M*A*S*H star Loretta Swit dies aged 87
30 May 2025, 21:44 | Updated: 31 May 2025, 01:27
Actress Loretta Swit, who played Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan in hit TV series M*A*S*H, has died at home aged 87.
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Swit's publicist Harlan Boll said the actress died at her home in New York City on Friday, likely from natural causes, although a coroner's report is pending.
Swit won two Emmy awards for playing Major Margaret Houlihan, the head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean War.
The series ran for 11 seasons from 1974 to 1983.
Swit and co-star Alan Alda were the longest-serving members of the M*A*S*H cast.
Swit appeared in nearly every episode of the series and was nominated for numerous awards.
She was partly responsible for the fleshing out of the character of Houlihan, who first appeared in the 1970s Robert Altman film on which the series was based as a one-dimensional sex-crazed female nurse.
Swit's influence on scriptwriters, along with the spread of feminism in the 1970s, helped transform Houlihan into a deeper and fuller character. Her sexual appetite was played down and the nickname Hot Lips was abandoned in the show's later years.
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“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, the author of The Complete Book of M*A*S*H.“
"To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn’t go into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”
The series finale, which aired on 28 February 1983, attracted over 100 million viewers and is the most-watched episode of any scripted TV series in history.
Swit was born on November 4 1937 in New Jersey. Her parents, Polish immigrants to the US, were not initially supportive of her ambitions to make a career in show business.
She won two Emmys for her role in M*A*S*H and was nominated for numerous Golden Globe awards.
M*A*S*H was hugely successful and was placed 25th in Rolling Stone magazine's list of best TV shows of all time. It won the Impact Award at the 2009 TV Land annual awards.
