Loretta Swit, who played ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan on M*A*S*H, dies aged 87

The actor, who won two Emmy awards, was best known for being one of longest-serving cast members on the hit series

Loretta Swit MICHAEL BUCKNER/GETTY IMAGES

Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy awards for playing Major Margaret Houlihan, the demanding head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean war on the pioneering hit TV series M*A*S*H, has died. She was 87.

Publicist Harlan Boll says Swit died on Friday at her home in New York City, likely from natural causes.

Swit and Alan Alda were the longest-serving cast members on M*A*S*H, the series based on Robert Altman’s 1970 film, which was itself based on a novel by Richard Hooker, the pseudonym of H Richard Hornberger.

The CBS show aired for 11 years from 1972 to 1983, revolving around life at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical hospital, which gave the show its name. The two-and-a-half-hour finale on 28 February 1983, lured over 100 million viewers, the most-watched episode of any scripted series ever.

Rolling Stone magazine put M*A*S*H at No 25 of the best TV shows of all time, while Time Out put it at No 34. It won the Impact Award at the 2009 TV Land annual awards. It won a Peabody Award in 1975 “for the depth of its humor and the manner in which comedy is used to lift the spirit and, as well, to offer a profound statement on the nature of war”.

In Altman’s 1970 film, Houlihan was a one-dimensional character – a sex-crazed bimbo who earned the nickname “Hot Lips”. Her intimate moments were broadcast to the entire camp after somebody planted a microphone under her bed.

Sally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie version and Swit took it over for TV, eventually deepening and creating her into a much fuller character. The sexual appetite was played down and she wasn’t even called Hot Lips in the later years.

The growing awareness of feminism in the 70s spurred Houlihan’s transformation from caricature to real person, but a lot of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.

“Around the second or third year I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes,” Swit told Suzy Kalter, the author of The Complete Book of M*A*S*H.

“To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn’t go into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”

Swit’s other roles included films such as Race with the Devil and SOB and shows including The Love Boat. She also played Christine Cagney in the pilot movie of Cagney & Lacey.

First published at The Guardian Australia, May 31, 2025.

What happened to a Strad between death and sale

The Joachim-Ma Stradivarius

Message from Brooline, Mass., violin dealer Christopher Reuning: My take on the sale of the Joachim, Ma Stradivari sold at Sotheby’s: The hammer price of $10M may have been well below the over hyped publicity surrounding the sale, but it was a very strong result for this violin by all measures. Most importantly, it was great for the New England Conservatory who will put these funds to important use. We have cared for this violin since the weekend of Sihon Ma’s death when I was summoned to collect the violin from his home in Philadelphia and store it in my vault for safe keeping. After that, I arranged for it to be exhibited at the museum in Cremona and ultimately aided in its acquisition by NEC. From that point, we cared for the violin during the loan periods of several of NEC’s best violinists until it finally came time to advise that it be pulled out of circulation in order to receive a much needed restoration. This very big restoration job was done at my recommendation by John Becker of Chicago who did a tremendous transformation of the top which ranks as one of the most genius jobs I have ever seen. While I am not in favor of the exaggerations of the auction house, I am thrilled that it sold ultimately for a price that was exactly in line with what most knowledgeable professionals including myself believed it should. It was a good day for a lucky buyer and a great day for the New England Conservatory.

Note from Site Administrator Tony Magee: The "Joachim-Ma" Stradivarius is a renowned violin crafted by Antonio Stradivari in 1714 during his "Golden Period". It's named after two of its most prominent owners: Joseph Joachim, a celebrated 19th-century violinist, and Si-Hon Ma, a Chinese violinist and pedagogue. The violin was recently sold at a Sotheby's auction for $11.25 million, with the proceeds benefiting the New England Conservatory's scholarship program. 

Ruth Buzzi, comic actor on ‘Laugh-In’ and more, dies at 88

Actress Ruth Buzzi during the 'The Best of Laugh-In' panel at the 2011 Winter TCA press tour in Pasadena, Calif. 

Photo: Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images file

By Beth Harris, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ruth Buzzi, who rose to fame as the frumpy and bitter Gladys Ormphby on the groundbreaking sketch comedy series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” and made over 200 television appearances during a 45-year career, has died at age 88.

Buzzi died Thursday at her home in Texas, says her agent Mike Eisenstadt. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was in hospice care. Shortly before her death, her husband, Kent Perkins, had posted a statement on Buzzi’s Facebook page, thanking her many fans and telling them: “She wants you to know she probably had more fun doing those shows than you had watching them.”

Buzzi won a Golden Globe and was a two-time Emmy nominee for the NBC show that ran from 1968 to 1973. She was the only regular to appear in all six seasons, including the pilot.

