TRIBUTE: Loretta Swit moved TV roles for woman forward

The ‘M*A*S*H’ star fought to bring more depth to Margaret in the beloved dramedy.

Loretta Swit, who played Major Margaret Houlihan for 11 seasons on “M*A*S*H,” died Friday. She was 87.

Swit’s rendition of Margaret changed what was possible for women to be on TV. Network roles for women in the 1970s were dominated by cheerful matriarchs like Carol Brady and Edith Bunker.

Mary Tyler Moore pushed boundaries with a show about a single woman who didn’t seem too interested in husband hunting. Yet her stories usually reset by the end of the episode.

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Bea Arthur’s title character in “Maude,” who dealt with controversial such as abortion, but that show was an outlier.

Margaret had continuity and with it the complications of growth and change.

Writers initially made Margaret a one-note character: a classic “woman who yells trope.” Alan Alda’s Hawkeye and Wayne Rogers’ Trapper were having all the fun, flouting authority and giving being moral monologues.

Margaret was a scold. She wanted to do things by the book — unless it involved her affair with the married Frank Burns, a sniveling weasel of a man who was a mediocre surgeon and an even lesser comrade.

Larry Linville, who played Burns, and Swit made a good comedy duo, but their stories were always predictable: an awkward sexual encounter in which Frank failed to compliment Margaret on her beauty and was in the doghouse or the pair joined forces to thwart the shenanigans of of Hawkeye and Trapper.

This characterization made Margaret flat and dull. Swit pushed writers to put more meat on her part. And she won, especially as women began taking chairs in the writers’ room.

“I wanted people to laugh at Hot Lips, not hate her.” Swit once told an interviewer.

The Hot Lips monicker was a holdover from the character’s origins in the 1968 Richard Hooker novel “M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors” and the 1970 Robert Altman film based on the book.

The idea was Hot Lips got her position of authority by sleeping with generals and manipulating men.

Actress Sally Kellerman earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Margaret as sex object and the butt of jokes. In the film, Kellerman’s Margaret is exposed to the whole laughing camp when Hawkeye and Trapper tear down the partitions of the women’s shower.

Swit’s Margaret had the same sexual backstory, but she evolved and grew perhaps more than any character on the series.

She eventually dumps Frank for Donald, a beefy colonel whom she marries. But Donald is a numbskull in his own right and when she discovers his affair and subsequent reassignment to San Francisco, she divorces him.

The stigma of divorce was much stronger in the 1970s than today and the power and agency with which Margaret stuck up for herself was seldom seen in women on television.

She had a one-time dalliance with Hawkeye when the pair were stuck behind enemy lines.

The easy move would have been to try it make them a couple, but writers took the tougher path of showing that despite being great medical pros and excellent colleagues, they were incompatible.

The result was a more mature way to look at both sex and relationships.

In the span of 11 seasons, Margaret went from a punchline to an equal partner in the series.

Credit to the writers, directors, and producers for growing and changing. But credit Swit for unmatched execution and acting prowess.

Margaret went from being defined by her gender and relationship to men to being defined by her career to ultimately being defined by herself, a person in full.

Swit’s portrayal of Margaret earned her two Emmys and 10 nominations. What’s more: Swit pushed forward what could be expected of a female lead on TV.

By the time “M*A*S*H” ended in 1983, Diane Chambers (Shelley Long) made her entrance on “Cheers” — an opinionated and privileged Ivy League grad forced to work as a waitress at a small Boston bar and face a working class world she never knew.

“Cagney & Lacey” starred Tyne Daily and Sharon Gless as two female detectives managing the stresses of the job and family life.

(Swit was originally cast as one of the leads in that groud-breaking cop series but couldn't get out of her “M*A*S*H” contract.)

Margaret and the rest of the 4077th took their final bow before the largest audience for a scripted network show in TV history.

Swit, of course, was not Margaret. Swit has a long career in theater, TV, and film, with her last movie role coming in 2019. She was an advocate for animal rights and authored a book on needlepoint and watercolor painting.

Swit’s story ended on Friday, but Margaret lives on forever.

Right now, someone is discovering “M*A*S*H” for the first time on a streaming service or return.

Follow Margaret. It's a heck of a story.

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