Sally Kellerman lauded for role in MASH film

LOS ANGELES • Sally Kellerman, the willowy, sultry-voiced actor and singer whose portrayal of Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the 1970 dark comedy MASH earned her an Oscar nomination, died on Thursday at an assisted living facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.

Her son, Jack Krane, said the cause was heart failure.

In her decades-long career in film and television, Kellerman was best known for her role as the strait-laced but alluring army nurse in MASH, which landed her rave reviews and a Golden Globe Award.

The film, directed by Robert Altman, broke ground with its irreverence and graphic depiction of a group of hotshot surgeons struggling to save horribly wounded soldiers at an Army surgical unit during the Korean War.

When MASH was adapted into the television series M*A*S*H, Kellerman's character was played by Loretta Swit.

Kellerman, who was born in Long Beach, California, on June 2, 1937, made her film debut in a 1957 movie called Reform School Girl, in which she had one line.

In the 1960s, she racked up more than 30 television appearances on shows including The Outer Limits and Star Trek.

After MASH, Kellerman continued to work in film and on television, accumulating more than 150 credits, including the series Maron (2013 to 2016) - in which she played comedian Marc Maron's mother - and a 10-episode stint on the soap opera The Young And The Restless (1973 to present).

At times, she lamented being so identified with her MASH role.

"Did you know," she said in an interview with the New York Times in 1980, "that when I started out on television, I could never get a comedy part? I was always a sophisticated, hard-bitten drunk or the wife being beaten by her husband. But I'm still Hot Lips to everyone."

In addition to her son, she is survived by a daughter, Claire Kellerman Krane. Another daughter, Hannah Krane, died in 2016. Kellerman's husband, Jonathan Krane, also died in 2016.

NYTIMES