Even Jamie Farr has troubles with being hacked.

Just before his scheduled phone interview late last month, the 88-year-old actor and Toledo native got some fishy emails indicating that his bank account had been compromised. “There’s so many scams going on. It really tires the public, don’t you think?” he asked wearily.

But the eternally optimistic Farr was determined not to let it ruin his day. He contacted Geek Squad and scheduled an appointment so they could sort it out.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the iconic TV show that made the actor a household name.

“These comic cons are amazing,” Farr said. “It’s remarkable how many people turn out. M*A*S*H was a show that wasn’t just for entertainment. It was a show of inspiration to a lot of people who had problems in their lives, and the show helped them get through those problems. And many of them were inspired to get into medicine. We get that a lot.

“This year, we’ve been pretty busy. We’ve been on the covers of all kinds of magazines and periodicals and podcasts that people have asked us to do. Even MeTV which presents M*A*S*H nightly has done special things on us. It’s quite an honor.”

Five decades after M*A*S*H premiered on Sept. 17, 1972, Farr is still making new fans all over the world. He’s often asked to film personalized greetings on Cameo, a platform that allows fans to solicit personalized videos from participating celebrities, which thrills him to no end.

“I do these Cameos and I’ve got a lot of requests from parents whose 16-year-old children love the show and watch it. So I’ll wish them a happy birthday or congratulations on their graduation,” Farr said.

“Loretta and I just marvel at the way we are thought of by the people who watch the series. I was going through security at one place and the policemen were there, and they were, ‘Oh my goodness! A living legend.’ It’s just unbelievable.”

Unbelievably just about sums up Farr’s life. His story begins in North Toledo during World War II, when a skinny Lebanese boy named Jameel Joseph Farah lived with his parents and sister in a mixed neighborhood of Greeks, Jews, Italians, and Latinx families.

“Auto-Lite Spark Plugs was my backyard. We lived on Michigan Street and my poor mother, whenever she did the washing on Mondays, she would hang up the clothes in the backyard and they’d get soot on them from the factory. So she’d have to wash them again,” Farr said with a chuckle.

As a teenager, Farr delivered papers for The Blade, and he can still remember smelling the aromas of all the different kinds of food that filled the neighborhood streets around 5 p.m., when he would make his deliveries.

“When I sold The Blade subscriptions, I got rewarded for selling a lot of them by being taken to a Detroit Tigers game against the Boston Red Sox, and I got to see Ted Williams play,” Farr recalled.

Farr’s dad owned a grocery store at the corner of Locust and North Ontario streets, and he would save the ends of cold cuts for the hungry homeless residents in the neighborhood.

“In those days, you didn’t call them homeless — they were tramps or hobos — and they would stop in, and my dad would make them a sandwich,” Farr said. “They would ask if they could do anything in return, and my dad would say, ‘No, that’s perfectly all right.’ It was a wonderful, wonderful neighborhood. I’m fortunate, even at my age, I still have friends who live in that area.”

Farr remembered sitting on a playground swing at Riverside Park (now Jamie Farr Park) one fateful night in 1952 on the eve of leaving for California to pursue his acting career. Farr got his first break by early television pioneer Red Skelton, whose main writer Sherwood Schwartz (later the creator of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island) noticed “the kid with the big nose” in a TV pilot that never went anywhere. Schwartz cast him on Skelton’s live variety show.

After appearing on The Red Skelton Show a few times, Farr was drafted into the Army and was shipped out to Japan. As fortune would have it, Skelton came out to Korea to entertain the G.I.s, and Skelton asked for — and received — Farr’s assistance in his stage show.

“Red said, ‘When you get back to the States and you try to resurrect your career, come see me,’” Farr said.

On Aug. 22, 1959 — the day after Hawaii was made a state, as Farr remembers it — he shipped back out to California to once again pursue acting. But then Farr’s father suddenly died at 62, leaving his mother with no money.

Farr figured he had to move to Phoenix, Ariz., where his mother was now living to help take care of her. Dejected, he went to say goodbye to Skelton, who after hearing the news about Farr’s mother, pulled out a wad of bills and asked the young actor, “How much do you need? You work for me now.” Skelton thrust a stack of bills into the bewildered young man’s hand and said, “Here, send that to your mom. You’re now under contract to me and I’ll see you at the house tomorrow.’”

