Rhonda just clued me in that Loretta Switt, who played Margaret Houlihan on the TV version of MASH, died on Friday.
Hot Lips on TV was not the caricature from the movie version. And that makes sense; you can say the same thing about the difference between the television show and the movie. I grew up with the sitcom version on TV each night, but only watched the movie later, in college, rented from the library. My father often lauded it in the same breath as Catch-22. The MASH movie remains among my favorite films of all time. The film is satire; the television show was far more sincere. Both cast a hard light on the human cost of war, with divergent strategies, but equally noble goals.
I imagine that in the same way there are people who stridently affirm that Van Halen is better with Dave and The Office ended when Steve Carell left, the movie trumps the film, or vice versa. For my tastes, I prefer the dark, artful humor of the film, but I recognize how black comedy would not translate into a television serial.
In the same way that Alan Alda brought a pathos to Donald Sutherland’s Hawkeye, Switt played Hot Lips not as a turgid rule follower but as a values-driven exemplar of service–if, occasionally, a little coarse.