By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Loretta Swit, who has died aged 87, is remembered fondly for playing ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan in ‘M*A*S*H’ on TV for eleven years but life on that show wasn’t 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.
‘I’ve had to fight for the growth and development of my character,’ she said when I interviewed her in 1981. At first on ‘M*A*S*H’, as in Robert Altman’s 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)
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’s nature to look on the bright side of things but she agreed that life on the show wasn’t always tranquil. ‘Nothing simmers on the set,’ she insisted. ‘If 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’s never been a big problem. There’s never been a horrendous thing that couldn’t be worked out.’
Harry Morgan, who played Col. Sherman T. Potter from Season 4 onwards, tended to disagree. ’There are a lot of strong characters around here and they’re all men,’ he told me. ‘It’s been kind of difficult for her.’
Mike Farrell, who played Capt. BJ Hunnicutt from Season 4, agreed with Morgan. ‘It’s fairly clear that she’s felt herself outnumbered at times,’ he told me. ‘Because of her nature, she’s less of a take-charge type and in meetings she doesn’t come on as strong as Alan Alda, for example.’
Swit told me she never contemplated quitting the show even when two others in the cast departed after Season 3 – Wayne Rogers and 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..
‘Wayne left for very legitimate reasons,’ Swit told me. ‘He was not getting enough screen time. He wasn’t being exploited fully and he knew it. I thought it was a good move for him. I can’t say McLean’s move was invalid – he wanted to be in his own show – but when he was leaving, he said to me, “I know I’ll 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.” Larry felt that after five years he’d done Maj. Burns as much as he could. And Gary felt that he’d done everything he possibly could with Radar.’
Executive Producer Burt Metcalfe told me the changes in Houlihan’s character were the result of mutual agreement. ‘We 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’t keep playing that same one note so we began to soften her and show more humanity, as we’ve done with a number of other characters.’
Even so, Swit’s screen time began to dwindle and she said she wasn’t sad that ‘M*A*S*H’ was ending. ’Ten seasons are plenty,’ she said. ‘I’m ready to wind up now. I really think it’s 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’t know whether I’ll find it.’
To her surprise, it looked as if she’d found one right away. On hiatus from ‘M*A*S*H’ in 1981, she was signed to play Det. Christine Cagney opposite Tyne Daly as Det. Mary Beth Lacey in a TV movie ftitled ‘Cagney & Lacy’ (pictured below)..
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 ‘M*A*S*H’ pulled the plug. They refused to let her go even though that show was nearing its end.
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 ‘M*A*S*H’. Noting that the ‘Cagney & Lacy’ TV-movie got tremendous numbers when it aired on Oct. 8 1981, he said, ‘I’ve 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 “Cagney” except you’re tied to this, it’s apt to make you feel a little moody.’
The final episode of ‘M*A*S*H’ 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 ‘Cagney & Lacy’ was a hit for five seasons with Emmy wins for Daly and Gless.
Loretta Swit was nominated for Emmy Awards ten times as outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for ‘M*A*S*H’ and won twice. She never found another series but she has numerous credits in TV-movies and shows including ‘Murder She Wrote’, ‘Burke’s Law’ and ‘Diagnosis Murder’.
‘That’s how I like to think of myself,’ Margolin told me in 1982 for a cover story in Canadian TVGuide. ‘Some guys can take a sidekick, others can’t. Jim didn’t have a sidekick for many years and he doesn’t need one but somehow this has evolved snd I think we work well together.’
Taking voice lessons to lose his Texas accent, Margolin gradually won small stage roles leading to the road company that took him to Los Angeles in 1960. There, he dound steady work on TV series such as ‘My World and Welcome to It’ and ‘The Partridge Family’ and acting in movies including ‘Death Wish’ and ‘Kelly’s Heroes’.
Margolin’s sidekick eccentricity found its purest expression in Garner’s reprise of his western show, ‘Breat Maverick’. He played Philo Sandeen, a Yugoslavian who came to the New World, decided that he preferred to live the way the Indians lived and preferred to go by the name Great Scout Standing Bear. Philo Sandeen was much more capable than Angel and more dangerous. Margolin said, ‘After a while, as Angel, it became incumbent to get a laugh on everything I did and I didn’t want to fall into that.’
20 David Niven movies you should see
By Ray Bennett
David Niven, who was born 115 years ago today and died aged 73 in 1983, gave Ron Base and me the best quote of all time.
The Oscar-winning British actor was on a book tour to promote his first memoir, the brilliant “The Moon’s a Balloon”, in 1972. Ron and I, who worked at The Windsor Star across the river, went to a Detroit hotel ballroom for a lunch – a hospital fundraiser – at which Niven was to speak. We were told we could interview him afterwards.
Lunch was great because we sat at a table with actress Constance Towers so we encouraged her to share yarns of her films with John Ford. Niven was a masterful raconteur and he spun hilarious tales from his book.
Always one of my favourite screen actors, Niven was the definition of suave and debonair from his start in comedies such as “Thank You, Jeeves” (1936), in which he naturally played Bertie Wooster (pictured above with Virginia Field and Arthur Treacher as Jeeves), and war pictures such as “Dawn Patrol” (1938).
He might be best known for his role as Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in Eighty Days”, which won five Academy Awards in 1957 including Best Picture. He is perfect and Shirley MacLaine and Robert Newton (pictured below) have their moments although the film is a bloated travelogue stuffed with odd star cameos.
