Letter, we get letters

Here’s a question that went from “possible” Friday to entire post.

It’s from Glenn:

Ken, possible Friday question, regarding viewer mail: Do you have any letters you might be able to share here (after removing names and addresses, of course)? I'd love to see what MASH fans were writing in about at the height of the show ("Where can I find that dress Klinger wore last night?")

I didn’t save the letters. I sure wish I did.

On MASH we would get angry letters saying we were anti-American, Commies, that sort of thing. If we received a letter without a return address it was a good bet it was from a troll or idiot.

The network would also get angry letters about our show and they would graciously forward them to us.

But most of the mail we received was complimentary. Sometimes a viewer had a question or wondered if we were going to bring Colonel Flagg back.  And yes, we got inquiries all the time about Klinger's wardrobe. 

We also received unsolicited scripts, which for legal purposes, we had to send back unopened.

On every show I worked on I received mail from people saying “I look just like so-and-so. You should do an episode where I play her sister.” They would always include a picture and NEVER once did they look even remotely like the actor they thought was their doppelganger. Oh, the laughs we had in the writers room passing around those photos. Imagine Mick Jagger thinking he’s Suzanne Pleshette’s identical twin.

The majority of viewer mail went directly to the actors. And in many cases they were addressed to the characters’ names. The post office knew to send letters addressed to “Hawkeye Pierce, 4077th MASH, Korea” to 20th Century Fox in Los Angeles. They knew to send Paramount all correspondence addressed to “Diane Chambers, Cheers bar, Boston, Ma.”

You’d think this would happen two or three times a year. Try hundreds. Maybe thousands.

Sometimes "Hawkeye" would be asked for medical advice.  Or "Frasier" would be asked for relationship advice.  

Actors receive lots of marriage proposals. And fan mail from prisons. Writers don’t get any of that.

Usually if someone sends a letter to an actor on a show he will receive some response. Most of the time it’s from a staff member. Generally a thank you with a photo. Occasionally the star will write back himself. Some are very good about providing autographs, others just send printed autographed photos.

We writers get requests for scripts from time to time. I always try to accommodate them. Now if a young writer wants a script from a show I suspect they can just email the request to the show and if granted, they receive a pdf. And that’s cool except there’s nothing like getting a package in the mail with the logo of the show or studio.

I don’t know whether shows get as much mail today as they once did. Before the internet and social media the only way to express your opinion of a show, yay or nay, was to write letters. Now you can just go on a fan site and chances are the writing staff will read it.

Of course how many letters these days are not getting delivered because, unlike the postal service, the internet doesn’t know how to deliver email sent to Supergirl@Nationalcity.com or TonySoprano@mafia.org?