Jamie Farr

Jamie Farr, born Jameel Joseph Farah on July 1, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, is an American comedian and actor. His father, Samuel Farah, was an immigrant from the Beqaa Valley region of present-day Lebanon who had passed through Ellis Island under the surname Abboud before adopting his own father's first name as a family name; he operated a grocery store and raised his family as part of Toledo's Antiochian Orthodox community. Farr's mother, Jamelia, was a first-generation Lebanese American seamstress who had grown up in Iowa. Farr grew up in northern Toledo alongside an older sister, Yvonne, who died in 2012.

His introduction to performing came at age eleven, when he earned two dollars by winning a local acting competition. While attending Woodward High School, from which he graduated in 1952, he worked at his father's grocery store and delivered two Toledo newspapers each day. After moving to California, he enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse, where an MGM talent scout spotted him and arranged a screen test. He appeared in the 1955 MGM film The Blackboard Jungle in the role of Santini, credited at the time under his birth name, Jameel Farah. He would not adopt the name Jamie Farr until 1959, following his military service. During his Pasadena Playhouse years he also worked at a chinchilla farm to supplement his income. Sherwood Schwartz, having seen Farr in an unsold television pilot, cast him on The Red Skelton Show in 1955 in the recurring role of Snorkel. Farr became a regular on the program, and when Skelton later traveled to Japan and Korea for a USO tour, he specifically requested Farr as his assistant.

Farr was drafted in 1957 and completed basic training at Fort Ord in California. Designated a Broadcast Specialist, he worked on training films at Fort Knox, the Army Pictorial Service, and Fort Huachuca before deploying to Korea, where he served with the Special Services and worked on the Far East Network. After two years of active duty he returned to the United States for an additional two years on reserve, followed by two years on inactive reserve. When his father died shortly after his return, Farr considered leaving acting to provide financial support for his mother. Red Skelton intervened, giving him money to send home and hiring him as a writer.

Throughout the 1960s, Farr took small roles on television series including The Danny Kaye Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, My Three Sons, and Garrison's Gorillas, and appeared in films such as The Greatest Story Ever Told, No Time for Sergeants, Who's Minding the Mint?, and With Six You Get Eggroll. In October 1972, he was hired for a single day's work on the fourth episode of the CBS series M*A*S*H, playing Corporal Maxwell Klinger, a soldier attempting to obtain a Section 8 psychiatric discharge by wearing women's clothing. At the time, Farr's primary concern was the $250 paycheck, which he needed for groceries and rent. The producers repeatedly declined to offer him a contract, a situation Farr attributed to a desire to avoid raising his salary, and he was not brought on as a series regular until season four in 1975. Like Farr himself, Klinger was a Lebanese American from Toledo, which allowed Farr to incorporate references to the city into his dialogue, including mentions of Tony Packo's Cafe and the Toledo Mud Hens baseball team. As the series progressed, Klinger was promoted to company clerk and gradually stopped wearing women's clothing, a change made partly to reflect the character's maturity and partly because Farr did not want his two young children teased about the role. By the series finale, only Alan Alda and Loretta Swit had appeared in more episodes than Farr. He was also the only cast member who had actually served in Korea, and the dog tags he wore as Klinger were his own from his military service.

Following M*A*S*H's conclusion in 1983, Farr joined Harry Morgan and William Christopher in reprising their roles for two seasons on the spinoff AfterMASH. He also played the Sheik in The Cannonball Run, Cannonball Run II, and Speed Zone, becoming the only actor to appear in all three films in that series. During the late 1970s he appeared regularly as a celebrity judge on The Gong Show and made frequent appearances on game shows including The $100,000 Pyramid, Super Password, and Body Language. He also developed an unsold pilot for a game show called Oddball for NBC. Between the 1970s and early 1990s, he appeared in made-for-television movies including Murder Can Hurt You, Return of the Rebels, and Combat Academy, and guest starred on series such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Emergency!, and Murder She Wrote. He was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

Farr made his Broadway debut in 1992 in Guys and Dolls, playing Nathan Detroit, a role he had wanted since seeing the production during his high school years. He stepped into the part on short notice, replacing Nathan Lane with only two weeks of preparation and a single full-cast rehearsal before opening. In 1997, he played Oscar Madison in a production of The Odd Couple opposite William Christopher, his former M*A*S*H costar, who portrayed Felix Unger. His additional stage work has included Flamingo Court opposite Anita Gillette, Say Goodnight Gracie, The Last Romance, George Washington Slept Here, Catch Me If You Can, Don't Dress for Dinner, Lend Me a Tenor, Tuesdays with Morrie, and Oklahoma!.

Farr published his autobiography, Just Farr Fun, in 1994. In 2003, he and his wife co-wrote Hababy's Christmas Eve, a book based on a story Klinger tells about a family of camels who guided the Wise Men to the manger. Between 2007 and 2008, he served as one of three rotating hosts, alongside Chuck Woolery and Bob Eubanks, of the $250,000 Game Show Spectacular at the Las Vegas Hilton, and hosted a daily radio travel feature called Travelin' Farr. On Memorial Day 2007, he hosted a multi-episode M*A*S*H marathon on the Hallmark Channel, providing commentary during commercial breaks. Between 2016 and 2018, he promoted M*A*S*H and other classic television series on MeTV, and in 2022 he hosted M*A*S*H: The Best By Farr, a program in which he offered commentary on his favorite episodes to mark the show's fiftieth anniversary. That same year he was attending large-scale fan events including Comic Con.