Quotes

Hot Lips changed a lot in eleven years. Initially Margaret Houlihan behaved as though a man were the only thing that could complete her life, and she didn't see what richness her life contained. She gained a lot of self-esteem through the years, and she came to realize that what she did, what she offered, was valuable. To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn't discard anything. I didn't go on into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux. She never stopped developing.

I mean, certain things had to remain the same. She had to remain one of the antagonists because that was the structure of the show. In the second season, we saw for the first time that she was unhappy with "Frank" and wanted more from her life. Then around the third or fourth year, in an episode called The Nurses (1976), "Hot Lips" gave the nurses a speech telling them how lonely she was because she was in charge and that's the way it was, so she couldn't really have any friends. Her marriage and her divorce changed her. Her affair with "Hawkeye" in Comrades in Arms: Part 1 (1977) changed both characters, so that they were never really rivals again.

Sometimes I would get letters from nurses saying how grateful they were that a nurse was finally being portrayed as a person, a caring human being. As far as the audience was concerned, I think it identifies with at least one or two or maybe all of us. We have become people to them and never caricatures. We're very real to them.

Larry Linville and I were very deep friends. Very often we would go behind the tents on the TV series M*A*S*H (1972) to work out scenes and then bring them to the Director.

I always wanted to be an actress. Luckily, my mother loved movies and we would go to double features and sit through both films twice.

I think of Alan Alda as a teacher. He is so involved in women's lib and has helped me to have confidence in myself. He is a gentle, kind man and I owe a lot of my transformation into a liberated person to him. (12 March 1979)

M*A*S*H (1972) is a classic. The writing, the execution, the production values... It was just a blessing. The whole experience was just a noble blessing, to work on those literary scripts. To work with family, friends, and colleagues who you loved -- every week! It doesn't surprise me that it continues to seduce generation after generation after generation.

I'm not interested in being married. I have a career and friends and things I care about doing. I don't want a lot of other demands. And, thanks to Alan [Alan Alda], who has deep insight about women, I don't feel guilty anymore about not wanting a family. My parents and friends are my family. (12 March 1979)

'Major Houlihan' (M*A*S*H (1972)) was unique at that time and in her time, which was the 50's when it was really happening. She became even more unique I think because we allowed her to continue to grow -- we watched her evolve. I don't think that's ever been done in quite that way, on what was labeled a 'sitcom' because other was no other word for it. I never think of it as a sitcom. If there was a category it was, but we had to be put somewhere so we were called a comedy.