RADAR O'REILLY

'Corporal “Radar” O’Reilly' is a fictional character in the ''M
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In the Richard Hooker novels, Radar's full name is given as 'J. Robespierre O'Reilly', while on the TV series it is 'Walter Eugene O'Reilly'. (He is simply "Radar O'Reilly" in the film.)
In the film his best friend is Lt. Col Blake.

Contents

About the character

Changes

Relationship with others

Leaving M ★ A ★ S ★ H

Teddy Bear

Decorations

Trivia

Quotes

External links

About the character

The novel establishes that Radar was from Ottumwa, Iowa, and literally dreamed of joining the Army right after high school. He was endowed with extra-sensory perception, appearing at his commander’s side before being called and finishing his sentences. He also had super-human hearing, able to hear incoming helicopters before anyone else. It was these abilities which earned him the nickname, "Radar."
His father, who had been 63 when Radar was born, was deceased. Radar's mother, Edna, lived on the family farm, and his uncle Ed helped out on the farm and served as his father figure.
According to the beginning of the novel, Radar joined the Army in hopes of becoming successful in the Signal Corps, but was assigned to be an orderly in a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M
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Changes

On television, Radar's character started off worldly and sneaky, a clerk who carried with him at all times a pocketful of passes for any potential scam that might arise. At one point, he tried to mail home a Jeep, piece by piece. (Hawkeye commented that once Radar's mailman found out, he'd have a retroactive hernia.) He was known for his tremendous appetite for heaping portions of meat. He was also not averse to drinking Col. Blake's brandy and smoking his cigars when the colonel was off-duty. This character was apparently not wholly to the writers' liking, and he became a naïve and trusting farm boy, a vegetarian, and cigars and strong liquor made him ill or dizzy. His favorite beverage was a grape Nehi (non-alcoholic). In "The Novacaine Mutiny", it is revealed that Radar won $300 from Sgt. Zale in a poker game.

Relationship with others

Radar was often portrayed as a friendly, but very young man from the Midwest. As a symbol of how young this man was when he got to Korea, he slept with a teddy bear. He related well to children and sometimes spent time with the Korean orphans in the area. He was a virgin and very naïve around matters of love, making him an occasional romantic target of the camp's nurses.
Cpl. O'Reilly had a rough start as clerk at the 4077th, where it seemed he couldn't do anything right. The unit's commander, Lt. Col. Henry Blake, took him under his wing. Eventually, the young man became an excellent clerk, often balancing out Lt. Col. Blake's occasional silliness, with the near-magical abilities to get whatever the unit needed. Throughout much of the series, he was more or less the glue that held the 4077th together, keeping the unit running like a well-oiled machine.
Blake and Radar grew very close, and it was Radar who tearfully announced Blake's death over the Sea of Japan. While Radar needed some time to adjust to the new Col. Potter, he eventually became very close to Potter as well. Radar was very fond of animals and raised several during his duty at M
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★ H. For Col. Potter's anniversary, Radar gave him a horse that he, Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt rescued. Col Potter refers to the horse as a male during this episode. Throughout the rest of the series, however, the horse (referred to by name, Sophie) is a mare.
Radar idolized Hawkeye Pierce, but the two had a falling out after Radar was injured during a trip to Seoul, where Hawkeye convinced him to go to lose his virginity. Overwhelmed by shock and guilt, Hawkeye spent a night binge-drinking, then had to leave the O.R. (which he'd never had to do before) the next day to throw up. When Radar questioned Hawkeye about this, Hawkeye blew up, "To hell with your Iowa naïveté... and while we're at it, the hell with you! Why don't you grow up... you ninny!" When Hawkeye returned to apologize, Radar's response was, much to the horror of the nurses, "Oh yeah? Well, you can forget it. Just forget it! To hell with me, huh? To hell with you! How do you like that?!" and then threatened to punch Hawkeye if he ever said anything bad about Iowa again. The two made up later at Col. Potter's prompting, and afterward their relationship was on more of an equal footing, with Radar outgrowing his hero worship.
Radar's short stature was a frequent source of humor during his tenure, with Hawkeye and the other doctors teasing him for his lack of height. At one point, Radar actually bought shoes that came with lifts so that he could appear taller. The shoes almost made him eye level with Major Frank Burns.
As company clerk, his duties included passing on mail, messages and information to various camp personnel resulting in being the constant victim of "shooting the messenger" whenever it was bad news. This occurred numerous times with almost everybody ranging from waking Hawkeye to tell him that he's wanted somewhere where Hawkeye would verbally threaten him i.e. "I'll nail your tongue to your nose!" to informing Major Houlihan some bad news about her husband to where she would physically assault him.
Radar was portrayed as being an accomplished drummer and pianist, but a lousy bugler. He did a very good impersonation of John Wayne.
Under Col. Potter, his scrounging and semi-legal activities are strongly curtailed, seemingly out of respect for his commanding officer.
Radar's given first name is revealed in the Season 4 episode "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", when he asks a disturbed patient (who believes he is Jesus Christ) to bless his teddy bear. The patient complies, then blesses "Radar", who answers him "I'm Walter."
His name was revealed to the other members of 4077th during the viewing of a home movie sent by his mother, who addressed it to Walter (and says "I love you, Walter" to the camera). When Radar confirmed that this was his given name, Hawkeye Pierce suggested that he "give it back."
The only M
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Leaving M
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In the first three seasons of ''M
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In these two episodes, Radar was given a hardship discharge after his Uncle Ed died so that he could go home and help out on the farm. When the unit is in dire straits because they have no working generators, Radar decides that the 4077th needs him more than his mother does. Pierce and Potter try to convince Radar that he is making a mistake, but it takes Klinger's swindling a generator from supply to convince him that the 4077th will survive without him. Just as a farewell party for Radar is about to start, a helicopter of wounded soldiers arrives, immediately cancelling the party. The unit has no time to waste, but they manage to say their goodbyes to Radar. As Radar looks inside the main tent from the window, Hawkeye looks up at him and gives him a farewell salute. Radar salutes back. As a way of saying that Radar came to Korea as a boy and went home a man, he left his teddy bear behind, (as Dr. Sidney Freedman predicted he would in the episode "War of Nerves"), leaving it with Hawkeye. (The first cast member of ''M
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In the 1984 television movie, ''W
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Richard Hooker's series of ''M
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Teddy Bear