She was first spotted by “Laugh-In” creator and producer George Schlatter playing various characters on “The Steve Allen Comedy Hour.”

Schlatter was holding auditions for “Laugh-In” when he received a picture in the mail of Buzzi in her Ormphby costume, sitting in a wire mesh trash barrel. The character was clad in drab brown with her bun covered by a hairnet knotted in the middle of her forehead.

“I think I hired her because of my passion for Gladys Ormphby,” he wrote in his 2023 memoir “Still Laughing A Life in Comedy.” “I must admit that the hairnet and the rolled-down stockings did light my fire. My favorite Gladys line was when she announced that the day of the office Christmas party, they sent her home early.”

The Gladys character used her purse as a weapon against anyone who bothered her, striking people over the head. On “Laugh-In,” her most frequent target was Arte Johnson’s dirty old man character Tyrone F. Horneigh.

“Gladys embodies the overlooked, the downtrodden, the taken for granted, the struggler,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post in 2018. “So when she fights back, she speaks for everyone who’s been marginalized, reduced to a sex object or otherwise abused. And that’s almost everyone at some time or other.”

Buzzi took her act to the Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts in Las Vegas, where she bashed her purse on the heads of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Lucille Ball, among others.

Her other recurring characters on “Laugh-In” included Flicker Farkle; Busy-Buzzi, a Hollywood gossip columnist; Doris Swizzler, a cocktail-lounge regular who got drunk with husband Leonard, played by Dick Martin; and an inconsiderate flight attendant.

“I never took my work for granted, nor assumed I deserved more of the credit or spotlight or more pay than anyone else,” Buzzi told The Connecticut Post. “I was just thrilled to drive down the hill to NBC every day as an employed actor with a job to do.”

Buzzi remained friends through the years with “Laugh-In” co-stars Lily Tomlin and Jo Anne Worley.

Born Ruth Ann Buzzi on July 24, 1936, in Westerly, Rhode Island, she was the daughter of Angelo Buzzi, a nationally known stone sculptor. Her father and later her brother operated Buzzi Memorials, a gravestone and monument maker in Stonington, Connecticut, where she was head cheerleader in high school.

Buzzi enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse at age 17. Two years later, she traveled with singer Rudy Vallee in a musical and comedy act during her summer break. That earned her an Actors’ Equity union card before she graduated from the playhouse’s College of Theatre Arts.

Buzzi moved to New York and was immediately hired for a lead role in an off-Broadway musical revue, the first of 19 such shows she performed in on the East Coast.

She got her national television break on “The Garry Moore Show” in 1964, just after Carol Burnett was replaced by Dorothy Loudon on the series. She played Shakundala the Silent, a bumbling magician’s assistant to Dom DeLuise’s character Dominic the Great.

Buzzi was a regular on the CBS variety show “The Entertainers” whose hosts included Burnett and Bob Newhart.

She was in the original Broadway cast of “Sweet Charity” with Gwen Verdon in 1966.

Buzzi toured the country with her nightclub act, including appearances in Las Vegas.

She was a semi-regular on “That Girl” as Marlo Thomas’ friend. She co-starred with Jim Nabors as time-traveling androids on “The Lost Saucer” in the mid-1970s.

Her other guest appearances included variety shows hosted by Burnett, Flip Wilson, Glen Campbell, Tony Orlando, Donny and Marie Osmond and Leslie Uggams.

She appeared in Ball’s last comedy series “Life With Lucy.”

Buzzi guested in music videos with “Weird Al” Yankovic, the B-52’s and the Presidents of the United States of America.

She did hundreds of guest voices in cartoon series including “Pound Puppies,” “Berenstain Bears,” “The Smurfs” and “The Angry Beavers.”

She was Emmy nominated for her six-year run as shopkeeper Ruthie on “Sesame Street.”

Sesame Street’s Big Bird poses with cast members Ruth Buzzi and Roscoe Orman as they accept 

a TV Guide Award for Favorite Children’s Show in 1999. Photo by Rose Prouser/ Reuters

Her movie credits included “Freaky Friday,” “Chu Chu and the Philly Flash,” “The North Avenue Irregulars” and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again.”

Buzzi was active on social media and had thousands of followers whom she rewarded with such one-liners as “I have never faked a sarcasm” and “Scientists say the universe is made up entirely of neurons, protons and electrons. They seem to have missed morons.”

She married actor Kent Perkins in 1978.

The couple moved from California to Texas in 2003 and bought a 640-acre ranch near Stephenville.

Buzzi retired from acting in 2021 and suffered a series of strokes the following year. Her husband told The Dallas Morning News in 2023 that she had dementia.

Associated Press National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.

First published at PBS News, May 2, 2025