RIP: Loretta Swit, who played Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan on TV’s M*A*S*H, dead at 87.
Swit also praised her “M*A*S*H” character as “unique,” even if “nobody appreciated her” within the show.
“She was unique at the time and in her time, which was the ’50s, when the Korean War was happening,” Swit explained. “And she became even more unique, I think, because we allowed her to continue to grow — we watched her evolve. I don’t think that’s ever been done in quite that way.
“She was the head nurse, and her ambition was to be the best damn nurse in Korea, and I tried to help her achieve that,” she continued. “That woman was so lonely, and she was trying to do such a good job. And nobody appreciated her.”
In Variety, Alan Alda adds, “Loretta was a supremely talented actor. She deserved all her 10 Emmy nominations and her 2 wins. But more than acting her part, she created it. She worked hard In showing the writing staff how they could turn the character from a one joke sexist stereotype into a real person — with real feelings and ambitions. We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret. Loretta made the most of her time here.”
Reviewing her character’s position and evolution on “MASH,” Swit once said, “I mean, certain things had to remain the same. She had to remain one of the antagonists because that was the structure of the show. In the second season, we saw for the first time that she was unhappy with Frank and wanted more from her life. Then around the third or fourth year, in an episode called ‘The Nurses,’ Hot Lips gave the nurses a speech telling them how lonely she was because she was in charge and that’s the way it was, so she couldn’t really have any friends. Her marriage and her divorce changed her. Her affair with Hawkeye in ‘Comrades in Arms’ changed both characters, so that they were never really rivals again.”
In the mid-’70s, M*A*S*H increasingly leaned hard into Alan Alda’s burgeoning real life persona as a feminist icon. Starting late in season six when CBS began using the show as counter-programming opposite ABC’s Monday Night Football, its episodes became much more sentimental than its earlier, funnier, snappier incarnation spearheaded by series creator Larry Gelbart. But we’re unlikely to see such a well-written show today than in the 1970s, when TV still had to appeal to a mass audience, and leftists could still be funny without worrying about the smothering hand of PC.
As Jerry Seinfeld said last year, “‘People always need [comedy] … they need it so badly and they don’t get it,’ Seinfeld began. ‘It used to be you’d go home at the end of the day, ‘oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘M*A*S*H*’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on.’ You just expected there will be some funny stuff on TV you can watch tonight. ‘But guess what? Where is it? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme Left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people.’”
UPDATE: Speaking of leftist PC crap, the Gray Lady goes into full Margaret Dumont mode in Swift’s obit:
The Times in 2025 looks back at the collective writing, directing and producing efforts of Richard Hooker, Ring Lardner Jr., Robert Altman and Larry Gelbart and concludes:
