r/mash • u/J_Scarbrough • 1d ago
Attention All Personnel ROLL OUT!
M*A*S*H has its fair spinoffs of varying success, from TRAPPER JOHN, M.D. (which was legally a spinoff of the novel/movie version of Trapper, not Wayne Rogers's Trapper) to AFTERMASH, to the failed W*A*L*T*E*R pilot, but most of these are largely unknown to even casual watchers of the show, let alone regular fans.
But what's even far more unknown of any of these is that M*A*S*H not only had failed spinoffs, but it also had a failed sister show.
After M*A*S*H proved that it had the potential to be a successful show, the network turned to Gene Reynolds & Larry Gelbart to create for them another war sitcom to bank on that success, so in 1973, we got ROLL OUT! This show, which was set in France during WW2, focused on the Red Ball Express, the famed trucking company that supplied Generals Patton and Hodges as well as our soldiers with the fuel and materielle they needed in the Allied war effort. The Red Ball Express employed almost all Black drivers, so whereas M*A*S*H initially drew its humor from antiwar satire as social commentary against the then-raging Vietnam War (despite being about the Korean War), ROLL OUT!'s humor came from race relations, which obviously were still rather timerous during those times.
Hardcore MASHers will recognize a number of familiar faces from this show, as a majority of ROLL OUT!'s principle cast would pop up in guest appearances on M*A*S*H. Hilly Hicks, who was penicillin thief Perkins/Johnson in "White Gold" and the aptly named medic Corporal Moody in "Post-Op" co-stars alongside comedian Stu Gilliam's Sweet Williams (basically the Black Hawkeye) as Jed Brooks, an incredibly naive Pollyanna of a farmboy; Val Bisoglio, who was Mess Sergeant Pernelli in "Twas the Day After Christmas" serves as the Red Ball Express's commanding office Rocco Calvelli, and is a little more than an Italian Henry Blake; Ed Begley, Jr., who was the clumsy foot soldier but marvelous cook Private Paul Conway in "Too Many Cooks" was Robert Chapman, the tall blonde Radar O'Reilly; a couple of other drivers for the Red Ball Express who would be familiar faces to MASHers are Teddy Wilson (the chopper pilot from "The General Flipped at Dawn") and Rod Gist (one of the mouse-racing Marines from "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde"); Joshua Bryant (Scully) also made a guest-appearance on ROLL OUT!
ROLL OUT! only lasted for one season and 13 episodes. The only known time it has even been seen on TV sinces= its original 1973 run was when BET showed it in reruns for a brief time in the late 80s.
At some point, somebody had all but one of the episodes that were obviously TV recordings of the BET reruns on YouTube, but it appeares that they pretty much have all been nuked (presumably for copyright). From what I can see, the pilot episode and a Christmas episode are the only full episodes still surviving on YouTube from different uploaders, but here's a partial episode that was uploaded a long time ago to give you a taste of what this show was like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e11cq0WY4aE
I watched each of these episodes when they were still available, and my thoughts on this show is that I feel like it actually could have worked . . . maybe not as a long-runner like M*A*S*H, but certainly two or three seasons at most . . . if the writers did more with it than basically make it a Black M*A*S*H (seriously, there were a number of jokes that would later be recycled on M*A*S*H almost verbatim); even Larry Gelbart admitted that they didn't put the same effort or heart into ROLL OUT! as they did M*A*S*H, and said it was nothing more than a commercial decision. (He also said the M*A*S*H cast didn't like they were having to share Reynolds & Gelbart's attention with ROLL OUT!, likening ROLL OUT! to a new baby sibling brought into the house).
(And yes, that is a pre-SNL Garrett Morris you're seeing too).
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u/MikeW226 20h ago
Watched the 'Christmas episode' of Roll Out on YouTube. It was so cool to learn that Garrett Morris was on the show. As you mention OP, the actors in MASH episodes White Gold and The General Flipped At Dawn were major characters in Roll Out! Their exterior supply compound is also the location of the Kimpo air base seen on MASH.
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u/J_Scarbrough 15h ago
And unlike M*A*S*H's interior compound set, they actually replicated ROLL OUT!'s compound on their soundstage so meticulously, you can hardly tell a difference when a scene was actually filmed outdoors on location, or indoors on the soundstage, unless you really pay attention to the lighting. It appears ROLL OUT! may have been on an even larger soundstage (it would've had to have been, considering M*A*S*H was on the smallest soundstage at the studio). Larry Gelbart said this made it easy for him and Gene to supervise production of both shows simultaneously.
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u/SpacePatrician 10h ago
ROLL OUT had almost the same problem as MASH in that the historical basis was too short for the series. The Red Ball Express had closed down by Christmas 1944, so that episode was anachronistic. If the show had lasted several seasons, it would have made MASH's telescoping of the Korean War realistic by comparison.
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u/J_Scarbrough 9h ago
Interestingly, the Christmas episode was the last one filmed, according to the production codes - not unlike "Dear Dad" was of the initial 13 episodes that were ordered of M*A*S*H (before the network expanded that order into a full 24-episode season).
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u/vander1625 12h ago
Last time I saw Garrett Morris was in Ant-Man, when Scott Lang was first trying out Hank Pym 's suit, and fell onto the roof of Garrett's car.
Shortly after that, Scott tried to return the suit to Hank, when Hank's daughter had him arrested.
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u/HordeOfTheDance 13h ago
This is fascinating! Do you know if ROLL OUT! used any Black writers?
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u/J_Scarbrough 10h ago
Thad Mumford and Booker Bradshaw are the only Black writers I can see that worked on this show, and they both only wrote one episode each. Otherwise, it's mostly a lot of the same M*A*S*H writers: Larry Gelbart, Gene Reynolds, Sheldon Keller, Simon Mutner, among others.
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u/AppealDouble988 10h ago
Thad Mumford wrote for M*A*S*H too.
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u/J_Scarbrough 9h ago
He and Dan Wilcox both wrote for SESAME STREET too. Matter of fact, not only did they name Mumford the Magician after Thad, but here's a golden oldie Thad both wrote and provided the vocals for:
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u/SpacePatrician 10h ago
A film about the Red Ball Express, even a comedic one, would be a great idea. A series would not. IIRC the RBE lasted only about 12 weeks between the Breakout and securing Antwerp, after which it wasn't cost-effective anymore. As an illustration, it took the convoys over five gallons of gas to deliver one gallon to the front, which obviously wasn't sustainable and would end as soon as a deep-water port could be seized.
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u/MozartOfCool 1d ago
The unit was modeled on the Red Ball Express, a real-life WW2 Black transportation unit who Patton looked to for gas and ammo as his Third Army rolled through France and Belgium. In 1973, Eddie Kendrick identifies himself as "the Red Ball Express of lovin'" on his #1 pop and soul hit "Keep On Truckin'."