SALLY KELLERMAN
(2 June 1937 – 24 February 2022)
The name 'Hot Lips' Houlihan will be linked forever with the American actress and singer Sally Kellerman, who has died aged 84 from heart failure. 'Hot Lips', or to give her role its full name of Major Margaret Houlihan, was the butt of practical jokes played on her by fellow soldiers in M*A*S*H, Robert Altman's 1970 black comedy about a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in the Korean War. Also starring Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould, it was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Kellerman for best supporting actress and Altman for best director, but it only won an Oscar for Ring Lardner's screenplay. However, Kellerman, who was also nominated for a Golden Globe, did win two awards from the Kansas City Film Critics' Circle and the Golden Laurel Award. M*A*S*H was only the fifth film in the actress's career but she went on to make many more. A tall woman with an overwhelming personality, she was always a pleasure to watch.
Sally Clare Kellerman was born in California to John Helm Kellerman, a Shell Oil executive, and Edith Baine Vaughn, a piano teacher. She was inspired to become an actress by seeing Marlon Brando in Viva Zapata! and attended the Hollywood High School where she sang in musical shows but left to study at the Los Angeles City College. After a while she joined Jeff Corey's acting classes, along with Jack Nicholson, Dean Stockwell and Shirley Knight. She auditioned for Otto Preminger's film of Saint Joan but her stature and looks, five foot ten inches tall with a large mouth, were against her for that part. Instead her first film was Reform School Girl (1957), an American International Pictures' exploitationer aimed at the young drive-in audience. After that she hit several television series until Hands of a Stranger (1962), a minor horror pic based on The Hands of Orlac.
She then studied at the Los Angeles Actors' Studio (West) which brought her some better roles such as a part in Jack Smight's thriller The Third Day (1965) with George Peppard, and, after more television (Ben Casey, I Spy, Star Trek, Bonanza, Tarzan, etc) she played the only surviving victim in The Boston Strangler (1968), Richard Fleischer's film with Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda. After M*A*S*H she worked with Altman again on Brewster McCloud with Bud Cort and later on Welcome to L.A. (1976) which Altman produced, The Player (1992) in which she played herself, and Pret-a-Porter (1994) in the role of the editor of Harper's Bazaar. Sadly, she turned down Altman's Nashville and the chance to sing, a decision she later regretted.
Following M*A*S*H she appeared in the Neil Simon comedy Last of the Red Hot Lovers directed by Gene Saks with Alan Arkin. In Howard Zieff's Slither, a hilarious comedy chase thriller she hooked up with James Caan who was playing an ex-con out on parole and together they go on a hunt for some stolen money. The unflappable Kitty Kopetsky played by Kellerman, is a hoot, especially when she admits she's "packing heat". Then Lost Horizon (1973), a musical remake of a Hollywood classic, bombed even with the likes of Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, Michael York, Charles Boyer and John Gielgud on board and a score by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and, of course, Sally Kellerman. The Big Bus proved to be a better vehicle for her talents, a spoof disaster movie. After Welcome to L.A., Kellerman continued to work on films and in television, including Centennial (1978), a long TV series on the history of Colorado.
Back on the big screen there was A Little Romance with Laurence Olivier and Diane Lane, Foxes with Jodie Foster, It Rained All Night with Tony Curtis, Loving Couples with Shirley MacLaine and James Coburn, and then more television. Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield, Blake Edwards' That's Life with Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrews, and Henry Jaglom's Someone to Love, Orson Welles' last film as an actor, were probably Kellerman's best work from the late 1980s. However, she carried on appearing in films and on television right up to 2021.
Kellerman also had a singing and recording career alongside her acting and she continued to work in theatre and as a singer in night clubs. Through the years she appeared in the musicals of Mame, The Wild Party and the ill-fated Breakfast at Tiffany's which closed during previews. She was in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues and made singing appearances at Reno Sweeney in Greenwich Village, the Rainbow Grill in New York, Feinstein's at the Regency on Park Avenue, and at California's Palmdale Playhouse. She also made some recordings including a jazz and blues album of songs by Linda Ronstadt, Nina Simone, Neil Diamond, Marvin Gaye and Dolly Parton, etc. In 2013 she published her memoirs: Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life.
Sally Kellerman was married to the TV producer Rick Edelstein from 1970 to 1972. In 1980 she married the writer-producer Jonathan Krane with whom she adopted newborn twins Jack and Hannah. Both Jonathan and Hannah died in 2016.
MICHAEL DARVELL