Loretta Swit is DEAD TO ME!!!

She had hot lips but she couldn’t live forever.

The DL urban legend story about her kicking Sharon Gless in the cunt made me laugh.

TMZ are such ghouls

OH NO!

Couldn't you bitches have shared a *sob* lousy cup of coffee with her?

New York Times.

Variety.

Damn. My childhood. It just keeps slipping away …. Who is next? Mariette Hartley? Jackie Joseph?

R5. Holy crap I remember that speech. It just screamed EMMY EMMY EMMY!

Oh no! What did she die of?

I came here the minute I heard! The very minute!

She managed to survive working with Helen Lawson.

Loretta and Sally

R8, hopefully, not me.

Loretta shouldn’t have had that nose job ^

[quote]Oh no! What did she die of?

Damn oil rig fires claimed another one!

It was the VAX!

87 year olds don't die every day!

[quote] Swit said her career came full circle when, in 1994, she guest-starred on Murder, She Wrote alongside Lansbury. “Angie is one of two fan letters I’ve ever written in my life. The other was to Robert Mitchum,” she recalled. “She was just dazzling [in Mame]. Years later, when we met at a CBS function, I said, ‘You probably won’t remember this, but when I was in New York …’ I don’t think I got further than that and she stopped me and said, ‘I still have that letter.'”

😭 😭 😭

Does anyone know where her apartment is?

And Alan Alda, r12.

I remember when she was known as Loretta Swift.

R8, from your lips to God’s ears.

Get back, Loretta!

She hated working on MASH and wanted to get out of her contract, but couldn't.

Like the world was just waiting breathlessly for her to do other TV and film.

She was very bitter about it - which is just so selfish and actor-like.

Guess hell needed another devil!

She was in a very well done tv movie The Execution.

Her Hot Lips are now cool to the touch.

R10 She was fighting an oil rig fire off the Gulf of Mexico.

The only MASH regulars still alive now are Alda, Farrell, Burghoff and Farr.

Guess she now has a race with the devil.

I prefer Sally Kellerman in the movie.

When did she want to get out of her contract? Early years or later seasons?

[quote]She was very bitter about it - which is just so selfish and actor-like.

We don't know what you're talking about.

She was the original detective Christine Gagney on Gag Me and Mace Me before Sharon Gless

Loretta had a great speaking voice.

Saw her and Ted Bessell in Same Time Next Year on Broadway. They were both fabulous!

Well, we're all going to die anyway!

El Taco Loco and I, send out the condolence. He say once to me, Melania? Why you not dye your hairs like favorite actress Hot Lips Houlihan? I kick him in his Baby Bella. No more talk about the blonde ladies. Why so much talk about the mash? He like French fry better, anyway.

R20 - Died in her apartment at 60 West 67th Street.

R20 - Update - 50 West 67th - 4C

I guess her lips are cold now.

[Quote] Saw her and Ted Bessell in Same Time Next Year on Broadway.

You don’t know what you’re TALKING about! That was Georgie Jessel!

Jessel, not Bessell!

She'll never make the Famous Nongenarians thread now.

Or however you spell it.

Who gets her things?

“Ugh. THIS b!tch.” - Sally Kellerman at the Pearly Gates

I'm glad she kept busy, right till the end, R29.

As a child I always wondered how she became a star, as she was rather horsey and not particularly glamorous.

She just posted on Instagram 4 days ago honoring Memorial Day. I had no idea she lived in New York.

Other than a role in some minor film in 2019 she has no acting credits since 1998. So she pretty much retired at 60?

I find that so surprising.

R31 that’s one of my favorite horror movies.

[Quote] Who gets her things?

Frank Burns

I would imagine she was making pretty good money by the time MASH ended. The show ran for eleven years. I don't know if I've ever actually sat through an entire episode of MASH, but I do watch The Best Christmas Pageant every year...though that's mainly because little Fairuzia Balk was so adorable in it.

It looks like she focused on theatre later in life. She played Shirley Valentine 1,000 times across the country.

She was a black bitch!!

I'm still here, bitches!

She was wonderful playing a version of Sue Mengers in Blake Edwards' S.O.B.

R48 - I'm with you. Of all the beautiful actresses in Hollywood to play Hot Lips - THIS is the best they could do?