Radar's teddy bear had originally been found on the set by one of the actors. Throughout the series, Radar was known for sleeping with a teddy bear. This was added by the creators to symbolize Radar's youth and naïveté; it was also the source of several jokes throughout the series, which collectively formed a recurring joke in itself. In the second-to-last episode, "As Time Goes By", Hawkeye added the teddy bear to a time capsule with several other items from the camp, to commemorate those who came over as boys, and went home as men. On July 29, 2005, the teddy bear used in the series was sold at an auction for $11,800.

Decorations

★ Corporal's stripes

★ Purple Heart

★ Korean Service Medal

★ United Nations Service Medal

★ National Defense Service Medal

Trivia

★ Big Bird of ''Sesame Street'' has a teddy bear named Radar, a tribute to Radar O'Reilly's teddy bear and Radar O'Reilly himself.

★ Radar was not the first adult TV character to sleep with a teddy bear. Thurston Howell III, the millionaire on Gilligan's Island (which ran from 1964-1967) slept with one.

★ ''Stargate SG-1'' features a bespectacled NCO who is frequently responsible for keeping the show's main characters in operation, USAF Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman, played by Gary Jones. He was given the first name "Walter" in season four, which is generally assumed to be an homage to O'Reilly.

★ Radar was only in his late teens, but Gary Burghoff himself was almost 30 at the time the series began. Audiences were generally fooled by his short stature, boyish appearance, and prepubescent voice (so long as they disregarded his gradually receding hairline in later seasons).

★ Gary Burghoff's left hand is slightly (but visibly) deformed, which would ironically make him unfit for military service. This was sometimes covered up in the series by Radar holding a prop such as a clipboard in that hand or simply putting it in his pocket, while at other times the deformity is easily visible. Furthermore in an early episode when Trapper John loses Hawkeye's "long Johns" underwear to Radar in a poker game, Hawkeye rants about how Radar is 4 feet 11 inches tall and asthmatic-either one of which would have also made Radar unfit for military duty.

★ Having played the character in the feature film, the television series, and two of its spin-offs, Gary Burghoff is the only actor to portray Radar. ''Trapper John, M.D.'' is the only version or spin-off of ''M
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★ O'Reilly Media maintains a blog about new technologies entitled ''O'Reilly Radar'' [1].

★ With Radar's departure from the show, Hawkeye Pierce, Margaret Houlihan and Father Mulcahy were the only remaining characters on the ''M
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★ Burghoff also played Mrs. O'Reilly in one episode in a home movie, dressing in drag.

★ Burghoff was also the first adult actor to appear nude from the rear on broadcast television. In the episode, "The Sniper", Burghoff's towel fell off too early, revealing his bare buttocks for a noticeable amount of time.

★ In an early episode Hawkeye and Trapper John discover that Radar is sending a Jeep home piece by piece-Hawkeye comments about how Radar will become a future car salesman; another time Radar goes around camp selling wing-tip shoes; however in the episode where Radar goes home, he goes back to being a farmer-instead of a salesman.

Quotes

★ [repeated line, announcing helicopters bringing wounded from a far distance] "Choppers..."

★ "I'm afraid he's doing some very important sleeping for the Army right now."

★ "Ah, Bach!" (Love Story)

★ "Listen, buddy, we're a hospital! How would you like it if we fired patients at you?" (Bombed)

★ "I have a message... Lt. Colonel Henry Blake's plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan... It spun in. There were no survivors." (Abyssinia, Henry)

★ "I've looked everywhere except the nurses' showers. Oh no, sir, I couldn't look in there, there might be naked female personnel showering with their clothes off!" (The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan)

★ "I don't think this place is turning out to be that great an experience for me. I mean, I work under terrible pressure and everything, and there's a lot of death and destruction and stuff, but outside of that I don't think I'm really getting much out of it." (Fallen Idol)

External links

★ Finest-Kind.net - ''M
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★ Best Care Anywhere - ''M
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