{"id":10565,"date":"2025-05-30T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T01:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10565"},"modified":"2025-09-07T19:53:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T19:53:46","slug":"life-wasnt-always-easy-for-loretta-swit-on-mash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10565","title":{"rendered":"Life wasn’t always easy for Loretta Swit on ‘M*A*S*H’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Loretta Swit, who has died aged 87, is remembered fondly for playing \u2018Hot Lips\u2019 Houlihan in \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 on TV for eleven years but life on that show wasn\u2019t always easy for her. It was a struggle for a woman to be heard in the midst of an otherwise all-male cast dominated by Alan Alda.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve had to fight for the growth and development of my character,\u2019 she said when I interviewed her in 1981. At first on \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019, as in Robert Altman\u2019s movie (in which Hot Lips was played by Sally Kellerman), Houlihan lived up to her nickname. She panted for the married Maj. Frank Burns (Larry Linville) and suffered mightily at the hands of pranksters Hawkeye Pierce (Alda) and Trapper John (Wayne Rogers, pictured above)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It took time before there was a general raising of consciousness and after Linville left in the fifth year, Hot Lips cooled down. It was in Swit\u2019s nature to look on the bright side of things but she agreed that life on the show wasn\u2019t always tranquil. \u2018Nothing simmers on the set,\u2019 she insisted. \u2018If we have something that needs to be straightened out, we have a little cubicle off to the side where we work on our lines. We stop shooting and go in there and work out the problem. There\u2019s never been a big problem. There\u2019s never been a horrendous thing that couldn\u2019t be worked out.\u2019<\/p>\n

Harry Morgan, who played Col. Sherman T. Potter from Season 4 onwards, tended to disagree. \u2019There are a lot of strong characters around here and they\u2019re all men,\u2019 he told me. \u2018It\u2019s been kind of difficult for her.\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mike Farrell, who played Capt. BJ Hunnicutt from Season 4, agreed with Morgan. \u2018It\u2019s fairly clear that she\u2019s felt herself outnumbered at times,\u2019 he told me. \u2018Because of her nature, she\u2019s less of a take-charge type and in meetings she doesn\u2019t come on as strong as Alan Alda, for example.\u2019\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Swit told me she never contemplated quitting the show even when two others in the cast departed after Season 3\u00a0 <\/span>\u2013 Wayne Rogers and\u00a0 <\/span>Mclean Stevenson, who played Lt. Col. Henry Blake. Linville left after the fifth and Gary Burghoff, who played Radar (as he had in the movie), quit after Season 8..\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018Wayne left for very legitimate reasons,\u2019 Swit told me. \u2018He was not getting enough screen time. He wasn\u2019t being exploited fully and he knew it. I thought it was a good move for him. I can\u2019t say McLean\u2019s move was invalid \u2013 he wanted to be in his own show \u2013 but when he was leaving, he said to me, \u201cI know I\u2019ll never be in anything as good as this again but I simply have to try. I have to go out there and be No. 1.\u201d Larry felt that after five years he\u2019d done Maj. Burns as much as he could. And Gary felt that he\u2019d done everything he possibly could with Radar.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Executive Producer Burt Metcalfe told me the changes in Houlihan\u2019s character were the result of mutual agreement. \u2018We were as interested in changing her as Loretta was. She began as a kind of sex-crazed military martinet. When Larry Linville left, we felt we couldn\u2019t keep playing that same one note so we began to soften her and show more humanity, as we\u2019ve done with a number of other characters.\u2019<\/p>\n

Even so, Swit\u2019s screen time began to dwindle and she said she wasn\u2019t sad that \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 was ending. \u2019Ten seasons are plenty,\u2019 she said. \u2018I\u2019m ready to wind up now. I really think it\u2019s time. We may have said everything we need to say or have to say. It is a very hard act to follow. If I do decide to do another series, it will have to be as interesting, as human and as caring. I don\u2019t know whether I\u2019ll find it.\u2019<\/p>\n

To her surprise, it looked as if she\u2019d found one right away. On hiatus from \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 in 1981, she was signed to play Det. Christine Cagney opposite Tyne Daly as Det. Mary Beth Lacey in a TV movie ftitled \u2018Cagney & Lacy\u2019 (pictured below)..\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shot in Toronto, where I interviewed Swit, it was a hit and Swit was all set to sign on for a full series until the producers of \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 pulled the plug. They refused to let her go even though that show was nearing its end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Swit told me later that she never intended to do the series but Harry Morgan pointed to the fact that she was not very prominent in the last season of \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019. Noting that the \u2018Cagney & Lacy\u2019 TV-movie got tremendous numbers when it aired on Oct. 8 1981, he said, \u2018I\u2019ve no doubt that the spark plug was Loretta. Here, we just finished a script in which she had four or five lines. When you think what you might have done with something like \u201cCagney\u201d except you\u2019re tied to this, it\u2019s apt to make you feel a little moody.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final episode of \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 garnered extraordinary ratings in February 1983 and meanwhile ‘Cagney & Lacy’ had debuted in March 1982 with Daly and Meg Foster as Cagney. The view was there was little chemistry between the two leads and it was cancelled after six months. It came roaring back to life in March 1984 with Daly and Sharon Gless as Cagney. Foster went on to have a great many credits and \u2018Cagney & Lacy\u2019 was a hit for five seasons with Emmy wins for Daly and Gless.<\/p>\n

Loretta Swit was nominated for Emmy Awards ten times as outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 and won twice. She never found another series but she has numerous credits in TV-movies and shows including\u00a0\u2018Murder She Wrote\u2019, \u2018Burke\u2019s Law\u2019 and \u2018Diagnosis Murder\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Loretta Swit, who has died aged 87, is remembered fondly for playing \u2018Hot Lips\u2019 Houlihan in \u2018M*A*S*H\u2019 on TV for eleven years but life on that show wasn\u2019t always easy for her. It was a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[5263,5259,5260,5261,5258,5262,1081,5264],"class_list":["post-10565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-cagney-lacy","tag-mash","tag-alan-alda","tag-harry-morgan","tag-loretta-swit","tag-mike-farrell","tag-sharon-gless","tag-tyne-daly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10565"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11518,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10565\/revisions\/11518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}