Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy Awards playing Major Margaret Houlihan on the pioneering hit TV series M.A.S.H., has died at 87. Publicist Harlan Boll says Swit died Friday at her home in New York City, likely from natural causes. Swit, who played the demanding head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean War, and Alan Alda were the longest-serving cast members on M.A.S.H. The show 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. 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. Sally 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.'
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