Loretta Swit: 18 Joyous Memories of ‘MASH,’ Animal Advocacy and More in One of Her Last Interviews
In one of her last interviews, Loretta Swit shared candid stories of M*A*S*H, art and animal rescue
Loretta Swit’s voice was as unmistakable as ever—warm, funny and alive with passion. When Woman’s World last spoke to the actress not long before her death, she filled the conversation with stories, laughter, and reflections that said as much about who she was as any role she ever played. More than four decades after M*A*S*H signed off the air, she was still brimming with gratitude for the experience, still treasuring the bonds she formed on Stage 9 and still working tirelessly for the causes that defined her offscreen life.
Most striking was the spirit of giving that ran through everything Loretta Swit said, whether it was giving herself fully to her characters or pouring her energy and name into making a difference. Even near the end, she was still talking about her Switheart Animal Alliance, about saving beloved pets for families who couldn’t afford costly surgeries, reuniting military dogs with their handlers and writing another book so proceeds could go directly to those efforts. It wasn’t a cause she picked up for publicity, but rather a calling that went back to when she was a toddler in a stroller, pointing at dogs on the sidewalk and nearly bursting with excitement.
Loretta Swit never lost sight of the importance of connection, whether it was with animals in need, audiences in a theater or fans who still approached her with M*A*S*H memories decades after the finale. “It’s a romance between me and the audience,” she shared exclusively with Woman’s World. “We couldn’t do without each other. Together we make magic.”
A beloved star of M*A*S*H and a tireless advocate off-screen, Loretta Swit’s life and career can be summed up in these key moments (explored in much more depth in her own words below):
Loretta Swit (Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, M*A*S*H) — 1972–1983
Won two Emmy Awards for M*A*S*H; also known for Gunsmoke guest spots and the Cagney & Lacey pilot.
- Stage Career: Appeared in productions of The Odd Couple (Female Version), Same Time, Next Year, and Shirley Valentine.
- Animal Advocate: Founded SwitHeart Animal Alliance; passionate about animal rescue and activism throughout her later life.
- Artist & Author: Published SwitHeart: The Watercolour Artistry & Animal Activism of Loretta Swit (2017).
- Final Years: One of her last interviews (2023) reflected on M*A*S*H, her devotion to animals, and her belief in compassion as her true legacy.
1. Her love for animals began before she could talk
Loretta Swit liked to joke that her passion for animals was never a choice. “My parents used to laugh and tell me that when I was just a baby in a stroller, if I saw a dog, I would turn beet red, like a little balloon about to pop, and shout, ‘Doggy! Doggy! Doggy!’” she recalled. And that innate excitement never left her. As a girl, she would pocket sugar cubes from restaurants to feed a horse she didn’t even own. It was the beginning of a lifelong bond with animals, one that would later define much of her work off-screen. “I always knew you don’t buy an animal—you rescue, you foster or you adopt. Those abandoned creatures need us.”
2. She had a need to act
Just as animals were a constant in her life, so was performing. Swit remembered sneaking a lamp under the covers at night as a child, reading books aloud and acting out every character, dog voices included. “When I took my first acting class, I discovered I’d been rehearsing all my life,” she laughed. That feeling carried her through the early years of her career. “It was never, ‘I’m going to try to do this.’ It was, ‘I’m going to do it.’ That’s a big difference. It’s a need, like breathing.”
3. Margaret ‘Hot Lips’ Houlihan grew because Loretta Swit demanded it
When M*A*S*H began, Margaret Houlihan was defined by her relationship with Frank Burns and while Swit was the first to admit that the pairing could be funny, she also realized that it wasn’t sustainable. “We were together for the first three seasons,” she explained, “but they made him married, they made him goofy and inept and it was difficult. At our meetings together, I would tell the writers it was more and more difficult for me as an actress to justify being with him. Yes, he’s the only game in town, I’m very lonely, I’m human, but you can do it just so long.”
Swit never downplayed the writers’ role in shaping Margaret. “You’ve got to have the words. We were blessed with these extraordinary writers, starting with Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds. I used to say, “You don’t do anything. You do a Larry Gelbart line or a joke. You just sit there and say the words.”
4. Loretta’s real life was woven into the role
Swit’s animal advocacy found its way into the show. “The writers were so splendid. They would take from our lives and embroider that into the character. My animal activism, for example. They wrote an episode in which I fall apart because the camp dog gets hit by a Jeep. What they were able to show was my release over the death of this little dog. Margaret couldn’t do that in the OR, but she could do it there.”
That humanizing moment was rare for Houlihan and Swit treasured it. “She was so dedicated as a nurse, so pulled together, she didn’t let herself fall apart often enough. That’s what made her interesting—to see it happen occasionally when she wasn’t pulling everything together.”
