By MARK KENNEDY, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy Awards playing Major Margaret Houlihan, the demanding head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean War on the pioneering hit TV series “M.A.S.H.,” has died. She was 87.
Publicist Harlan Boll says Swit died Friday at her home in New York City, likely from natural causes.
Swit and Alan Alda were the longest-serving cast members on “M.A.S.H.,” which was based on Robert Altman’s 1970 film, which was itself based on a novel by Richard Hooker, the pseudonym of H. Richard Hornberger.
The CBS show aired for 11 years from 1972 to 1983, revolving around life at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, which gave the show its name. The two-and-a-half-hour finale on Feb. 28, 1983, lured over 100 million viewers, the most-watched episode of any scripted series ever.
Rolling Stone magazine put “M.A.S.H.” at No. 25 of the best TV shows of all time, while Time Out put it at No. 34. It won the Impact Award at the 2009 TV Land annual awards. It won a Peabody Award in 1975 “for the depth of its humor and the manner in which comedy is used to lift the spirit and, as well, to offer a profound statement on the nature of war.”
In Altman’s 1970 film, Houlihan was a one-dimensional character — a sex-crazed bimbo who earned the nickname “Hot Lips.” Her intimate moments were broadcast to the entire camp after somebody planted a microphone under her bed.
Related Articles
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ ex-personal assistant says she was too traumatized to answer his 2023 call Dozens sickened in expanding salmonella outbreak linked to recalled cucumbers FAA demands an accident investigation into SpaceX’s latest out-of-control Starship flight Meet Hercules and Ned, the border collies fending off wildlife at West Virginia’s busiest airport Army Corps analysis finds Great Lakes pipeline tunnel would have sweeping environmental impactsSally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie version and Swit took it over for TV, eventually deepening and creating her into a much fuller character. The sexual appetite was played down and she wasn’t even called “Hot Lips” in the later years.
The growing awareness of feminism in the ’70s spurred Houlihan’s transformation from caricature to real person, but a lot of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.
“Around the second or third year I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes,” Swit told Suzy Kalter, author of “The Complete Book of ‘M.A.S.H.’”
“To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn’t go into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”
“M.A.S.H.” wasn’t an instant hit. It finished its first season in 46th place, out of 75 network TV series, but it nabbed nine Emmy nominations. It was rewarded with a better time slot for its sophomore season, paired on Saturday nights with “All in the Family,” then TV’s highest-rated show. At the 1974 Emmys, it was crowned best comedy, with Alda winning as best comedy actor.
Mark Kennedy is at twitter.com/KennedyTwits
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Loretta Swit, Emmy-winner who played Houlihan on pioneering TV series ‘M.A.S.H.,’ has died at 87 )
Also on site :
- Takeaways from AP’s report on how federal public health cuts are affecting communities across the US
- David Hogg draws attacks from both sides as his star rises
- 215 Fun Pictionary Words—With Easy, Medium and Hard Categories