Sally Kellerman obit

 

Sally Kellerman, Hot Lips Houlihan in ‘M*A*S*H,’ Dies at 84

The Oscar-nominated actress and singer also starred in 'Back to School' opposite Rodney Dangerfield and on 'Maron.'

 She was not on the list.

Sally Kellerman, the husky-voiced actress known for her Oscar-nominated portrayal of U.S. Army Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, has died. She was 84.

Kellerman, who also sang and had a Grand Funk Railroad tune written for her, died Thursday morning at an assisted care facility in Woodland Hills after a battle with dementia, her son, Jack Krane, told The Hollywood Reporter.

A native Californian, Kellerman had a memorable role in the third Star Trek episode, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” in which she portrayed Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, a human Starfleet officer aboard the USS Enterprise. When Dehner sacrifices her life, her dying words to Capt. Kirk (William Shatner) are, “I’m sorry … you can’t know what it’s like to … be almost a god.”

And in the comedy Back to School (1986), Kellerman was wonderful as the free-spirited college literature professor Diane Turner, the love interest of Rodney Dangerfield’s obnoxious rags-to-riches businessman, Thornton Melon.

 

“This is my one brag in life: The director [Alan Metter] said he felt that I helped make Rodney human, believable in a relationship. Because I just had to love him and be sincere about it,” Kellerman said in 2016 on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. (She played Maron’s eccentric mom on his IFC comedy.)

 

Kellerman also noted that when fans encountered her in public, they either yelled, “Hey, Hot Lips!” or recited a classic Dangerfield line from Back to School: “Call me sometime when you got no class.”

Kellerman had appeared in guest-starring stints on many TV shows of the 1960s, including The Outer Limits, 12 O’Clock High, Ben Casey, That Girl and Mannix, when she won the role of the by-the-books Houlihan in M*A*S*H, an adaptation of Richard Hooker’s 1968 novel about Army surgeons saving lives during the Korean War.

One of her more famous scenes in the movie came when she is embarrassingly pranked in the shower. Kellerman had never been nude onscreen, so Altman devised distractions for the shot, she said.

“When I looked up, there was [actor] Gary Burghoff stark naked standing in front of me,” she recalled in 2016. “The next take, [Altman] had Tamara Horrocks — she was the more amply endowed nurse — without her shirt on. … So I attribute my Academy Award nomination to the people who made my mouth hang open.”

Regarding the humiliation her character endured, Kellerman said: “I loved Bob, but he was a real male chauvinist, probably the worst. I’m kidding. Sort of kidding. But I think that [torment] really saved Hot Lips. She grew up after that. She’d been so uptight, so rigid, no sense of humor — and after all that went down, she started having a really good time, a real life.”

In a 2013 interview, Kellerman remembered that when the M*A*S*H crew was watching the dailies, Altman told her, “You’re going to get nominated for an Oscar for this one, Sally.” She wound up losing to the sentimental favorite that year, Helen Hayes of Airport.

She and Altman also collaborated on the features Brewster McCloud (1970), The Player (1992) and Pret-a-Porter (1994) and on a 1997 episode of Gun, an ABC anthology series that he executive produced. Kellerman, though, squandered another opportunity to work with the famed director.

After she had an ill-fated rendezvous with Alan Arkin in the Neil Simon comedy Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972), directed by Gene Saks, “Bob called me one day at home,” she recalled in her 2013 memoir, Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life. “‘Sally, do you want to be in my picture after next?’ he asked. ‘Only if it’s a good part,’ I said.

“He hung up on me. Bob was as stubborn and arrogant as I was at the time, but the sad thing is that I cheated myself out of working with someone I loved so much, someone who made acting both fun and easy and who trusted his actors. Stars would line up to work for nothing for Bob Altman.”

She added, “Oh, the Altman film I turned down? Nashville. In that part I would have been able to sing. Bad choice.”

Sally Claire Kellerman was born on June 2, 1937, in Long Beach, California. Her mother was a piano teacher and her father an executive for Shell Oil. “I came out of the womb singing and acting,” she said.

While attending Hollywood High School, Kellerman starred in a production of Meet Me in St. Louis and submitted a demo to jazz impresario Norman Granz. He offered her a recording contract at Verve, but, just 18, she turned it down.

“I was young and scared at the time,” she said. “I had very little self-esteem, and I had already started this acting class. This class, taught by Jeff Corey, really gave me the chance to grow up.” (Classmates included Jack Nicholson, James Coburn and Robert Blake.)

In 1957, Kellerman made her film debut in the Samuel Z. Arkoff crime drama Reform School Girl, then appeared regularly on television and in several plays, including The Marriage Go-Round and Call Me by My Rightful Name.

She had a role in a 1966 stage production of Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, starring Richard Chamberlain and Mary Tyler Moore, but the show was closed in previews before it made it to Broadway when producer David Merrick said he did not want to “subject the drama critics and the public to an excruciatingly boring evening.”

Still, all of her experience to that point emboldened her as she auditioned for Altman.