5. The ‘most expensive kiss’ on television
One of the defining moments for Margaret and Hawkeye came in the series finale, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” when the two characters shared a long kiss. “Did you know it was the most expensive kiss ever held on television?” Swit laughed. “It was explained to me—because advertisers were buying time by the minute, they calculated that that kiss was the longest, most expensive kiss on TV.”
To her, the emotion behind that moment is what counted. “It was this explosion: goodbye, after all those years. It harked back to the time when Hawkeye and Margaret had a meeting of body and soul behind enemy lines. Our relationship was affected dramatically from that episode on. And in the finale, that kiss was a release. It was powerful.”
6. The ‘M*A*S*H’ cast was truly a family
For fans, reunions of the cast were a big deal, but Swit was quick to point out that they never really needed them. “We see each other all the time,” she said. “We always laugh when everybody says it’s a reunion. It’s like, are you kidding? I just had lunch with him.
“Alan Alda and I were together having lunch when he said, ‘I was thinking maybe all of us should get together on my podcast.’ I said, ‘That’s a great idea,’ but trying to get these guys to agree on a date? Weeks and weeks of laughs and jokes. That’s how it always was.”
She remembered how the cast would make unconventional choices just to stay together. “When we went to the Emmys, the network would send long limos, give you the red-carpet treatment. We opted to charter a bus. The M*A*S*H cast arrives on this bus—that’s hysterical! But that’s who we were. We wanted to be in one bus, in one place, together.”
7. A secret to the show’s writing
Swit marveled at the way the writers constantly created fresh stories by pairing unlikely characters. “One of the most brilliant things I think they continued to do was what I used to call the ‘what if’ syndrome. What if Jamie Farr and Loretta get a flat tire? What if Margaret wants to go to Tokyo for her birthday but doesn’t tell anyone her age?”
That process gave rise to the episode “Birthday Girls,” where Margaret and Klinger are stranded together. “At first, she says, ‘I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, you of all people.’ That terrible Irish temper. But then she can’t help but be touched by him. Jamie was so wonderful. I can’t think of anyone who could be Klinger. The casting was just extraordinary.”
For Swit, those unexpected duets—Margaret with Klinger, Margaret with Winchester—were part of what made the series feel like music. “Each one of us was like a note, and together it was a symphony. Sometimes it was harmony, sometimes cacophony, but it was always music.”
8. The death of Henry Blake changed television
Few television moments were as shocking as when McLean Stevenson’s Henry Blake was killed off-camera in a plane crash. Swit remembered the impact vividly. “To lose Henry Blake to the war was monumental,” she said. “It was the first time that had ever happened—a main, beloved character killed. But what a statement to make against the war.”
The audience reaction was intense. “The producers were besieged with mail and calls: ‘How dare you kill Henry?’ And our answer was: ‘We didn’t. The war did. Take your rage and put it where it’s going to do some good.’”
9. The finale was impossible to get through without tears
The last episode of M*A*S*H, “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen,” remains the most-watched television finale in history. Swit described the atmosphere on set as both draining and unforgettable. “Burt Metcalf was directing and he was pleading with us: ‘Please, people, stop crying. I can’t have you crying in every scene.’”
But for Swit, the emotions were unavoidable. “We were rehearsing, reading the script, and I had to look at Harry Morgan—my dearest friend, father, colleague, confessor. I had to look at that twinkling face and say, ‘You dear, sweet man, I’ll never forget you.’ And do it without crying? Are you serious? Of course I burst into tears, and Harry burst into tears. We thought we’d be drained by the time we shot it, but it doesn’t happen. The truth behind it was real. I wasn’t going to see him every day. Yes, we were forever friends, but this was the end of Room and Stage Nine. It was bittersweet.”
10. The fans were truly connected to the show
The impact of M*A*S*H wasn’t lost on Swit, who often spoke about the way the show connected with its audience. One story she loved involved a fan letter from an ICU nurse. “She wrote that she was ready to sit down somewhere and laugh and enjoy herself,” Swit recalled. “She thought Shirley Valentine was a comedy, and she got the last available seat right in front. At one point, she said, Shirley—Loretta— looked into my eyes, and she wrote, ‘I will never again look casually at another soul.’”
That kind of moment, Swit said, was the essence of acting. “This is what you’re capable of doing,” she told her students when she read them the letter. “This is a noble profession. If you have that kind of purity in your drive, it will always reward you. It’s a romance between me and the audience. We couldn’t do without each other. Together we make magic.”
11. ‘M*A*S*H’ endures because it was always honest
Decades after the finale, Swit wasn’t surprised that people still cared. “It makes perfect sense,” she said. “Because it was always honest. The scripts were real, the performances were real. It felt real.”
