Saturday, February 16, 2013

M*A*S*H was a S*M*A*S*H



107
That is the number of days M*A*S*H played Salisbury movie screens. That is a lot. Over three calendar months.

Here was a movie, adapted for the screen by Ringgold Wilmer "Ring" Lardner Jr., once an American journalist and screenwriter blacklisted during the Red Scare of the late 1940s and 1950s and the last surviving member of the Hollywood Ten at the time of his death in 2000.

A movie about the Korean War released during the Vietnam War. Risky, many in the industry said. But Twentieth Century Fox took a chance, and the chance reaped huge dividends, both on the theatre screen and the TV screen as well.
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M*A*S*H played sixteen different times in Salisbury (the initial engagement lasted three weeks).

May 8 - 28, 1970 - TERRACE THEATRE
August 14 - 20, 1970 - CAPITOL THEATRE
December 17 - 19, 1970 - SALISBURY DRIVE-IN THEATRE
May 21 - 27, 1971 - TERRACE THEATRE
July 25 - 29, 1971 - SALISBURY DRIVE-IN THEATRE
May 19 - 25, 1972 - CAPITOL THEATRE
July 21 - 27, 1972 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
January 6, 1973 - TERRACE THEATRE
February 16 - 22, 1973 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
June 29 - July 2, 1973 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
December 5 - 11, 1973 - TERRACE THEATRE
June 21 - 27, 1974 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
June 6 - 12, 1975 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
February 18 - 20, 1977 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
June 24 - 30, 1977 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE
May 11 - 17, 1979 - THUNDERBIRD DRIVE-IN THEATRE