“Before M*A*S*H, I was ready to take any kind of chance,” Kellerman said. “I went out for the Lieutenant Dish part, which was bigger. But I happened to be wearing lipstick, and while I was talking a mile a minute, producer Ingo Preminger kept muttering in his German accent, ‘Hot Lips!’ … [Altman] yelled ‘Hot Lips’ too.”

The film and Hooker’s novel, of course, also inspired the CBS series M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972-83. Nearly all of the characters from the movie were recast, including Hot Lips, portrayed on TV by Loretta Swit, who won two Emmys and was nominated for her work on 10 of the show’s 11 seasons. (Burghoff did reprise his role as Walter “Radar” O’Reilly.)

Altman said that he disliked the show “because [it] was the opposite of my main reason for making this film — and this was to talk about a foreign war, an Asian war, that was going on at the time. And to perpetuate that every Sunday night — and no matter what platitudes they say about their little messages and everything — the basic image and message is that the brown people with the narrow eyes are the enemy. And so I think that series was quite a racist thing.”

Kellerman’s film résumé also included The Boston Strangler (1968), The April Fools (1969), Slither (1973) opposite James Caan, the Charles Jarrott-directed Lost Horizon (1973), Welcome to L.A. (1976) with Harvey Keitel and Sissy Spacek, The Big Bus (1976), Foxes (1980), Blake Edwards’ That’s Life! (1986), All’s Fair (1989) and Boynton Beach Club (2005).

On the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless, she played Constance Bingham, an elderly woman confined to a wheelchair, and landed a Daytime Emmy nomination in 2015.

Kellerman eventually did pursue a singing career and in 1972 released her first album, Roll With the Feelin’.

“I love acting … but my fantasy is to have a couple of babies and make an album a year, and maybe a picture a year, too,” she said in 1973. “I don’t want to not do either one.”

Around that time, Kellerman dated Grand Funk Railroad singer-guitarist Mark Farner, who wrote the 1976 pop song “Sally” about her. Her second album, Sally, was released in 2009.

Kellerman also did voiceover work in commercials — most famously for Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing — and for such animated films as The Mouse and His Child (1977), Happily Ever After (1990) and Delgo (2008).

Kellerman wed writer-director Rick Edelstein (Starsky & Hutch) in December 1970, but the marriage was troubled from the start. “We’ve fought every day since we’ve met,” she said years ago, “and sometimes I wondered whether my wedding dress would be black with red splotches.” They divorced in 1972.

In 1980, she married the late producer Jonathan D. Krane (Look Who’s Talking, Face/Off). They adopted twins Hannah, who died in 2016, and Jack.

Filmography

Film

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1957      Reform School Girl           Marcia

1962      Hands of a Stranger         Sue        

1965      The Third Day    Holly Mitchell   

1968      The Boston Strangler      Dianne Cluny     

1970      M*A*S*H            Major Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan          Won—Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress

Won—Golden Laurel Award for Best Comedy Performance, Female

Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture

Nominated—National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress

Brewster McCloud           Louise  

1972      Last of the Red Hot Lovers            Elaine Navazio  

A Reflection of Fear         Anne    

1973      Slither   Kitty Kopetzky  

Lost Horizon       Sally Hughes      

1975      Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins              Mackinley Beachwood  

1976      The Big Bus         Sybil Crane         

Welcome to L.A.               Ann Goode        

1977      The Mouse and His Child               The Seal               Voice

1979      A Little Romance              Kay King              

1980      Foxes    Mary    

It Rained All Night the Day I Left                 The Colonel        Nominated—Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actress

Serial     Martha

Head On               Michelle Keys   

1985      Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird              Miss Finch           Voice

Moving Violations            Judge Nedra Henderson               

KGB: The Secret War       Fran Simpson    

1986      Back to School   Dr. Diane Turner              

That's Life!          Holly Parrish      

Meatballs III: Summer Job            Roxy Dujour       

1987      Three for the Road          Blanche               

Someone to Love             Edith Helm         

1988      You Can't Hurry Love      Kelly Bones        

1989      The Secret of the Ice Cave            Dr. Valerie Ostrow          

All's Fair               Florence              

1990      Happily Ever After            Sunburn               Voice

1993      Doppelganger    Sister Jan            

Younger and Younger     'Zig-Zag' Lilian   

1994      Mirror, Mirror 2: Raven Dance    Roslyn  

Prêt-à-Porter     Sissy Wanamaker             Won—National Board of Review Award for Best Cast

1996      It's My Party       Sara Hart            

1997      The Lay of the Land         Mary Jane Dankworth   

1999      American Virgin                Quaint

2001      Women Of The Night      Mary    

2004      Open House       Marjorie Milford              

2005      Boynton Beach Club        Sandy   

2006      Payback                Miss Bronson     Voice; Director's Cut

2011      Night Club           Dorothy                Won—Accolade Competition Award of Excellence for Best Supporting Actress

2013      Joan's Day Out   Joan       Short film

2014      Reach Me            Florence 'Flo'    

When Bette Met Mae     Narrator               Documentary

A Place for Heroes           Maureen            

2016      His Neighbor Phil              Bernadette        

The Remake       Aunt Peg             

Flycatcher           Thelma

Television

Year       Title       Role       Notes

1962      Cheyenne           Lottie Durango Episode: "The Durango Brothers"

1963–1964          The Outer Limits               Ingrid Larkin       Episode: "The Human Factor"

