by The American actor Loretta Swit, who died at the age of 87, achieved “Hot Lips” Houlihan, chief medical nurse with a mobile army hospital during the Korea War, in TV -Sitcom M*a*s*h. From 1972 to 1983 it appeared in all 11 series series – longer than the conflict that inspired it – the role of Sally Kellerman in the 1970 film.
Women’s hostility ran in a way that was not present in Richard Hooker’s novel from 1968 by Richard Hooker on which they were not present in the TV version. The strict disciplinary was also the butt of the sexist jokes from the surgeon and other men, who in the 4077. Mobile chance unit, especially the Hawkey pier (Hawkeye). Swit – who had the only leading female role in the show – stood before the fifth series began. She was then allowed to contribute to the development of her character and make Houlihan three -dimensional, warm and braver. “I am a feminist, from the tip of my head to the bottom of my toenail, and I prefer strong women,” she told the American Magazine Closer Weekly in 2022.
Actors are always identified with certain parts. So it is exactly
From then on, Swit’s character was mainly called her real name and not as “hot lips”, and a more human side appeared when Houlihan broke down in front of her nurses and admitted that she was injured by the contempt that she thought for her because of her strict manner. The long -term relationship of the figure with Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) ended and she married lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott (first by Beeson Carroll and then by Mike Henry), which she later left it when he had cheated on her. Swit’s performance won her two Emmy Awards as an outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series in 1980 and 1982.
It may have had a global recognition for a second television role, in a program that was groundbreaking because of his representation of women if the producers had not refused to leave them out of their contract. In addition to Tyne Daly as Mary Beth Lacey, Swit played the 1981 pilot from Cagney & Lacey the police detective Christine Cagney. It was the first American police drama to show women in the two leading roles. In Cagney & Lacey there was coarse -grained realism and the authenticity of women who compensated for their work and home life, but was not available as a Swit, Meg Foster took over the management of Cagney, when the series began after six episodes of Sharon Gless.
Swit never had a different main rank. “Actors are always identified with certain parts,” she said. “For some, Marlon Brando will always be the godfather. That’s exactly how it is.”
Perhaps her best film role was the first American president – successor to a former circus clown, a parody of Ronald Reagan – in whoops Apocalypse (1986), the writers Andrew Marshall and David Renwick’s variation of their British sitcom.
Loretta was born in Passaic, New Jersey, the son of Polish descent, Nellie (born Kassack) and Lester Szwed, a upholsterer, who had to see the family name. She visited the Pius XII. High School, Passaic, where she appeared in the school games, and Gibbs College, Montclair, New Jersey, and then had different secretarial tasks. She moved to New York and trained with Gene Frankel at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1959. Her break in the New York Theater in 1961 came on the square on the square when she joined the occupation of the long-standing actor player production of the bar by Jean Genet.
She only spent the rest of the decade on stage until she traveled to Hollywood in 1969. Then she got small roles on television, including three in Hawaii Five-O (between 1969 and 1972) and two in Gunsmoke (both 1970).
Later she played at Broadway as Doris in Bernard Slades “Annual Adultery” at the same time, next year (Brooks Atkinson Theater, 1975-76) and took on the role that comes from Ellen Burstyn. The New York Times found that it gave a “stylish identity” of Burstyn, who had won a Tony Award for her performance.
Swit was again on Broadway in Rupert Holmes ‘musical version of Charles Dickens’ unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood (Imperial Theater, 1985-86) and replaced Cleo Laine in the double roles of Princess Puffer and Miss Angela Preysock. A stage part made for Swit was the title character of the British dramatist Willy Russell’s one-Woman show Shirley Valentine, whom she took in Chicago (Wellington and Wisdom Bridge Theater, 1990), then on an American tour (1995) and Canadian stages (1997 and 2010). The role of the bored Liverpool house woman, who escaped her modest life and the husband’s husband, was played in the western end of London and the film version of Pauline Collins, who also made it to Broadway. Swit said about the character: “Many of her experiences are universal – your ambition and your desire, your lust for life and her frustration, which do not fulfill certain aspects of her own potential. I had relatives with her as soon as I read the script.”
Eve Ensler’s comic and at times seriously political game were the vagina monologues as one of the three women who had taken over several roles, first in the Westside Theater in New York (1999), then in the west (Arts Theater, 2001-02) and on an American tour (2002-03).
The actor was a passionate animal activist and supported many charity organizations as well as his own, sweet animal alliance. Your book Swedeart: The watercolor Artistry & Animal Activism from Loretta Swit was published in 2017.
Swit’s marriage from 1983 with the actor and lawyer Dennis Holahan ended in divorce 12 years later.
• Loretta Jane Swit, actor, born on November 4, 1937; died on May 30, 2025
