

“Thinking about these men wasn't some kind of acting exercise,” Alda wrote in a letter that will accompany the items at the auction. Levine died in 1973, while Davenport died in 1970. Levine, two men who enlisted in their 30s and were both discharged in 1945, according to the auction house’s research. Army had issued them to Hersie Davenport and Morris D. When Alda first began wearing the dog tags, he realized they bore the names of real soldiers the costume department hadn’t created them for the show.
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The center, which Alda helped launch in 2009, helps scientists improve their communication skills and learn how to talk to non-experts. Proceeds from the sale will benefit the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, which is part of Stony Brook University in New York. The dog tags once belonged to two soldiers named Hersie Davenport and Morris D.

The boots and dog tags will be part of a Heritage Auctions sale later this month. Now, after holding onto them for the last 40 years, Alda has decided it’s finally time to let them go. The accessories meant a lot to him, and they were the only items he kept when the show ended 1983. The actor, now 87, wore the boots and dog tags for all 11 seasons of the popular show, which followed a mobile surgical hospital during the Korean War. Every day when he arrived on set to film “ M*A*S*H,” Alan Alda donned scuffed combat boots and placed a pair of dog tags around his neck to get into character as surgeon Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce.
