Sally Kellerman, who played ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan in ‘M.A.S.H.’ movie, dies at 84 (2024)

Toggling between dramatic roles and quirky, free-spirited comedic parts, Ms. Kellerman appeared in more than 150 movies and television shows, in addition to pursuing a career as a cabaret singer and recording artist.

She appeared in one of the first “Star Trek” episodes, as a ship psychiatrist who develops psychic abilities, and starred as an English teacher courted by comedian Rodney Dangerfield — “Why don’t you call me sometime, when you have no class?” — in the 1986 movie “Back to School.”

But she remained best known for her role in “M.A.S.H.” (1970), a critically acclaimed black comedy about a camp of Army doctors and nurses during the Korean War. “Everybody calls me Hot Lips,” she told Life magazine after the film’s release, sounding surprised and a little amused by her identification with the protocol-obsessed Maj. Houlihan. “Nobody even knows my name.”

Ms. Kellerman appeared in some of the movie’s most memorable scenes, earning her nickname after mischievous doctors sneak a microphone into the tent where she’s sleeping with surgeon Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), broadcasting their lovemaking over the PA system. “Oh, Frank, my lips are hot,” she says. “Kiss my hot lips!”

When the doctors (played by Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, among others) later collapse the walls of the shower unit as a prank, Ms. Kellerman is exposed to the entire camp mid-wash. “This isn’t a hospital,” she shouts after running to her commanding officer, angry and humiliated. “It’s an insane asylum!”

The film grossed more than $80 million, becoming one of the year’s biggest box office hits, and inspired a long-running TV show, with Ms. Kellerman’s character played by Loretta Swit. Ms. Kellerman received one of the film’s five Oscar nominations, for best supporting actress, but lost to Helen Hayes for “Airport.”

Ms. Kellerman was widely praised for her performance, especially in the shower sequence. “With her expressive, vulnerable face, she is disturbing to laugh at,” wrote New York Times reviewer Roger Greenspun. “It is as if she had returned from some noble-nonsense war movie of the 1940’s to suggest an area of human response that the masterly sophistications of ‘M.A.S.H.’ are unaware of.”

Some critics saw the prank scenes as misogynistic, although Ms. Kellerman argued that they gave her character a chance to develop over the course of the film and revealed a vulnerability that was missing early on. The shower sequence was also transformative for her as an actress, after years of anxiety over her appearance and frustration with the roles she had been offered.

“M.A.S.H. was a whole catharsis,” she told Newsweek. “It freed me of a lot of complexes. All I had played was these suffering women. The whole feeling of being big and ugly and loud as can be was a big breakthrough for me.”

Ms. Kellerman partnered with Altman several more times, playing a fairy godmother character in “Brewster McCloud” (1970) and a libidinous real estate agent in “Welcome to L.A.” (1976), which Altman produced and Alan Rudolph directed. She also had a cameo in the filmmaker’s Hollywood satire “The Player” (1992) and starred in his fashion-world comedy “Ready to Wear” (1994), as a magazine editor and rival to Tracey Ullman and Linda Hunt.

Their collaborations were some of the highlights in a career that was filled with detours, including a hiatus from acting to tour as a cabaret singer (“I wanted to be like Billie Holiday, but without the drugs — well, maybe just a little grass”) and stints recording ad spots for brands including Hidden Valley Ranch.

In a 2013 memoir, “Read My Lips,” she conceded that she had made mistakes in rejecting hit movies such as “The Poseidon Adventure” in favor of projects that turned out to be duds, including the 1973 musical “Lost Horizon,” a box-office bomb with songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

“There isn’t an actor in town who hasn’t turned down some fabulous thing. There was just too much of that in my case,” she wrote. “My choices weren’t made from a place of any real confidence but rather mostly from fear.”

One of her “most painful mistakes,” she said, was spurning an offer from Altman to appear in one of his upcoming movies. When she told him in a phone call that she would take the role “only if it’s a good part,” he hung up.

“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.”

The film was “Nashville,” Altman’s 1975 masterpiece set in the country and gospel music world. “In that part I would have been able to sing,” Ms. Kellerman wrote. “Bad choice.”

Sally Claire Kellerman was born in Long Beach, Calif., on June 2, 1937, and grew up in Los Angeles, graduating from Hollywood High. Her mother was a piano teacher, and her father was an oil company executive.

At age 18, she landed a contract with Verve Records and seemed on the verge of fulfilling her dream of becoming a jazz singer. But she was “neurotic and scared,” she later told the Los Angeles Times, and turned from singing to acting, taking classes with instructor Jeff Corey and making her screen debut with a small role in “Reform School Girl” (1957).

Supporting herself with jobs as a waitress, secretary, swimming coach and elevator operator, she began to appear on television, including in episodes of “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Mannix,” “Cheyenne” and “The Outer Limits.” “It took me eight years to get into TV — and six years to get out,” she told Life. “Frigid women, alcoholics they gave me. I got beat up, raped and never played comedy.”

Ms. Kellerman landed roles in the suspense and crime movies “The Third Day” (1965) and “The Boston Strangler” (1968), and was slated to appear in a 1966 stage production of the musical “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which closed during previews and never officially opened on Broadway.

Then came “M.A.S.H.” and its notorious shower sequence. Ms. Kellerman later said she felt “absolutely horrified and humiliated” while preparing to shoot the scene; during early takes, she dropped to the ground and covered herself so quickly that it was unclear what was happening. The cast and crew, led by Altman, devised ways to slow her descent.

“When I looked up, there was [actor] Gary Burghoff stark naked standing in front of me,” Ms. Kellerman said in Mitchell Zuckoff’s book “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography.” “The next take, he had Tamara Horrocks,” who played one of the nurses, “without her shirt on. … So I attribute my Academy Award nomination to the people who made my mouth hang open when I hit the deck.”

Ms. Kellerman appeared opposite Alan Arkin in the Neil Simon adaptation “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” (1972) and in the road-trip comedy “Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins” (1975). She also starred with James Caan in “Slither” (1973) and played the disapproving mother of Diane Lane in “A Little Romance” (1979), as well as the divorced, unsatisfied mother of Jodie Foster in “Foxes” (1980).

Her marriage to writer-director Richard Edelstein ended in divorce. In 1980, she married Jonathan D. Krane, who produced the comedy “Look Who’s Talking.” He died in 2016, the same year as her daughter Hannah Krane. Survivors include two children, Jack and Claire.

In recent years Ms. Kellerman appeared on shows including “Difficult People” and “Maron,” and received a Daytime Emmy nomination for a guest role on “The Young and the Restless.” She also performed cabaret, including in an act she called “Hot Lips,” and released an album, “Sally,” in 2009.

“You must have enough other things going for you so the world doesn’t come to an end if you’re not working,” she once told United Press International. “You build a life with your husband and kids. I wasn’t born a model of mental health. But I have to get it together when I’m not working. I never stay down too long because I’m busy figuring how to get out of the hole.”