For her, that honesty was the thread running through every aspect of the show, from the writers t0 the cast and the audience’s response. Toward the end of the series, the cast even began posting fan letters and telegrams on a bulletin board. One stuck with her forever: “Dear M*A*S*H folks, thank you for the laughter, the tears. Thank you for letting me feel.” Swit never forgot that one. “That says it all. What happens if you don’t feel? You’re dead.”
12. The work environment was unlike anything else
For Swit, showing up to Stage 9 each day wasn’t really work. “You’ve never seen a cast so eager to get to work,” she remembered. “Harry [Morgan] and I used to get there so early. It was like going to see your family, your favorite people, your favorite faces. Even if you were dozing in your chair in the green room, you were happy to be there.”
That joy didn’t go unnoticed by the cast themselves. “McLean said to me on his last day, ‘I know I’ll never be in anything this good again.’ That was a quote,” Swit recalled. “But he also said, ‘I have to leave, I want to be number one.’ He didn’t get it—he was number one. It had nothing to do with billing. He was so rich and so wonderful in that role, but he needed to go. And that changed the dynamic of the show again.”
“Each change was like getting adrenaline. It was a shot in the arm, this new force that came in. And again, the casting was always brilliant. For Harry Morgan to come in and replace McLean—holy moly.”
13. Loretta Swit never lost her passion for the stage
Long after M*A*S*H wrapped, Swit found herself continually drawn back to theater. “’Are you still driven as an actress?’ Loretta, are you still breathing?” she laughed. “It’s part of your DNA. That doesn’t stop. You keep learning. That’s why I love long runs—because you’re forced to look for nuances, to find new moments. A play is a living thing.”
She believed in the truth of performance. When a fan once asked if the tears were real in the episode where Henry Blake dies, Swit’s answer was simple. “Everything we do is real. It’s acting 101. If you looked into our eyes and saw pain, that was real.”
14. Art was another form of expression
In addition to performing, Swit was passionate about painting. “I’m not a trained artist, but when you look through my book [Switheart], you’d think I’d had lessons,” she said. “And my work gets better as you go through the book. Practice makes perfect—not that there is such a thing as perfect in art. But you aspire and you get better by repetition. That’s exciting to me.”
Her artistic streak had always been there. “I was six years old when I saw an ad in a magazine that said, ‘Draw me and win a prize.’ I begged my mother to submit my drawing and I won first prize. It was just a little bank, but I was only six. And already, knowing I wanted to be an actress, I was also sketching and painting.”
15. Jewelry and perfume became part of her ‘Switheart’ brand
Swit never treated her ventures into jewelry and perfume as side hustles—they were creative outlets. “I don’t have a jewelry line per se,” she said with a laugh. “My girlfriend says it’s barely a dash. Not a line at all. A dash of jewelry. But I design things with hearts, because of my trade name, Switheart.”
Perfume was even more immersive. “I was flying to France, watching them weigh pounds of flowers, learning how many tests you have to make combining this and that until finally, with my ‘nose’—that’s what we call them—we both looked at each other and said, ‘Wow. This is the one.’ That’s very exciting. It’s another form of art.”
16. Every book was another chance to give back
Swit’s first art book went into multiple printings, with all proceeds directed to her Switheart Animal Alliance. “That’s what pays for some of those life-or-death surgeries,” she said proudly. And she wasn’t finished. “Now I’m onto another book. I’ve done many paintings since the first one came out. I’ve also lost some animals I painted and photographed, and I want to share their presence with the reader. It will pay homage to them, to their lives and to my heart when I lost them.”
17. Loretta Swit rejected cynicism
Late in life, Swit held fast to optimism. “I’ve always believed in the goodness of people,” she said. “Anne Frank could say it in her circumstances, so who am I not to? Why waste your time on cynicism? Look for ways to make it better. Please, let’s be reasonable here. Don’t waste your time. Look at what we can accomplish.”
18. ‘You had to be there—and we were’
For all her accomplishments, Swit always returned to the years she spent on M*A*S*H. “Alan once gave us all this beautiful coffee table book on medicine,” she recalled. “Inside, he wrote to me, ‘Wasn’t it wonderful to be us?’ And I always say that when I write to the others.”
She called M*A*S*H “a jewel in the crown of any career,” but she also saw it as a miracle she shared with her colleagues and her audience. “Some of the things that bonded us together for life cannot be explained. You had to be there in the morning shooting, at lunch, at dailies, laughing together. You had to be there when Harry Morgan made Mike Farrell laugh so hard he was on the floor. You had to be there. And we were.”
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