She wasn't particularly beautiful and I remember her being rather 'fleshy' and big-boned for the 1970s.

Yes there are some glamour shots where she looked pretty, but overall, I didn't understand it.

Sally Kellerman was much more striking and alluring - maybe it's because she had a passing resemblance to Sally Kellerman?

She was not the least bit overweight, especially in the early years of the show. She just had a round face, same as Janis Joplin, who was also perceived as overweight, though she was not.

It was the 70s. She needed to be reasonably attractive in a normal person way, not a sex kitten.

I always liked her on Mash she was fun and I like how in the later years she was still a b**** but they softened in the edges and meet her more human. She did often have really horrible hair though like there's this episode of diagnosis murder she just started out in her wig was awful. A friend of mine met her at a sand con a few years ago and apparently she was going up and down the line squirting hand sanitizer into everybody's hand I don't blame her cuz the people that go to those things are generally pretty gross but my friend did get me a signed mash commemorative book from her.

One of my favorite stories I've read about her was shared here where somebody claimed but she threw a fit while filming a Burger King commercial because the bite taken out of the prop Burger was too big and she felt it would make her look like a pig.

She was also a committed animal rights activist. PETA celebrated her, which is very high praise, indeed.

I love Sally, but Loretta was the better Hot Lips for TV.

Elliott Gould said they offered Trapper John to him for TV and he was too Movie Star snobby to do the role. Since his career grandly collapsed right after the offer, it might have been a good move on the surface if he accepted it...but it won't have been. TV is different from movies.

Did PETA know about those Burger King commercials?

R64 she claimed in an interview she didn't even remember doing one and if she did she would regret it so maybe they didn't.

Also someone stated earlier she was bitter about having to stay on mash because it meant not being Cagney and Lacey when it went to series but her response here seems completely the opposite of that and that leaving mash wasn't even a serious consideration. So either she wasn't ever really bitter about it or she's soft and rewritten history a little bit.

"Loretta: I don’t always get the offers. They’re filtered, and I do believe they were after me to do something. I was very tempted. I loved doing the character. I thought she was a great character for me to do, you know? My brother had this theory that the audience loved seeing me in uniform. The idea of leaving MASH was too heavy. I mean, that was incomprehensible. My people, CBS and Fox, did not want to let me go. They didn’t want to let Wayne go, or Mac. They had winning combinations and we were a big hit. I didn’t force it or pursue it because the idea of leaving MASH…I look back now, and it was no contest. MASH is still on the air after 45 years. It’s never been off the air. It was a remarkable show and a remarkable experience, and I couldn’t leave it. i have no idea what would’ve happened if I had, but I think I did the right thing."

R59 She was a tad chubby in the seasons. She lost weight with each season.

As a boy of eight or nine, I could never understand why her hair was white and it seemed as though she intended it to be that way.

She WAS Loretta Swit!

I just re-watched "Race With The Devil" recently... She should have done more movies.

People on previous threads mentioned that she was difficult when they worked with her. R61: I thought they neutered her in later years and her Oedipal relationship with COL Potter was annoying. In general, the later seasons got rid of the tension between the characters that had provided the humor and the better examples of drama.

Did she ever give Hawkeye a BJ?

Mission: IMPOSSIBLE

Homecoming

[quote]This time it's personal as Jim returns home to uncover who is killing his childhood friends; with the aid of the rest of the IMF team of course. But what will be worse, the death of another friend or finding that a friend is the killer.

Loretta Swit....Midge Larson

[quote] Did she ever give Hawkeye a BJ?

She gave BJ a Hawkeye!

They wrote her out of MASH mid season for multiple episodes so she could do Same Time, Next Year on Broadway for six months. I think they sent her off somewhere and filmed a series of phone calls in advance that they inserted into her missed episodes.

Omg is this Taylor Swift mother? Stay strong tay! I'm here for u

R70. I don't think she was neutered at all she was just more well-rounded than human. Very entirely still mean change a lot of The antagonism they always had but Margaret's case it became less vindictive and mean over the years.

I outlived another of my cuntemporaries.

Per the NYT she once worked as a secretary for DL fav Elsa Maxwell.9

She was a Michael Musto item in the last play she did in New York.

