New York – Loretta Swit, who He won two Emmy awards Playing Major Margaret Houlihan, the demanding main nurse of a surgical unit behind the line during the Korean war in the successful television series “Mash”, has died. She was 87 years old.
The publicist Harlan Boll says that Swit died Friday at his home in New York City, probably due to natural causes.
Hit and Alan Alda They were the members of the oldest cast in “Mash”, which was based on the 1970 film by Robert Altman, which was based on a novel by Richard Hooker, the pseudonym of H. Richard Hornberger.
The CBS show was broadcast from 11 years from 1972 to 1983, revolving around life in the 4077th surgical hospital of the mobile army, which gave the name to the program. The end of two and a half hours on February 28, 1983, attracted more than 100 million viewers, the most watched episode of any series with a script.
Rolling Stone magazine put “Mash” at number 25 of the best television programs of all time, while Time Out put it at number 34. He won the impact prize in the annual TV Awards Land 2009. He won a Peabody Award in 1975 “for the depth of his humor and the way in which the comedy is used to lift the spirit and, thus, to offer a deep statement on the nature of war.”
In Altman’s 1970 film, Houlihan was a one -dimensional character, a spiny main nurse and destined for the rules that she was regularly tormented by male colleagues, which gave her the nickname “hot lips.” His intimate moments were transmitted to the entire camp after someone planted a microphone under his bed.
Sally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie’s version and Swit took care of television, finally deepening her and creating her in a much more complete character. His sexuality was played and was not even called “hot lips” in recent years.
The growing awareness of feminism in the 70s stimulated the transformation of Houlihan of the cartoon to the real person, but much of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.
“Around the second or third year, I decided to try to interpret it as a real person, intelligently, even if that meant damaging the jokes,” Swit told Suzy Kalter, author of “The Complete Book of ‘Mash'”
“To simplify it too much, I made every traumatic change that happened in his life and kept it. I did not enter the next episode as if it were a different character in a different work. He was a constantly flow character; he never stopped developing.”
“Mash” was not an instant success. He finished his first season in the 46th place, of the 75 television series on the Network, but caught nine Emmy nominations. He was rewarded with a better slot for his second season, paired on Saturday nights with “All in the family”, then the best qualified television program. In the Emmys of 1974, he was crowned best comedy, with Alda winning as best comedy actor.
The series also survived despite the cast of the cast. In addition to Swit and Alda, the first season presented Wayne Rogers, McLean Stevenson, Larry Linville and Gary Burghoff. Harry Morgan, Mike Farrell and David Ogden Stiers would be added later, while Jamie Far and William Christopher had expanded roles.
“The interpretation of Loretta Swit by Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan was innovative: bringing heart, humor and strength to one of the most durable roles of the television comedy. His talent extended far beyond that iconic character, with an acclaimed work both in stage and on the screen that showed his intelligence, versatility and passion,”, the executive director of the National Comedy Center Guinderson, he said in a statement.
Swit appeared in all except 11 episodes of the series, almost four times more than the Korean war, exploring issues such as PTSD, sexism and racism. Swit pressed for a better representation for women.
“One of the things I liked, with Loretta’s Dring, was every time I had the opportunity to write for his character, we moved away from the angle of the hot lips and we discovered more about who Margaret was. He became a more real person,” Alda told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018.
The series ended with a happy note to Houlihan, who spends much of the end discussing whether he wants to go to Tokyo or Belgium for his next publication abroad. Finally, he chooses to return to the United States and work in a hospital, citing his father, an army career man.
Swit did not agree personally that it was the right decision for a military mentality official: “I did not think it was correct for my Margaret,” Entertainment told Yahoo Entertainment in 2023. “I think her next movement was Vietnam. So I did not agree with that, but that is what they wanted her to do.”
But the actor was able to write the speech that Houlihan pronounces to his nursing companions on his last night together, in which he says: “It has been an honor and a privilege to have worked with you. And I am very, very proud to have met you.”
“I was consumed for writing that. And I still receive letters from women around the world who became nurses due to Margaret Houlihan. Having contributed to someone’s life is remarkable,” Entertainment told Yahoo.
During his career, Houlihan had an adventure with Hawkeye aluminum, the clumsy Frank Burns, played by Linville in the television version, and in season 5, Houlihan returns from a stay in Tokyo committed to a handsome lieutenant colonel, a story that Swit says he advocated the writers.
“I told them: ‘Can you imagine how fun you will have with Larry when I return to the city and tell him that I am committed? He will start the doors of the disaster tent!’ And that is exactly what they did.
Towards the end, Swit was tempted to leave the show. She played the role of Chris Cagney in a 1981 television movie, “Cagney AND Lacey “, and the part was offered when it was collected as a half -season series for the spring of 1982. But the producers insisted that they stay with” Mash “for their last two seasons.
Swit told Florida Times-Union in 2010 that he could have stayed with “puree” anyway. “You can’t help improving as an actor who works with scripts like that,” he said. “If you are in something that literate, well, we pamper ourselves.”
In 2022, James Poniewozik, the main television critic of the New York Times, reviewed the program and said he kept well: “His combination of crazy comedy and drama of Pitch Dark, the laughs that amplify serious bets and the vice versa is recognizable in today’s dramas, from ‘better things’ to ‘Barry’, that work in the DMZ between the suggestion between the suggestion and sadness”. “”
After the television series, Swit became an animal well -being vocal activist, selling Switheart perfume and its memoirs through its official website, with profits that benefit several non -profit groups related to animals.
In 1983, he married actor Dennis Holahan, whom he had met when he was a guest star in “Mash” who divorced in 1995.
Born in Passaic, New Jersey, daughter of Polish immigrants, presumed registered in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then paid her quotas for years in Touring Productions.
In 1969, he arrived in Hollywood and was soon seen in a series like “Gunske”, “Hawaii Five-O”, “Mission Impossible” and “Bonanza”. Then, in 1972, he obtained his great rest when asked to audition for the role of “hot lips.”
He would regularly return to the theater, starring Broadway in 1975 in “Same Time, next year” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” in 1986. He was in “Amorio Crossing”, a romantic comedy, in Alhambra Theater, in Alhambra Theater AND Dining in 2010 and in the production of “Mame” of the North Carolina Theater in 2003.
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Mark Kennedy is in http://twitter.com/kennedytwits
