Jamie Farr's character on M*A*S*H became a showstopper—quite literally at times—with his fashion choices and iconic dialogue, but the character didn’t always start that way.

At first, Farr’s character was only meant to be a small role, but it quickly turned into something much bigger. While audiences started to see Cpl. Klinger in a larger light, the actor did too.

According to a 1975 interview with The Burlington Free Press, Farr said his career seemed to have blossomed in the third season of M*A*S*H. Even though he was a character since the beginning, his real start came a little later.

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"This season, my name is up front in billing with everyone else, and that translates one way: I've arrived," Farr said.

Farr said that there were too many actors in M*A*S*H to make it easy to get noticed. But he credited a year of guest roles in Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Detectives, and more as the reason for the shift.

He honed his acting skills while suddenly popping up on everyone’s TV screens, making Farr hard to forget.

"I realized how popular the show was when I was doing CBS promos this spring," Farr said. "I'd go places, and there would be such crowds waiting, I'd start looking around for some celebrity like Robert Redford or Donny Osmond. When it turned out they were there to meet me—Corporal Klinger—I decided to take advantage of this new popularity."

He said the shtick of wearing women’s clothing helped set him apart from his co-stars, but that wasn’t the only appeal of Klinger. People liked his character because he had heart and added a unique humor to the 4077th.

However, his clothing choices were so popular that they didn’t go unnoticed by California fashion designers.

"They presented me with their first annual Zany Award for 'setting fashion back at least 10 years,'" he said. "Actually, I think I was getting to look too good. I discovered the better the clothes and the more coordinated they were, the funnier they looked on me."

According to Farr, that was something his wife agreed with.

M*A*S*H helped him feel alive, like he had arrived, and gave him a new outlook on acting—something he needed after being in lower billing for most of his career prior to joining the 4077th.