Sally Kellerman, the Oscar and Emmy nominated actor who performed Margaret Hot Lips Houlihan in director Robert Altman’s 1970 movie MASH died Thursday.
Kellerman died of coronary heart failure at her house within the Woodland Hills part of Los Angeles, her supervisor and publicist Alan Eichler stated. She was 84.
Kellerman had a profession of greater than 60 years in movie and tv. She performed a school professor who was returning pupil Rodney Dangerfield’s love curiosity within the 1986 comedy Back to School. And she was an everyday in Altman’s movies, showing in 1970’s Brewster McCloud,” 1992’s The Player and 1994’s Ready to Wear.
But she would always be best known for playing Major Houlihan, a straitlaced, by-the-book Army nurse who is tormented by rowdy doctors during the Korean War in the army comedy MASH.”
In the movie’s key scene, and its peak second of misogyny, a tent the place Houlihan is showering is pulled open and he or she is uncovered to an viewers of cheering males.
This isn’t a hospital, that is an insane asylum! she screams at her commanding officer.
She carries on a torrid affair with the equally uptight Major Frank Burns, performed by Robert Duvall, demanding that he kiss her sizzling lips in a second secretly broadcast over the camp’s public deal with audio system, incomes her the nickname.
Kellerman stated Altman introduced out the very best in her.
It was a really liberating, optimistic expertise, she instructed Dick Cavett in a 1970 TV interview. For the primary time in my life, I took possibilities, I didn’t suck in my cheeks, or fear about something.
The movie was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, however her best-supporting actress was its solely performing nod regardless of a solid that included Duvall, Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould.
The film can be changed into a TV collection that lasted 11 seasons, with Loretta Swit in Kellerman’s position.
Sally Clare Kellerman was born in 1937 in Long Beach, California, the daughter of a piano trainer and an oil govt, shifting to Los Angeles as a baby and attending Hollywood High School.
Her preliminary curiosity was in jazz singing, and he or she was signed to a contract with Verve information at age 18. She opted to pursue performing and didn’t put out any music till 1972, when she launched the album Roll With the Feeling.” She would sing on the side, and sometimes in roles, throughout her career, releasing her last album, Sally, in 2007.
She took an acting class at Los Angeles City College and appeared in a stage production of Look Back in Anger with classmate Jack Nicholson and several other future stars.
She worked mostly in television early in her career, with a lead role in 1962’s Cheyenne and guest appearances on The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Bonanza.
Her appearance in the original Star Trek pilot as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner won her cult status among fans.
She would work primarily in film in the years following MASH, including 1972’s Last of the Red Hot Lovers and 1975’s Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins,” each with Alan Arkin, 1973’s Slither with James Caan, 1979’s A Little Romance” with Laurence Olivier and 1980’s Foxes with Jodie Foster.
She would work into her 80s, with several acclaimed television performances in her final years.
She starred in the comedy series Decker with Tim Heidecker and played comedian Mark Maron’s mother on his series Maron.
Sally Kellerman was radiant and beautiful and fun and so great to work with, Maron said on Twitter Thursday. My real mom was very flattered and a bit jealous. Im sad shes gone.
And in 2014 she was nominated for an Emmy for her recurring role on The Young and the Restless.
Kellerman was married to television producer Rick Edelstein from 1970 to 1972 and to movie producer Jonathan D. Krane from 1980 until his death in 2016.
She is survived by her son Jack and daughter Claire.
Read all of the Latest News, Breaking News and Assembly Elections Live Updates right here.