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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Mike Farrell

American actor (born 1939)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 5, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Michael Joseph Farrell Jr. is an American actor, best known for his role as Captain B.J. Hunnicutt on the television series M*A*S*H (1975–1983). In addition, Farrell was a producer of Patch Adams (1998) starring Robin Williams, and he starred in the television series Providence (1999–2002).

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mike Farrell” is american actor (born 1939). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mike, Farrell and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1975, 1983, 1998, 1999—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Mike, Farrell and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american actor (born 1939)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1983, 1998 and 1999.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mike Farrell”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mike Farrell primary sources, Mike Farrell archive and Mike research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mike Farrell”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Mike Farrell” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.