From Alan Alda

Does anyone remember a 7/11 commercial that she did in the 90s? There was a close up of her taking a big lick of a soft ice cream cone and saying “Hmmm….”

That makes perfect sense to me, r79.

I remember her in some weird 80s television movie that had something to do with Kristalnacht. Now I’ll have to look it up. I don’t think she was even Jewish.

Loretta Swit, Jessica Walters, Sandy Dennis and Rip Torn in a movie about female Holocaust survivors revenge. Only on the 80s.

Nancy Sinatra tribute

First Linda Lavin, then Charles Strouse and now Loretta Swit. Everyone associated with It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman! is dropping like flies. Has anyone checked on Lesley Ann Warren?

Loretta’s funkadelic take on You’ve Got Posibilities at 37:14.

She came and spoke to my acting class in New York when she was a replacement in THE MYSTERY OF DROOD. I don't remember a single thing she talked about - whereas I do remember many specific insights other guest lecturers shared.

I do remember being surprised she was in a musical, as I'd never associated her with singing.

Loretta was the original Cagney in the Cagney and Lacey pilot.

Didn't she do a TV movie about two lady cops? I think it became a series later but she was only in the first movie.

[quote] She hated working on MASH and wanted to get out of her contract, but couldn't. Like the world was just waiting breathlessly for her to do other TV and film. She was very bitter about it - which is just so selfish and actor-like.

I don’t understand your complaint.

If you hate your job, you hate your job.

Nothing gets past you does it r89

MASH seems like it was a cool show to work on. Alda has a big ego but he also seems like the kind of person who would make sure everyone was happy and taken care of.

Did she get residuals from MASH? If so she would have been a wealthy woman.

Longer New York Times obit.

She was thick-middled in MASH and as it went on it was obvious she was losing weight and her hair got blonder and blonder until it was platinum. Wasn’t Meg Foster the original Lacey and they dropped her because she was too “butch”. Seriously I remember reading that back then.

They were airing three C&L episodes in a row weeknights and if you caught it just right as they cycled through, you could watch the last episode (Gless) followed by the pilot (Swit) followed by the first episode (Foster).

Meg Foster had those eerie hypnotizing eyes that was better suited to sci-fi.

Tyne was Mary Beth Lacey in all three iterations, r95.

Horrible snake eyes with pin prick pupils. Alexandra Daddario has a similar thing going on.

I used to be intrigued by her “M*A*S*H” 1950s character’s resemblance to any American supermarket chain’s 1970s seafood deli counter female employee.

I have to say, I have seen several news reports on her death and both FB and Bluesky are *filled* with remembrances of Swit.

I am a bit shocked at how much people have responded. Not that she didn't deserve notice but it's been 40 plus years since M*A*S*H ended....though I suppose she's seen every day in syndication/on the classic TV channels.

I hated her in Brett Somers' seat on Match Game

Wow, it was so big of Alan Alda to confirm that Loretta deserved the awards she was nominated for/won.

Well-done, Alan.

[Quote] It was the 70s. She needed to be reasonably attractive in a normal person way, not a sex kitten.

Yes that certainly sounds like the 70s.

[quote]r89 Didn't she do a TV movie about two lady cops? I think it became a series later but she was only in the first movie.

That was an unsold pilot, later aired as a movie of the week:

[italic]Cane Face & Lace Panties

Has Gary Burghoff broke his silence yet?

She was no Linda Lavin

[quote]We celebrated the day the script came out listing her character not as Hot Lips, but as Margaret.

That encapsulates everything that was annoying about the series.

Aw, Alan. Lovely heartfelt eulogy. Time out for tears. I’m anxious to hear from her other (surviving) MASH cast mates, Farr, Feral, Burghov. MASH is easily the best TV program this side of Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy. “Hot Lips” will be missed.

On tour as Gooch with Celeste Holm as Mame.

Is that June Allyson in the background?

Vicki Cummings as Vera. She died the year after the tour ended.

I believe it’s someone named Vicki Cummings.

Oh. Sorry.

Playing a PROSTITUTION WHORE… live, onstage!

Dollface alert

RIP

My mom said that Swit looked like Miss Piggy.

Susan Dey is sad. No statement at this time.

R27 That's a good one. Made when TV movies were trying to push boundaries. Starring Loretta, Sandy Dennis, Jessica Walter, Valerie Harper, and Barbara Barrie. I watched it again a few years ago, it still stands up.

