Gary Burghoff
Gary Burghoff is an actor, born 1943.
Before he was Radar, Burghoff was Charlie Brown. He originated the part in the 1967 Off-Broadway musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which is a useful thing to know about him, because the quality he brought to that stage is the one he later carried into uniform: a small, soft-voiced, slightly anxious decency that reads as younger than the actor playing it.
The 1970 film M*A*S*H gave him Corporal Walter Eugene O'Reilly, and Burghoff is the rare case of a performer who followed his own character out of a feature and into the television version of it. What he did with Radar was quieter than anything else in the camp. The leads were built on verbal speed and insubordination; Burghoff played the one man there who was neither funny nor cynical, and got laughs anyway, largely by being half a second ahead of everybody. The bit the character is remembered for, finishing a superior officer's sentence before it is spoken, only works because he underplayed it every single time. He holds a Primetime Emmy for supporting work in a comedy series.
Away from the unit he was a fixture of daytime television, sitting on the Match Game panel for 204 episodes between 1974 and 1979 after stepping in for Charles Nelson Reilly, then returning as a recurring guest for years afterwards. He came back to Radar once more for AfterMASH, the stateside spin-off, an experiment that mostly demonstrated how much of the original had depended on the war still being on.
Movies (1)
TV (4)
Where to start with Gary Burghoff
Start with M*A*S*H, the film, and not because it is better than the series. It is a colder, meaner, more chaotic thing, and Burghoff's Radar is the one fixed sane point in it, which tells you exactly what the character was built to do before a long run softened him.
Then go to M*A*S*H and watch the early episodes specifically, when Radar is still a scrounger and a bit of an operator rather than the camp mascot. The later years are warmer and less interesting.
AfterMASH is for completists and for anyone curious about what these characters look like with nothing left to survive. The Good Guys and Dinah! are footnotes, though the daytime work matters more than it looks: the Match Game panel, which is not among the credits listed here, is where a whole generation actually saw him week to week.