Hawkeye’s red robe on MASH is as iconic as the character. He’s seen wearing it throughout the series. What says “I shouldn’t be here” more than a bathrobe? But is it really red? Or is it, as Hawkeye himself once said, purple? Hawkeye’s color-changing robe has confused some fans, and some curious internet conclusions have arisen as a result. So, is Hawkeye’s bathrobe purple even though it looks red on screen?
(Estimated reading time: 15 minutes: skip to the key summary points, if desired) We know that TV screens and color technology do not always show things as they look in person. But a purple robe couldn’t be mistaken for red, and at times, even bright red, could it? Well, I’m here to tell you that your eyes did not deceive you, but somebody’s eye for color was certainly a bit off.
Hawkeye’s “Red” Bathrobe
When Hawkeye wasn’t wearing his fatigues or surgical gear, he was wearing his Hawaiian shirt or maybe his colorful Kimono. But the clothing we are most familiar with and identify with the character is his red bathrobe with MD USA embroidered on the left pocket. The specific shade of the robe changes depending on your screen. Sometimes it’s more on the brown side, sometimes more on the blue side. And sometimes it’s even moving over to the purple range. But if you had to pick a color, you’d probably pick red.
Hawkeye Calls His Robe Purple
Then, in Season 10, Episode 17, titled Where There’s a Will, There’s a War, Hawkeye confuses everyone by calling his robe purple. In this episode, I-Corps sends word that the battalion aid needs a surgeon. It’s B.J.’s turn to go, but he is off on leave in Seoul, so Hawkeye has to go instead. At the aid station, the casualties keep coming. Hawkeye finds out that the surgeon he is replacing was just killed by a mortar the day before, so he naturally fears for his life. Amid the boom and rattle of shells being dropped close by, Hawkeye writes his Last Will and Testament.
Hawkeye narrates what he is writing in his will as he writes it. He leaves most of his possessions to his dad, but he saves a few precious and symbolic items for his family at the 4077th. He wants to start with B.J., but he can’t think of what he wants to give him. So, instead, he starts with Charles, saying:
To Charles Emerson Winchester III, who during the dark days of war made himself available…you’ve been the victim of a ceaseless stream of dumb jokes. Though we may have wounded your pride, you’ve never lost your dignity. I therefore bequeath to you the most dignified thing I own: My bathrobe. Purple is the color of royalty.
The internet sources that address this confusion come to one of two conclusions. According to Monster MASH Wiki and this MeTV article, we have all been mistaken, and Hawkeye’s robe is actually purple. These sources reference the photo of Hawkeye’s robe on the Smithsonian History Website, saying that in the image, the robe is purple. Therefore, our TV screens have been lying to us all these years. A competing conclusion is that Hawkeye calling the robe purple is a humorous statement, intended to be a final joke on Charles.
Hawkeye is Joking About the Color of His Robe?
Starting with the latter, Hawkeye does not appear to be joking in the episode. There is no chuckle in his voice, and he sounds quite somber and sincere. If calling the joke purple is supposed to be a way of saying that Charles is not truly dignified, it’s a lame joke for the likes of Hawkeye and a bit feeble. Even Hawkeye knows that one thing Charles is, despite all his pompous arrogance, is dignified. In the scene, Hawkeye seems to really want to express appreciation for Charles, despite all the arguing and “bad jokes.” I do not believe that when Hawkeye calls his robe purple instead of red, he means it as a joke.
Is the Robe On the Smithsonian Website Purple?
That leaves us with our lying eyes. However, the robe shown on the Smithsonian site is not purple. It is a dark red on the brown side. If we’re giving it a specific name, I think most of us would call it maroon! And it’s certainly not a violet-red, nor did it ever appear so, as the MeTV article also states. To me, the robe displayed on the Smithsonian site does not look much different from the robe when it was worn by Hawkeye on the show. And, it looks much the same on my computer screen, phone screen, and tablet screen. Sorry, Wiki people and MeTV; ya’ll are confused. That’s a red robe.
What’s going on with these sources, I believe, may have been the same thing that happened with the writers of that episode, David Pollock and Elias Davis, and with Alan Alda himself, who directed the episode and surely would have picked up on the color error in the script had he realized it.
Confusion Over the Color Purple
Some people, because of some similar undertones in the colors and their general complexity, think of maroon as being a purple or purplish color. It’s not. Purple is purple; maroon is maroon. Regardless, this kind of confusion happens all the time with more complex colors.
