Sally Kellerman, MASH star and cabaret singer, dies at 84

Sally Kellerman, the Oscar-nominated actress and singer best known for playing the strait-laced Korean War nurse Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in Robert Altman's classic 1970 comedy MASH, died of heart failure Thursday at her home in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 84.

Alan Eichler, her manager and publicist, confirmed the news to EW.

In a career spanning six decades, Kellerman appeared in films and TV series including Back to School, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, The Young and the Restless, and Maron, while also performing as a cabaret singer and recording two albums: 1972's Roll With the Feelin' and 2007's Sally.

But Hot Lips — whose nickname originated from a passionate tryst broadcast over a military camp P.A. system — proved to be Kellerman's most indelible role. Her MASH performance shot her to stardom, earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, inspired the title of her 2013 memoir (Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life), and marked the first of several collaborations with Altman. (They re-teamed on Brewster McCloud, The Player, Pret-a-Porter, and the Altman-produced Welcome to L.A.)

Everett Collection Sally Kellerman in 'MASH'

MASH was Kellerman's fifth film, and she successfully lobbied Altman to beef up her part. In a 2014 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Kellerman recalled challenging the director on why Hot Lips had to exit the film so soon after being humiliated by a prank in the showers.

"I was so mad," Kellerman said. "I go, 'Why does she have to leave? Why couldn't she do this and that?' I had all these ideas. I'm practically in tears and so angry, and [Altman] casually leans back and he says, 'Well, why couldn't she? Why don't you take a chance? You could wind up with something or nothing.' Oh, it was like love at second sight."

Another of Kellerman's favorite projects was the 1980 telefilm Big Blonde, an adaptation of a Dorothy Parker story about a free-spirited model who settles down with a salesman (played by John Lithgow), only to discover that he's an ill-tempered alcoholic and frequently on the road.

"Big Blonde was the fullest role I've ever had," Kellerman told the New York Times in 1981. "It was the first time I've gotten to play a whole person. From now on, I'm not going to play some silly halfwit unless it's a fantastic silly halfwit."

Although she was famous for her work on screen, music was Kellerman's first love. She sang on stage and in the studio between acting gigs, and contributed songs to the soundtracks of Brewster McCloud, Lost Horizon, Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins, and Boris and Natasha: The Movie.

"My music has just been a passion that just wouldn't die," Kellerman told The Morning Call of Allentown, Pa., in 2015. "And I never wanted one without the other. But I wanted soul, and so I wanted to be the real deal — a real singer, not just an actor who sings, you know?"

Kellerman was married twice: to film producer Rick Edelstein in the early 1970s, and to Jonathan D. Krane, also a producer, from 1980 until his death in 2016. She is survived by son Jack, daughter Claire, and mother-in-law Lorraine Krane.

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