Skelton also gave Farr a St. Christopher medal that he still wears to this day, Farr recalled.

Farr performed shows with Skelton, working with such stars as Peter Lorre, Errol Flynn, and George Raft at posh hotels all over the country, including the Sands in Las Vegas and the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles. At the end of Skelton’s life, Farr served as a pallbearer along with Bob Hope and Milton Berle.

Farr got his first film role in the rock ‘n’ roll motion picture Blackboard Jungle, and soon made a name for himself in Hollywood as a reliable character actor, appearing on such programs as The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Danny Kaye Show, and My Three Sons.

In 1972, he got a call from his agent about an audition for a role in a show called M*A*S*H that was based on the acclaimed 1970 Robert Altman movie of the same name. Farr showed up on the set and asked for his costume. Much to his shock, he was given an Army dress and high heels.

As Corp. (later Sgt.) Maxwell Klinger, Farr dressed in drag to try to convince the military brass that he was crazy, a ruse that never worked. As seasons of the show went on, Klinger eventually stopped wearing the dresses, and the character mellowed into a dedicated member of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital No. 4077. As Klinger, Farr wore his actual Army dog tags and regularly referenced his hometown, name dropping both the Mud Hens and Tony Packo’s throughout the series.

With M*A*S*H on his resume, Farr became a bona fide star. He appeared on a myriad of ‘70s and ‘80s game shows, including The Gong Show, Password, and The Match Game. He filmed commercials for Mars candy bars and IBM computers and appeared as a fast-driving sheik in The Cannonball Run and its two sequels.

He played the ghost of Jacob Marley in the Bill Murray comedy Scrooged (“Bill was just like he was at golf tournaments. You never knew what he was going to do. It was like a party,” Farr said). In 1992, he made a childhood dream come true when he replaced Nathan Lane in the Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls as the character of Nathan Detroit.

“As a kid I saw Guys And Dolls at the Paramount Theater in Toledo,” he said. “I was an usher there as a teenager and I saw the original road company production. And I said, ‘Gosh, one day I’d love to play that role of Nathan Detroit.’”

The veteran actor had never performed on Broadway and admitted he was nervous making the biggest stage debut of his career.

“I had to learn the songs and the dances, and I had only one rehearsal with the cast before I opened with them on a Tuesday night and if you don’t think my heart was beating,” Farr said with a laugh.

Looking back at his career, Farr sounded amazed.

“How many actors can say they worked with comedians like Milton Berle and Lucille Ball and then went on to work with actors like Max Von Sydow and Sidney Poitier?” he said. “I look back on it all and I say that’s pretty good for a kid from North Toledo. And I’m still that kid.”

Farr referenced other Toledo actors who went on to make a name for themselves.

“I’ve lost so many friends, but I think about all of the guys from Toledo,” Farr said. “You had Clifford David from Woodward High School playing in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway. You had Philip Baker Hall who played Nixon [in the 1984 movie Secret Honor]. All of us were out here in California, but we never talked about show business; we just talked about Toledo.”

Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz reflected on Farr’s influence on Toledo and pop culture in an email:

“In today’s world of hundreds of cable television channels, streaming services, and digital media platforms, it’s easy to forget just how influential M*A*S*H was in shaping popular culture and attitudes.

Every week, tens of millions of Americans spent 30 minutes with a funny and friendly Toledoan named Maxwell Klinger, and as they fell in love with him, they fell in love with Toledo, too.

Jamie Farr helped turn the Mud Hens and Tony Packo’s into international brands in ways that are still felt today. His love of Toledo came through in each episode, and viewers could tell that it wasn’t simply scripted dialog. It was real.

The positive feelings millions of Americans have about Toledo can be traced to Jamie Farr, and for that we all owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.”

Farr still loves Toledo. Whenever he’s in town, he dines at The Beirut and recommended asking bartender Sammy Sayegh for a martini made with Bafferts Gin (“It’s gin for people who like vodka,” he said).

As he prepared for his comic con appearance, Farr pondered the ongoing popularity of M*A*S*H, which shows no signs of abating.

“The stories in M*A*S*H are wonderful, you enjoy the characters, and the honesty and truth in our delivery of the problems that were going on. I think they’re universal and they’re forever.”

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