Sad news today as it’s been reported that Sally Kellerman has died at the age of 84. According to THR, her son, Jack Krane, said that his mother passed at a nursing home in Woodland Hills after a battle with dementia. Sally Kellerman is best known for playing U.S. Army Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H as well as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in Where No Man Has Gone Before, the second Star Trek pilot.
Although she was a shy student, Kellerman appeared in a high-school production of Meet Me in St. Louis and submitted a recording demo to Verve Records. She wound up signing a contract with Verve but ended up walking away. “I was young and scared and at the time,” Kellerman told Palm Springs Life in an 2013 interview. “Norman Granz, was one of the biggest, hottest, producing labels in jazz. 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. I didn’t like myself and here I was in this incredible place with other artists, such as Jack Nicholson, James Coburn and Roger Corman. It was like a womb. I had time to develop, and it gave me time to grow up.” Sally Kellerman went on to appear in movies such as The Boston Strangler, Brewster McCloud, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Lost Horizon, Back to School, That’s Life!, Meatballs III: Summer Job, It’s My Party, and Ratatouille, as well as TV shows such as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Bonanza, The Invaders, Mannix, Diagnosis: Murder, Columbo, 90210, Workaholics, The Young and the Restless, and more.
Sally Kellerman’s biggest break arrived with M*A*S*H, but she almost turned the part of Hot Lips down. “I couldn’t find the role,” Kellerman said. “I felt I had been promised a ‘best part’ in the film, and I counted the lines and just felt I had been misled. I thought I would never get in the movies, and I huffed and puffed and hated this stranger (Altman) that I didn’t even know, wanting so much for this woman, this character, in this picture. And he said, ‘you’ll either have something or nothing’. And I went with it.” Kellerman’s biggest scene, and one of the most memorable of the film, was the shower prank scene. She had never appeared nude on film before had a few distractions lined up. “When I looked up, there was Gary Burghoff stark naked standing in front of me,” Kellerman said. “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 when I hit the deck.” As Kellerman mentioned, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her work on the film. She will be missed.