Frank Burns
E243084
Frank Burns is a pompous, inept, and hypocritical Army surgeon who serves as a primary antagonist on the television series M*A*S*H.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Frank Burns canonical | 4 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2173084 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Frank Burns Context triple: [MASH, character, Frank Burns]
-
A.
Bill Burns
Bill Burns was an American former Major League Baseball pitcher who became notorious as a key gambling intermediary in the 1919 Black Sox World Series fixing scandal.
-
B.
Curt Menefee
Curt Menefee is an American sportscaster best known as the longtime studio host of Fox's NFL coverage.
-
C.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is a relatively obscure individual whose primary distinguishing feature is sharing the surname associated with the name Kurtz.
-
D.
Jerome Kurtz
Jerome Kurtz was an American lawyer and tax expert who served as the U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue during the Carter administration, where he pursued significant tax reform and enforcement initiatives.
-
E.
Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor is an American computer engineer best known as one of the key designers of the first commercial microprocessor and an early pioneer in microprocessor architecture at Intel.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Frank Burns Target entity description: Frank Burns is a pompous, inept, and hypocritical Army surgeon who serves as a primary antagonist on the television series M*A*S*H.
-
A.
Bill Burns
Bill Burns was an American former Major League Baseball pitcher who became notorious as a key gambling intermediary in the 1919 Black Sox World Series fixing scandal.
-
B.
Curt Menefee
Curt Menefee is an American sportscaster best known as the longtime studio host of Fox's NFL coverage.
-
C.
David Kurtz
David Kurtz is a relatively obscure individual whose primary distinguishing feature is sharing the surname associated with the name Kurtz.
-
D.
Jerome Kurtz
Jerome Kurtz was an American lawyer and tax expert who served as the U.S. Commissioner of Internal Revenue during the Carter administration, where he pursued significant tax reform and enforcement initiatives.
-
E.
Stanley Mazor
Stanley Mazor is an American computer engineer best known as one of the key designers of the first commercial microprocessor and an early pioneer in microprocessor architecture at Intel.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (47)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
fictional character
ⓘ
television character ⓘ |
| adaptedForTelevisionBy | Larry Gelbart ⓘ |
| alignmentInStory | antagonist ⓘ |
| antagonisticTo |
B.J. Hunnicutt
ⓘ
Hawkeye Pierce ⓘ Radar O'Reilly ⓘ Trapper John McIntyre ⓘ |
| appearsIn |
M*A*S*H (TV series)
ⓘ
surface form:
M*A*S*H
|
| assignedToUnit | 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital ⓘ |
| basedOn |
Major Frank Burns from the 1970 film MASH
ⓘ
Major Frank Burns from the novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors ⓘ |
| comicFunction | source of comic relief ⓘ |
| conflictSetting | Korean War ⓘ |
| createdBy | Richard Hooker ⓘ |
| departureFromSeries | written out after Larry Linville left the show ⓘ |
| firstAppearance |
M*A*S*H (TV series)
ⓘ
surface form:
M*A*S*H (TV series) Season 1
|
| genre | war comedy-drama character ⓘ |
| inUniverseFate |
assigned to a hospital in Indiana
ⓘ
has a nervous breakdown and is sent stateside ⓘ promoted to Lieutenant Colonel ⓘ |
| knownFor |
hypocrisy about morality and behavior
ⓘ
reporting colleagues for minor infractions ⓘ sucking up to superior officers ⓘ |
| laterLivingArrangement | shares tent with Frank and later Charles Winchester after his departure is referenced ⓘ |
| livingArrangement | shares tent with Hawkeye and Trapper early in the series ⓘ |
| loyalty | loyal to Army regulations over medical camaraderie ⓘ |
| maritalStatus | married ⓘ |
| medium | television ⓘ |
| militaryBranch | United States Army ⓘ |
| narrativeFunction | foil to Hawkeye Pierce ⓘ |
| nationalityInStory | American ⓘ |
| nickname | Ferret Face ⓘ |
| occupation | Army surgeon ⓘ |
| personalityTrait |
hypocritical
ⓘ
inept ⓘ pompous ⓘ |
| politicalView | staunchly conservative ⓘ |
| portrayedBy | Larry Linville ⓘ |
| professionalCompetence | medically competent but surgically mediocre ⓘ |
| rank | Major ⓘ |
| religiousIdentity | self-righteous Christian ⓘ |
| roleInWork | primary antagonist in M*A*S*H ⓘ |
| romanticRelationship | Margaret Houlihan ⓘ |
| seriesDebutYear | 1972 ⓘ |
| setting | Korea ⓘ |
| spouseInStory | Louise Burns ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Frank Burns Description of subject: Frank Burns is a pompous, inept, and hypocritical Army surgeon who serves as a primary antagonist on the television series M*A*S*H.
Referenced by (4)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.