Gary Burghoff

Gary Burghoff
Burghoff at a convention in 2003
Born	Gary Rich Burghoff (1943-05-24) May 24, 1943 (age 73) Bristol, Connecticut, United States
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1967–2010
Spouse(s)	Janet Gayle (1971-1979) Elizabeth Bostrom (1985-2005)
Children	3

Gary Rich Burghoff (born May 24, 1943) is an American actor, known for playing Charlie Brown in the 1967 Off-Broadway musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and the character Corporal Walter Eugene "Radar" O'Reilly in the film M*A*S*H, as well as the TV series.

Burghoff was born in Bristol, Connecticut. He studied tap dance and became a drummer, despite having a congenital deformity of three fingers on his left hand. He gained early experience acting with the Belfry Players of Williams Bay, Wisconsin. In 1967 he originated the role of Charlie Brown in the original Off-Broadway production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. He was the drummer for a band called the Relatives in 1968. Actress Lynda Carter was the band's singer. The group opened at the Sahara Hotel and Casino lounge in Las Vegas, Nevada, and played there for three months. He and Carter remained friends, and she helped cast him in an episode of her later hit series The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, in the 1978 episode "The Man Who Wouldn't Tell".

Burghoff made his feature film debut in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970). Although several actors from the original film made guest appearances in the television series, Burghoff was the only actor cast as a regular, continuing in the role of Radar O'Reilly. Although he ostensibly played the same character in the series that he played in the film, Burghoff has cited differences in the portrayal: "In the original feature film MASH, I created Radar as a lone, darker and somewhat sardonic character; kind of a shadowy figure. I continued these qualities for a short time until I realized that the TV MASH characters were developing in a different direction from the film characters. It became a group of sophisticated, highly educated doctors (and one head nurse) who would rather be anywhere else and who understood the nature of the 'hellhole' they were stuck in. With Gelbart's help, I began to mold Radar into a more innocent, naïve character as contrast to the other characters, so that while the others might deplore the immorality and shame of war (from an intellectual and judgmental viewpoint), Radar could just REACT from a position of total innocence."