Maroon can sometimes have blue undertones, and purple can sometimes have red undertones. The fact that we address all such colors as just “maroon” or “purple” easily leads to this type of problem.
In fact, I would probably call burgundy maroon, but burgundy is a mixture of red and purple, while maroon is a mixture of red and brown. When I used my color picker tool on the robe image at the Smithsonian, it definitely registered more in the red-brown area, and not in the red-purple area. Regardless, the close similarity between all these colors could lead someone to think of a color you and I think of as maroon or dark red as being purple.
To be clear, true purple is a mix of blue and red. Some purple has more red, so darker reds may be seen as purple even though they have little to no blue in them. It can all be very confusing. You’d have every right to consider it my opinion, rather than a fact. Many people consider burgundy and maroon to be pretty much interchangeable.
In the second image above, I’ve compared a scene with Hawkeye wearing his robe with a burgundy and a maroon background. I’ve also superimposed a partial image of the Smithsonian robe for comparison. I believe that some readers might find the robe to seem more purple, closer to the burgundy side, and some may find it more brown, closer to the maroon side. Some may think it falls somewhere in between, which is closer to correct. I may not be able to change your opinion on what you see, but if you look closely, you may agree that the robe is, indeed, closer to maroon (the brown side), than to burgundy (the blue side). The fact that this is so ambiguous illustrates why so many people would agree that the robe is “purple.”
However, in terms of shear color components, it is more towards the brown than the blue, meaning it is more maroon, technically. You may also find that the look of the robe seems to change depending on which background you are concentrating on. No wonder there is so much confusion over the red to purple robe. In my opinion, the robe is not purple or burgundy; it is maroon, and thus red.
Other Red Things On MASH
However, there is a better way to settle the debate as to what is red on MASH and what is purple. All we need to do is reference other things on the show that are clearly red. There is plenty of blood seen staining the front of the doctors’ surgical robes. If we compare how that looks on the screen to Hawkeye’s robe, we can see that the robe looks like the blood. The blood, although it is fake, is clearly intended to be red.
We can also take Hawkeye’s own word for what is red. In Season 7, Episode 2, Peace On Us, Hawkeye, just after a surgery session, tired of the war and everything about it, goes on a tirade about everything being green, saying, “I’m so sick of green; everything is green!”
He wishes for another color, any other color, like red. Referencing the blood stain on the front of his surgical robe, he says, “Not this kind of red. Red that’s rosy, red that’s cheery. I’m not asking much: A red handkerchief; red fringe…”
When he mentions fringe, he touches the red fringe of the yellow lamp in the Swamp. As Potter walks in, he then takes the fringe from the lamp and begins to affix it to his green fatigue shirt, clearly adding something red to his uniform.
It is quite possible that the red stain on Hawkeye’s clothing, and other similar stains on the show, could appear to be somewhat on the purple side at times, depending on your screen. It is clearly supposed to be red. The red fringe is plainly referenced as red. Comparing the blood and the red fringe to Hawkeye’s robe, which he also wears in the episode, reveals that the robe is a similar color: It’s red, not purple.
Where Did Hawkeye Get His Robe?
Need further evidence of the robe’s color? Well, Hawkeye’s robe was not random. Why did it say MD USA on the pocket, for example? In reality, Hawkeye was wearing a US Army Hospital Robe or medical convalescence robe. These robes were issued by the Army in various colors, and it makes perfect sense that a doctor in Korea got his hands on one. These corduroy cotton robes came in maroon, the color of Hawkeye’s robe, and they came in burgundy, which looks much more purple. They also came in various other colors.
This robe is a maroon and is more like Hawkeyes, although quite faded. The neck ties have been removed. Here is an Army medical robe that is burgundy. As you can see, it looks much more obviously purple than Hawkeye’s robe, being in the red-blue range instead of the red-brown range. The robes came in several other colors, including blue and black. There are also robes with the pocket in a different position.
This brings me to something brought up by the MASH Historian. He believes that there may have been two different robes, as he recalls seeing a robe with the pocket in a different position. It is also quite possible that Hawkeye began the series with a maroon robe, and at some point started wearing a burgundy robe, which looks more purple. With the film technology they used, these two colors do not always look that different.
Even the picture of the robe he shows on his website, which he believes looks more purple, is a dark “pink.” This color is more toward the brown than the blue and it doesn’t have enough blue in it to truly be classed as a purple. On the other hand, the actual burgundy robe I referenced above is much more solidly toward the blue, and thus in the purple range. Again, these colors are often confused.