Judith Bellero     Episode: "The Bellero Shield"

1963      The Twilight Zone             Office Worker    Episode: "Miniature"

My Three Sons Helga Willamsen               Episode: "Steve and the Viking"

1964–1965          12 O'Clock High                 Lieutenant Libby MacAndrews   Episodes: "The Men and the Boys"

"Those Who Are About to Die"

1965      The Rogues         Elsa Huntington                Episode: "God Bless You, G. Carter Huntington"

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour            Sally Benner       Episode: "Thou Still Unravished Bride"

Seaway                 Aline Svenson    Episodes: "Bonhomme Richard"

1966      Star Trek              Dr. Elizabeth Dehner       Episode: "Where No Man Has Gone Before"

Bonanza               Kathleen Walker               Episode: "A Dollar's Worth of Trouble"

That Girl               Sandy Stafford   Episode: "Break a Leg"

1967      The Invaders      Laura Crowell     Episode: "Labyrinth"

1969      Mannix                 Diana Walker     Episode: "The Solid Gold Web"

1970      Bonanza               Lotta Crabtree   Episode: "Return Engagement"

1978      She'll Be Sweet (aka Magee and the Lady)             Veronica Stirling               TV film

1978–1979          Centennial          Lise Bockweiss Pasquinnel            Miniseries

1980      Big Blonde           Hazel     TV film

1981      Saturday Night Live         Herself (host)     Episode: "Sally Kellerman/Jimmy Cliff"

1982      For Lovers Only Emmy Pugh        TV film

1983      Dempsey             Maxine Cates     TV film

September Gun                Mama Queen    TV film

1984      Hotel     Lauren Webb     Episode: "Lifelines"

1985      Secret Weapons               Vera Malevich   TV film

1986      Tall Tales & Legends       Lucy       Episode: "Ponce de Leon"

1990      The Ray Bradbury Theater            Clara Goodwater              Episode: "Excorcism"

Evening Shade   Shelley Darling Episode: "Hooray for Wood"

1991      Victim of Beauty               Evelyn Ash           TV film

1992      Boris and Natasha: The Movie    Natasha Fatale TV film

1994      Dream On            Tracy     Episode: "Blinded by the Cheese"

1994, 1998          Diagnosis: Murder           Irene Stanton / Adele Botsford   Episodes: "Woman Trouble"

"Drill for Death"

1995      Kill Shot                Counsellor           TV film

1997      Gun        Frances                 Episode: "All the President's Women"

1998      Columbo              Liz Houston         Episode: "Ashes to Ashes"

1999      Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony              Narrator               TV Documentary

2000      Bar Hopping       Cassandra            TV film

2002      Verdict in Blood                Judge Marcia Blackwell TV film

Trail of the Cougar           Narrator               Television Documentary

2006      The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman               Herself Episode: "A Cult Classic"

2009      The Wishing Well             Donette               TV film

2011      90210   Marla Templeton             Episodes: "Nerdy Little Secrets"

"Women on the Verge"

Chemistry            Lola Marquez     12 episodes

2012      Unsupervised    Principal Stark (voice)     8 episodes

2013      Workaholics       Peggy    Episode: "The Worst Generation"

The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange           Romaine Empress / Marshmallow Queen (voice)                2 episodes

Deadtime Stories              Grandma Grussler            Episode: "Little Magic Shop of Horrors"

High School USA!              Dolores Barren (voice)   3 episodes

2013–2016          Maron   Toni Maron         Recurring role

2014      On Cinema          Herself Episode: "Second Oscar Special"

2014–2015          The Young and the Restless         Constance Bingham         10 episodes

Emmy nomination for Best Actress

2015      Comedy Bang! Bang!      Hera      Episode: "Stephen Merchant Wears a Checkered Shirt and Rolled Up Jeans"

2016–2017          Decker Janet Davidson 7 episodes

2017      Difficult People Joan Gentile       Episode: "The Silkwood"

Awards and nominations

Year       Work     Award   Category              Result

1970      M*A*S*H            KCFCC Award     Best Supporting Actress                 Won

1971      M*A*S*H            NSFC Award        Best Supporting Actress                 Nominated

M*A*S*H            Golden Globe Award      Best Supporting Actress                 Nominated

M*A*S*H            Golden Laurel    Best Supporting Actress                 Won

M*A*S*H            Academy Award               Best Supporting Actress                 Nominated

1980      It Rained All Night the Day I Left                 Genie Award      Best Performance by a Foreign Actress   Nominated

2004                      The Susan B. Anthony "Failure is Impossible" Award         Honoree (shared with actress Joan Allen and publicist Lois Smith)        Won

2011      Night Club           Award of Excellence        Best Supporting Actress                 Won

2013                      Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival/Cinema Paradiso         Lifetime Achievement Award     Won

2015      The Young and the Restless         Daytime Emmy Award    Outstanding Special Guest Performer in a Drama Series    Nominated