and Jack Benny, gleaned an appreciation for Gershwin, and grew to adore dialog-ridden novels such as Congressional Record (Never, pg. 32). He seemed to have it all - an interesting life, many means of learning, besides school, as well as a way to hone his amateur acting skills. However, there was still turbulence in Alda’s young life. His mother, Flora Martino, caused much of the uproar. He also moved many times to different homes and apartments. During high school, he even lived in Paris, France for a while (Never, pg. 60). After high school, Alda moved to New York, where he met his future wife, Arlene, and Bea Brown (Never, pg. 72). Arlene was the clarinetist in Bea Brown’s band. Both Alda, still called, Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo, and Arlene had similar senses of humor. They bonded over a rum cake, which had fallen on the floor (Never, pg. 73) and then over the Off-Broadway opera titled Four Saints in Three Acts (Never, pg. 74). His future wife, Arlene, was the one who eventually made him take the role he is most famous for – Hawkeye Pierce in the hit, eleven season, show, M*A*S*H.

            However, soon after Alda and Arlene met, he was called to active duty (Never, pg. 77). During his college years, Alda had signed up with the ROTC branch of the army. Both Arlene and Alda went south – she to Houston and Alda to Fort Benning – and here “She stared playing Beethoven and I started playing soldier” (Never, pg. 77). Every weekend, Alda would go AWOL to visit Arlene (Never, pg. 78); however, after being caught by a 10-year-old boy and his father, he did not go AWOL again until his honeymoon – three months later (Never, pg. 79). He was supposed to go to New York when he and Arlene had married, so he sent the commanding officer in New York “a pleasant letter letting them know I’d be a little late and would be there as soon as I’d finished my wedding trip” (Never, pp. 79-80). The captain of the unit was not happy, however, Alda was not docked for being AWOL for so long and he finished his stint in the army. This was something that Hawkeye might do. The many times Alda went AWOL might have subconsciously helped him later on play the character of Hawkeye. 

            When he was out of active duty, Alda started to teach himself how to act as well as work on his writing and soon some of the skits he had written had been accepted, more because of his last name then anything else (Never, pp. 84-85). However, Alan Alda and his father, Robert Alda, decided that a new name would be needed. His father chose Alda as the last name and Alan for his first, which was not a name Alan Alda liked, but “I decided that he had named me the first time, and if he wanted to rename me now I’d let him” (Never, p. 90). From then on, the name stuck.

Alda, who was working for the Ford Foundation, was hired out to the Cleveland Playhouse (Never, pg. 109). One of the first plays he acted in was To Dorothy, a Son. The play was a two act, British play where a man is indecisive, while his wife has their child and on the same night of its opening, Alda’s wife, Arlene, gave birth to their first child, Eve (Never, pp. 109-110). After that play, and countless of auditions, Alda went on to act in Fair Game for Lovers and here, Alda first got to try out adlibbing (Never, pg. 121). Opening night was a success, except for the fact that he accidently lit his robes on fire; no one was hurt (Alda, pg. 121). Adlibbing helped his career, especially for the character of Hawkeye because many times, while playing that character, Alda had to rattle off longwinded speeches that Alda created for the character Hawkeye. 

After making a medium sum of money, Alda and his family moved to New Jersey, where he then taught himself how to direct, which he showed at self-produced film festivals (Never, pg. 124).

            Through the plays he acted in, he unknowingly broke the racial barriers and the play was The Owl and the Pussycat (Never, pg. 125). This was a romantic tale about two lovers who were of different cultures (Never, pg. 125). With The Old and the Pussycat, Alda felt as if he “was entering a new phase of my professional life. I was starting to feel as though I were getting someplace” (Never, pg. 126).        

            He never stopped acting in plays, even after his multiple successes in film and television. One of his more memorable acting jobs, it seems for Alda, was the famous play by David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross. For Alda acting is his ecstasy (Ross, par. 2). For Alda, stage acting is unique. “On the stage, here and now, you have final cut. I’m free to make it different every night” Alda stages is Lillian Ross’s article (par. 4). For him, performing uses the whole brain as well as body and is a wonderful feeling for him (Ross, par. 4).

            While in Salt Lake City, Utah, Alda would receive the pilot script to a show that would make Alda famous. It was a script for a show that would influence many young people in the 1970’s as well as in the present day to act, to write, and to even become doctors. He all most did not take the job because the show was filmed in California. Arlene was completely for him being part of the show, however, Alda was unsure about taking on such a meaty job because “the story dealt with some harsh realities of human behavior” (Never, pg. 145). In just a few hours, he had to decide if he would be in a television show “about a bunch of doctors and nurses in Korea” (Never, pg. 145).

            The show was M*A*S*H. He did take the job; however, he was still unsure about the show and the character. Hawkeye Piece was the opposite of Alda – “he drinks, he chases women, he’s a smart aleck” (Never, pg. 150). At the lasts seconds before shooting the first scene, Alda looked at his boots hoping for some inspiration and got none. Nonetheless, “M*A*S*H would be a turning point” (Never, pg. 150) in his life. As “Action!” was shouted, suddenly, Alda was Hawkeye as he grabs an extra, playing a nurse, around the waist and kisses her (Never, pg. 151). For eleven seasons, the actors of M*A*S*H would be his extended family. They bonded together through jokes, rivalries, losses, and even the cold (Never, pp. 152-153). By the end of the series run, Alda had written nineteen of the episodes and directed quite a few of the episodes as well (Never, pp. 155-157). By the end of the series, the cast and crew watched it just before it was to be showed to the audience and then to celebrate, they were going to a Moroccan restaurant. The streets were completely quiet as Loretta Swit and he drove to the restaurant and across America, the streets were empty as half of the citizens of the United States was home watching the last episode of M*A*S*H (Never, pp. 180-181).

            For many decades, America has watched Alda, either on M*A*S*H or the many other shows he has been in. Many Americans want to become doctors because of quick-witted Hawkeye. In fact, Alda was so influential, that he was asked to speak to the graduating class of Columbia University. What he told the students the truth, which he was not a doctor nor did he like the sight of blood. He also told them to be a humane doctor like Hawkeye.

             Alda said, “He’s not a magician who can come up with an instant cure…and…knows he might fail. Not a god, he walks gingerly on the edge of disaster – alive to his own mortality” (Things, pp. 42-43). Alda made sure that the students knew this. He wanted the future doctors to be those filled with care for their patients and to know the skill, but do not let the skills possess the doctor (Things, pg. 44). 

            Alan Alda is a man who apparently has his life together. The man he is and became is apparent in anything he does. When acting in M*A*S*H, especially, Alda made sure that the atrocities of war were shown. Never before had an comedy shown that. Alan Alda changed how a comedy should be acted out – he gave shows today depth and character. In conclusion, he has also inspired a whole generation of people to become doctors. 

Works Cited

Alda, Alan. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I’ve Learned. New York: Random             House, 2005.

Alda, Alan. Things I Overheard while Talking to Myself. New York: Random House, 2007.

Ross, Lillian. “Alda Onstage”. New Yorker. September 5, 2005. Vol. 81, Issue 26, pg. 56.

Berman, Ronald. “Sitcoms”. Journal of Aesthetic Education. Spring 1987. Vol. 21, Issue 1, pp.    5-19.