Ah I found a funny comment about this in the older Loretta thread. Maybe I wrote it! It said the person that should have been executed was the dialogue coach.

[quote]I used to be intrigued by her “M*A*S*H” 1950s character’s resemblance to any American supermarket chain’s 1970s seafood deli counter female employee.

I don't recall ever seeing a "seafood deli counter" at any supermarket in the '70s. Or even today.

Crossword puzzles will never be the same.

They'll change the clue to "LATE M*A*S*H actress" now.

R121 In the Bay Area we had a local chain called QFI and I swear they had a lobster tank in the 70s.

Not to speak ill of the dead- but wasn't she always rumored to be a real bitch?

Her and that Polly Holliday chick. These fogies are before my time (kind of, 45)

But I remember reading that here-

Loretta was always nice to me.

Now, the big question. Was she important enough to be part of the Emmy cemmytery stroll or almost important enough she can be cut if need be?

[quote] Does anyone know where her apartment is?

On E. 67th

R117, it’s hilarious that you say that because when Swit guested on “The Muppet Show”, at the end of the episode, Miss Piggy came out dressed as Hot Lips and I remember thinking that Miss Piggy strongly resembled her.

MASH was a huge show in its day, but unwatchable and barely remembered now.

Yet, Alan Alda still walk among us.

[quote]Is that June Allyson in the background?

Yes, and she had a big load in her Depends.

R129 lol not it isn't..you can find it in syndication just about anywhere and is still very fondly remembered. I think the proof of it is that everybody who is pouring out their hearts over the Loretta who after Mash really didn't do anything notable

R128- Miss Piggy always reminded me of Barbara Streisand.

Predictions for the next three celebrity deaths- Barbara Eden, Marion Ross, and Shirley Jones

Tina Louise

Sorry, it's W. 67th

R132 is right. It's one of those shows that's always playing somewhere. Not forgotten at all

[quote]I think the proof of it is that everybody who is pouring out their hearts over the Loretta who after Mash really didn't do anything notable

Yeah, elderly gay men who are shut-ins aren't exaclty the pulse of America.

Isn't there some story about Loretta Swit hamming it up during The Mystery of Drood?

She was terrific in S.O.B.

Does anyone remember "Friendships, Secrets and Lies"?

If Barbara Eden goes, we won't have to listen to the 3 or 4 stories she endlessly recycles.

[quote]after Mash

Triggered.

[quote]Miss Piggy always reminded me of Barbara Streisand.

Your gay card is suspended until you learn how to spell my name.

Amy Schumer is the latest Miss Piggy

R141 Yes. Tina Louise was incredible in that.

You have to wonder about some of these tv ladies whose careers just stopped after their series ran their course. Yes, they were a certain age, but nothing awaited them like Sally Field's role on Brothers and Sisters or Tyne Daly in Judging Amy or Kathy Bates in Matlock.

I'm thinking; Loretta Swit, Michael Learned, Polly Holiday, Isabel Sanford, Karen Grassle, Cindy Williams, Mariette Hartley, Barbara Feldon. Some of them did guest shots here and there or a little Broadway and regional theatre work, or had pilots that didn't go. But no third act career that sustained.

Barbara Eden had two more tries at a series, Marion Ross did Brooklyn Bridge and Drew Carey and kept working till just a few years ago. Shirley Jones had her film work before she did TV.

R147, I think that's the reality for most actors who are lucky enough to get a hit series (let along the majority of actors who never even get that). It's been said more than once that getting a hit series is like catching lightening in a bottle and to get another one is more than that. While you made a list of female actors who never had another hit show (and you forgot to include Bonnie Franklin), most of them had a string of failed attempts at new shows that never got off the ground. With that said, what about all the male actors who never had another hit show, the recently deceased George Wendt, John Ratzenberger from Cheers, any of the men from Night Court, Corbin Bernsen, Daniel J. Travanti, Hal Linden, etc. Not to mention all of Swit's castmates from MASH.

Well done, r5

R148 is right. 99% of SAG is unemployed. Most actors will never achieve the high of starring on a hit show. And the number who get to star in multiple big hit shows is even tinier.

R141...OUCH, this NYT review!!!