Obit watch: May 31, 2025.

Loretta Swit.

NYT (share link).

She took voice lessons and dance lessons, but her parents were horrified by her choice of entertainment as an actual career. As Ms. Swit told The Toronto Star in 2010, after they saw her in a play at a small Greenwich Village theater, “My mother said to my father, ‘If you don’t stop her now, she may wind up doing this for the rest of her life.’”

I would like to think she ended up with piles and piles of sweet “M*A*S*H” residuals, especially given how long she was on the show. But there’s a quote in Larry Linville’s IMDB entry:

…after his agent, business manager, accountant, US government and ex-wives all got their cut, his royalties from M*A*S*H (1972) were enough to make his car insurance payment.

Then again, she only had one ex-husband.

I have a lot of problems with “M*A*S*H”, and those problems only increase the more MeTV reruns it. But it is interesting that Major Houlihan was actually permitted to have a character arc. This is a nice moment. (It used to be on YouTube, but I think they’re scrubbing anything from “M*A*S*H” that isn’t official.)

Other credits include “Freebie and the Bean”, the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Mission: Impossible”, “Supertrain”…

…and she was a “Mannix” two-timer. (“Only One Death to a Customer“, season 3, episode 20. She was “Dorothy Harker”. “Figures in a Landscape“, season 4, episode 4. She was “Jill Packard”.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 31st, 2025 at 10:42 am and is filed under 1970s, Leadership, Mannix, Obits, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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