Loretta Swit, the Emmy-winning actress who made the high-strung and relentlessly militaristic Maj. Margaret Houlihan human, dignified and, against all odds, sympathetic on the acclaimed television series “M*A*S*H,” died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 87.
Her death was announced by her publicist, Harlan Boll.
In the Oscar-winning 1970 film “M*A*S*H,” directed by Robert Altman, Major Houlihan (whose blatantly sexist nickname was Hot Lips) was played by Sally Kellerman. When the movie became a CBS series, Ms. Swit stepped into the role and made it her own, adding heretofore unseen nuance. She was nominated 10 years in a row for the Emmy Award for best supporting actress in a comedy series, and she won twice, in 1980 and 1982.
“M*A*S*H,” which aired from 1972 through 1983 on CBS, was, like the movie that inspired it, set at a mobile Army hospital during the Korean War. Major Houlihan spent the first five seasons distracted by her open secret of an affair with the sniveling, very married Maj. Frank Burns (Larry Linville).
Around the time Major Burns returned to the United States, she married a handsome officer whom she had met in Tokyo. But he proved unfaithful, and she was soon divorced and newly dedicated to her career as the unit’s head nurse.
“It was the greatest time in my career,” Ms. Swit told the British newspaper The Guardian in 2001. Margaret’s ambition throughout the series was to be “the best damned nurse in Korea, and that motivated everything I did, even when it came to sex.” Major Houlihan did seem to be on a flirtatious first-name basis with every general who visited the camp.
As early as Season 2, her nemesis, Capt. Benjamin Franklin Pierce (Alan Alda) — better known as Hawkeye — saw her good side, referring to her as “nurse, friend and all-around good egg.” Col. Sherman T. Potter (Harry Morgan) called her “the finest nurse I’ve ever scrubbed with.”
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