Here are 20 other David Niven movies worth watching:
“The Sea Wolves” (1980) Great fun based on a true story as Gregory Peck, Niven and Roger Moore play former soldiers who are sent on a secret mission in World War II to destroy a Nazi ship based in neutral Goa. Andrew V. McLaglen directs Reginald Rose’s entertaining script with a cast that includes Trevor Howard and Patrick Macnee.
“Murder by Death” (1976) Neil Simon’s Agatha Christie spoof has some wonderful moments from a cast in which Niven is joined by Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Maggie Smith.
“The Extraordinary Seaman” (1969) Bizarre comedy that I’ve always been fond of with Niven as the ghost of a drowned World War I sea captain who fetches up with his boat in World War II, helps some American sailors survive and falls for an American woman in the Phillipines. John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate”) directs Faye Dunaway, Alan Alda, Mickey Rooney and Jack Carter.
“Lady L” (1965) Ambitious if flawed comedy directed by Peter Ustinov, who adapated a novel by Romain Gary about an ageing woman played by Sophia Loren who recalls the loves of her life. Niven, Paul Newman, Cecil Parker and Philippe Noiret are among them.
“The Bedtime Story” (1964) Comedy Marlon Brando and Niven as conmen who challenge each other to seduce women on the Côte d’Azur such as an heiress played by Shirley Jones. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times said the two actors hit “a comedy peak” and “it is a very funny picture. It was remade in 1988 as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” with Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenne Headley, and later became a successful stage play.
“The Pink Panther” (1963) Niven and Robert Wagner are the jewel thieves in pursuit of the fabulous gem worn by Claudia Cardinale (pictured above) although Peter Sellers steals every scene as Inspector Clouseau. Blake Edwards directs the first of the “Pink Panther” series, which he co-wrote with Maurice Richlin (“Operation Petticoat”, “Pillow Talk”). Henry Mancini, of course, wrote the infectious score.
“55 Days at Peking” (1963) Nicholas Ray epic about American soldiers and British diplomats in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. Niven stars with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and a very large cast with cinematography by the great Jack Hildyard (Oscar-winner for “The Bridge on the River Kwai”) and music by Dimitri Tiomkin (Oscar-winner for “High Noon”, “The High and the Mighty” and “The Old Man and the Sea”).
“The Best of Enemies” (1961) Smart and cynical comedy about a square-off in the Abyssinian desert in World War II between an Italian captain (Alberto Sordi) and a British major (Niven). Directed by Guy Hamilton (“Goldfinger”, “Funeral in Berlin”), it co-stars Michael Wilding and Harry Andrews atop a raft of British and Italian character actors.
“The Guns of Navarone” (pictured above, 1961) Grand wartime adventure directed by J. Lee Thompson and based on a novel by Alistair MacLean about a group of Allied soldiers who must destroy a giant Nazi cannon so that convoys at sea might remain safe. Niven stars with Gregory Peck, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, Richard Harris and Anthony Quinn, whom Peck told me was the greatest scene-stealer in the movies.
“Ask Any Girl” (1959) Frothy comedy about brothers who fall for the same woman although one doesn’t realise it. Shirley MacLaine stars with Niven and Gig Young (“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They”) with the late Rod Taylor also in the cast.
“Separate Tables” (1958) Niven was named best actor at the Academy Awards for his performance as a stiff British Army officer with a secret in Delbert Mann’s version of the Terence Rattigan play about a group of off-season residents of a middle-class hotel at the English seaside town of Bournemouth. Deborah Kerr (pictured above), Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster and Gladys Cooper co-star with Wendy Hiller, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress.
“Bonjour Tristesse” (1958) Saucy Otto Preminger story of an unconventional playboy (Niven) and his fetching daughter, played by Jean Seberg (pictured above). Deborah Kerr and Mylène Demongeot co-star in a film whose reputation has grown over the years.
“My Man Godfrey” (1957) Niven is a butler with a dubious past to an American family dominated by women played by such as June Allyson, Jessie Royce Landis, Eva Gabor and Martha Hyer. Henry Foster (“Harvey”) directs.
“The Way Ahead” (1944) Carol Reed (“The Third Man”) directs a morale-building drama written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov about conscripts who learn about battle in North Africa. Niven stars with a raft of British character actors including Stanley Holloway (“My Fair Lady”), James Donald (“The Great Escape” and William Hartnell (the first Doctor Who).
“Spitfire” (1942) British actor Leslie Howard (“The Painted Desert”, “Gone With the Wind”) directs and stars as the airplane designer who created the famous machine flown by “the few” in the Battle of Britain in World War II. Niven, who left Hollywood to return to England for the war, co-stars with Rosamund John.
“Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” (1938) Directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder adapted from a play by Alfred Savoir. Screwball comedy on the French Riviera with Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. Niven co-stars along with the incomparable Edward Everett Horton.
“Dodsworth” (1936) William Wyler’s screen version of the Sinclair Lewis novel about a US industrialist (Walter Huston) and his wife (Ruth Chatterton) who drift apart on a European holiday picked up six Oscar nominations. Niven co-stars along with Paul Lukas, Mary Astor and Maria Ouspenskaya.
“The Charge of the Light Brigade” (below, 1936) The famous tale directed by Michael Curtiz, who gave Niven the title of his second memoir along with other very funny English-language clangers, my favourite of which is when the exasperated director told Errol Flynn (who starred opposite Olivia de Havilland) and Niven: “You think I know fuck nothing, but I know fuck all!”