You Can Purchase These Robes – Adding to the Confusion
Another aspect of this never-ending color joke is that you can find and purchase these Army medical robes online. The problem is that there are online images where individuals have purchased one of these robes in a burgundy color and labelled the robe “Hawkeye’s Robe.” This causes casual observers to think this is the actual TV prop and then observe that the robe does indeed look a bit more purple than they thought.
Conclusion: It’s RED!
When you saw Hawkeye’s robe, season after season, as being either red, bright red, or some shade of darker red, this was the influence of your TV screen, lighting, and film color technology. But, regardless of the specifics, it was never purple. It was, and remains, red. Someone may have gotten their wires crossed when Hawkeye bequeathed the robe to Charles and said, “Purple is the color of royalty.”
We could speculate that they knew that the robe was not purple and just wanted to use the color purple to refer to Charles’s dignity. I very much doubt that to be true, as the robe was just too visible throughout the series. While it’s attractive to provide a definitive answer (your eyes lie – the robe is purple), the likely answer is that the episode writers, and Alan Alda himself, were clearly confused about the color purple in the way I’ve described.
Unless the MASH historian is right about there being two different robes and I am right about the original maroon robe being switched out to a burgundy one (more purple). I do not think this is true, though, because a burgundy version would have looked less red and more obviously purplish, and at no point in the series does this occur.
Even the Smithsonian page says, “Hawkeye’s corduroy bathrobe looks purple in real life, but comes across as red on camera.” I suspect that most sources are repeating this because, if you can’t trust the Smithsonian, who can you trust? What you have to realize is that this is an article written for the website, not an official viewpoint. According to the author blurb at the bottom, the author is a Program Assistant in the Division of Armed Forces History who also volunteers with the Division of Culture and the Arts. I do not mean to cast aspersions, but, well, she’s just wrong, in my opinion. It doesn’t look purple.
In the image above, I’ve altered Hawkeye’s robe (right) to illustrate the difference between a true purple and the shade he wears in the scene (left), in case anyone reading this is also unclear about the distinction between maroon (a dark red) and purple.
There will no doubt continue to be various interpretations of the color of the robe. I understand why so many people think that the color of the robe looks purple. However, strictly speaking, it is not.
Trapper Once Wore a Red Robe Too
Among the things that happened only once, in the pilot episode, was Trapper also wearing a red MD robe of the same kind that Hawkeye wears. For whatever reason, it was then decided to make the red robe the province of only Hawkeye. Trapper wore two other bathrobes, however. In The Moose (Season 1, Episode 5), he wore a blue bathrobe. Any other time he wore a bathrobe, it was yellow.
Trapper would more often wear regular army fatigues, although not in a very regulation way. He would wear other things as well, Japanese-style robes, Hawaiian shirts, etc. But, he didn’t have a “standard” item of non-military clothing like Hawkeye did. You could argue that Hawkeye’s blue-printed Hawaiian shirt was fairly standard, as well.
Key Summary Points
- Hawkeye’s iconic red bathrobe on MASH sparks curiosity and debate among fans.
- The rob appears to shift between red and purple on different screens; it also sometimes appears to be brighter red and sometimes more brownish-red.
- In Season 10, Episode 17, Hawkeye refers to his robe as purple, adding to the confusion. This has led to two main conclusions on the internet:
- Some sources, like Monster Mash Wiki and MeTV, claim the robe is actually purple.
- Others believe that Hawkeye’s statement is intended to be a humorous joke about Charles’ dignity.
- The image of the robe in an article on the Smithsonian website is shown with a caption stating the robe is purple, although the robe actually appears to be maroon.
- Most sources seem to be deriving their statements about the robe being purple from this Smithsonian article.
- The confusion arises from perceived similarities between the colors maroon, purple, and burgundy.
- While maroon is a mixture of red and brown, purple is a mixture of blue and red.
- These perceptions lead to confusion about the robe’s color.
- Similar burgundy versions of these robes exist, and these images add to the confusion.
- Comparing the robe to other red things on the show, such as blood stains or red fringes, shows that the color of the robe is indeed red (maroon, or dark red-brown).
- Hawkeye’s robe is not a prop for the show. It is actually a US Army Hospital Robe, which is why it is embroidered with USA MD.
- These robes were issued in various colors, including maroon, burgundy, blue, and black.
- Maroon versions of the robe appear to match Hawkeye’s robe more closely, while existing burgundy versions do not, but confuse the issue.
- In conclusion, Hawkeye’s robe is, and always was, RED!
