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Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce is called Hawkeye because, in the character’s backstory, his father named him after the central character in James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans. Alan Alda played Pierce in the television series; Hawkeye is a nickname, not a military rank or a name Alda invented.
Who is Hawkeye in MASH?
Hawkeye is Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce, the character played by Alan Alda in the television series. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History explains that Pierce’s father bestowed the nickname in reference to Cooper’s novel, The Last of the Mohicans.
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Where does the nickname come from?
In Pierce’s fictional backstory, his father chose “Hawkeye” after Cooper’s novel character. The nickname therefore has a literary origin within the story. It is not a military designation, and the television series did not give Pierce the name as an invention by Alda.
How the MASH story reached television
The television series came after two earlier versions of the story: the 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors, written by former MASH physician H. Richard Hornberger with W.C. Heinz under the pen name Richard Hooker, and Robert Altman’s 1970 feature film. The Television Academy describes the series as based on the film, which was based on the novel. The CBS series ran from 1972 to 1983, as recorded by the U.S. Department of War and the Television Academy Interviews.
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Those broadcast years are separate from the Korean War setting of the story. Cooper’s novel explains Hawkeye’s nickname; Hooker’s novel is the source of the MASH franchise.
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