How Alan Alda Got His First Acting Gig At The Tender Age Of Six Months Old

Alan Alda is known for his roles in several popular TV series and films, such as M*A*S*H, The Four Seasons, and The Aviator. The 87-year-old’s acting career kick-started early — he got his first role when he was just six years old, all thanks to his parents, who are both forerunners in the entertainment industry.

His father, Robert Alda, is known for movies like Rhapsody in Blue and The Beast with Five Fingers, while his mother, Joan Browne, was a former beauty pageant winner who acted on Broadway. Insofar as Alan is concerned, the former child star leveraged his early screen appearance and has built a wonderful career in Hollywood.

Alan Alda was first introduced to acting by his father, Robert Alda

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times Syndicate,  Robert Alda revealed that he gave his son, Alan Alda, his first appearance onstage. “I brought him onstage in his high chair in a revue we were doing at one of the Catskill resort hotels,” he told the news outlet. “This was in the ’30s when Major Bowes Amateur Hour was the hit of radio.”

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“Remember Bowes and the gong that he used to end a bad act? Joey Adams and I were starring in this revue which we called ‘Schooldays’ — we wore knickers, the chorus girls were in short gingham dresses,” Robert Alda revealed. “We put some things on Alan’s tray to play with in case he got bored, including a bell like a desk clerk uses. Alan didn’t need them. He seemed engrossed in the show… until the finale when Joey Adams had his big number.”

Robert further explained that Alan began to enjoy himself and eventually stole the show. At this point, Alan got the spotlight for the very first time. “As Joey began to sing, he hadn’t sung eight bars when Alan began to bang that bell with all his might,” Robert added. “The audience roared. It was like Major Bowes’ gong. It was the first laugh Alan ever got.”

Alan Alda credits his father, Robert Alda, for his brilliant performance in ‘M*A*S*H’

Alan, who was selected for the role of Hawkeye Pierce in the TV adaptation of the 1970 film M*A*S*H, which premiered in 1972, revealed in his biography that he owes his success in the TV series to the early introduction and training he received from his father.

“There were many things that made the show work: the writing; the skill of the actors and directors; the power of knowing that real people lived through these stories. But this feeling of being a group, sometimes an apparently disruptive group, and the connectedness, the energy, that came from it, was vital,” he wrote. “It transformed us; it kept us fresh and glad to be there. I had never been as comfortable working with actors since the days I had acted with the person I knew best – my father.”

Alan and Robert acted side by side on an episode of ‘M*A*S*H’

Alan further revealed that he and his father got the opportunity to work together on M*A*S*H during its third season, and it was so beautiful that Robert’s character, Dr. Anthony Borelli, was brought back during the eighth season.

“After a few seasons on M*A*S*H, I heard that my father had been asked to do an episode with us. I could see the excitement in his face, and I felt the same excitement. We hadn’t acted together for a long time,” Alan wrote. “He was playing a surgeon with a drinking problem, and the script called for a confrontation about his drinking at the end of the show. Just before we shot the scene, I found him sitting alone in the Swamp, going over his lines, and I asked if he wanted to run the scene with me. He said sure, and we started trading lines, but halfway through, I stopped. ‘Maybe if you did it like this’ … and I gave him a different reading,” Alan recalled. “This wasn’t one of the shows I was directing. I was stepping in where I shouldn’t have, but he let me.”