Loretta Swit, the actress best known for playing Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan on the popular television series “M*A*S*H” has died. She was 87.
Swit's publicist B. Harlan Boll confirmed her passing.
Boll tells KDKA Radio he spoke to Swit on Thursday night around 11 p.m. Pacific time.
“She was checking in to see how I was doing and to get my new address to mail me something,” and Boll, who lost his home in the L.A. wildfires earlier this year.
She was found dead by a housekeeper at 10 a.m. PT Friday morning.
M*A*S*H debuted in 1972 and is still the highest rated finale for a TV series in the history of television. The show still lives on today on MeTV locally in Pittsburgh, airing six days a week.
M*A*S*H star Alan Alda reacted to Swit's passing on social media:
Swit starred in every season of M*A*S*H until its finale in 1983.
Swit visited Pittsburgh in 2021 for the Steel City Con and told KDKA Radio that for her it was always about meeting the fans and getting to meet some of the people who she had impacted through her work as Maj. Houlihan.
“I love meeting fans and hearing feedback about the show, about the character,” said Swit. “I cannot tell you how thrilling it is to hear from young women who became nurses because of being inspired by Margret Houlihan.”
She also told the story of a young woman who came from a broken home with her mother working two jobs and used the show as a comfort growing up.
“I guess M*A*S*H would babysit her and she started to regard me as her older sister . . . and she also did become a nurse,” said Swit.
The hit TV show that ended in 1983, will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year.
Even after all that time, Swit gets plenty of fan mail and calls the show a “global phenomenon.”
“I’ve seen it in Spanish, Italian, French, Thai, again, the humanity of it is so appealing, there seems to be no boarders that it hasn’t crossed.”
In addition to being a multi-time Emmy Award winning actress, Swit was also an animal right advocate and has a book entitled SwitHeart: The Watercolour Artistry & Animal Activism of Loretta Swit, with proceeds going to fight animal cruelty.