Sally Kellerman, who was Oscar nominated for her supporting function as Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” characteristic movie, died Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 84.
Her publicist Alan Eichler confirmed her demise.
Amid her other roles were being a cameo in Altman’s “The Participant,” a professor in Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School” and a Starfleet officer in the “Star Trek” episode, “Where No Male Has Absent Ahead of.”
The willowy blonde actress with the characteristically throaty voice appeared in two Altman films in 1970 the other was the additional experimental “Brewster McCloud,” in which she starred with Bud Cort and Michael Murphy. In this movie, which did not have a standard narrative, Kellerman performed Louise, the mom of the bewinged Cort character, Brewster.
She starred subsequent opposite Alan Arkin in the Gene Saks-directed Neil Simon effort and hard work “Last of the Crimson Warm Lovers” the Cleveland Push reported: “Sally Kellerman as the to start with girl makes out the best, handling to be equally alluring and hostile. She’s terrific with a place-down and her retorts have bite.”
She starred with James Caan in the goofy 1973 street movie “Slither” (in which the actress performed a witch, no much less) and was among the the starry forged of the musical version of “Lost Horizon.” Kellerman reteamed with Arkin alongside with a younger Mackenzie Philips for an additional wacky highway film, 1975’s “Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins,” then was part of the starry solid assembled for the spoof catastrophe movie “The Big Bus.”
In 1976’s “Welcome to L.A.,” created by Altman acolyte Alan Rudolph (and developed by Altman), Kellerman played a real estate agent, frantic mainly because her spouse is cheating on her, who is amongst the girls that a songwriter performed by Keith Carradine sleeps with during a sojourn in Los Angeles.
She appeared in the critically acclaimed “Great Performances” outing “Verna: USO Female,” starring Sissy Spacek. Variety said: “Kellerman, singing in a whiskey baritone or dropping supposedly refined reviews, reflects that individual form of blasé perspective that WWII curtailed, if it did not get rid of it.”
Returning to tv, the place she had started, Kellerman experienced a major function in NBC’s mammoth 1978 “Centennial” miniseries, starring as Raymond Burr’s daughter, who marries the fur trapper Pasquinel, played by Robert Conrad, who is central to the tale.
The actress performed the mom of a quite younger Diane Lane in the delightful “A Very little Romance,” but the focus listed here was on the teen lovers Kellerman and Arthur Hill ended up in the picture to have a troubled marriage from which Lane’s character sought escape. Kellerman had a a lot more exciting position in her subsequent photo, the teenager-women-go-astray pic “Foxes,” in which she and Jodie Foster proven in a number of scenes a believably challenging mother-daughter romantic relationship.
In the early 1980s Kellerman commenced to do a series of Tv set videos, such as “Big Blonde,” based on the Dorothy Parker tale, and “September Gun,” a Western in which she played madam Mama Queen.
She returned to the bigscreen for the derivative comedy “Moving Violations,” in which she played a scheming judge, and the following 12 months starred in the Rodney Dangerfield auto “Back to Faculty,” in which she played the appreciate fascination, a captivating professor.
In Blake Edwards’ “That’s Lifestyle,” starring Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrews, she performed a helpful neighbor, then segued to “Meatballs III.”
Luckily she soon discovered a aspect in Henry Jaglom’s 1987 film “Someone to Enjoy,” in which she performed what the New York Occasions explained as “an actress with out an unmannered bone in her entire body,” and in 1993 she appeared in Percy Adlon’s “Younger and Young,” starring Donald Sutherland and Lolita Davidovich.
She starred with Dave Thomas in “Boris and Natasha,” a are living-action adaptation of the Jay Ward cartoon, in 1992.
Returning to do the job for Robert Altman for the initially time given that the 1970s, Kellerman was amongst the starry casts of exceptional Hollywood satire “The Player” (1992), in which she cameo’d as herself, and 1994’s significantly less effective, Paris couture-centered “Ready to Dress in,” in which she performed a magazine editor associated in a rivalry with some others. The actress later appeared in a 1997 episode of the temporary ABC collection “Gun” directed by Altman.
In 1997 Kellerman and husband Jonathan D. Krane created the movie “The Lay of the Land,” centered on a engage in by Mel Shapiro in which the actress experienced formerly starred. Kellerman and Ed Begley Jr. toplined the movie, but it did not generate important or well-liked guidance.
The actress joined Dyan Cannon and Brenda Vaccaro in Susan Seidelman’s 2005 bittersweet comedy “Boynton Beach front Club,” about girls in their 6os pursuing romance in a South Florida enclave. Referring to Kellerman as “lean, blond, flashing her crocodile grin,” the New York Times said the film’s most touching scenes observe the nervous re-entry into the courting world of Len Cariou’s character, who, “under the client ministrations” of Kellerman’s character, “regains his sexual confidence.”
She experienced recurred on daytime cleaning soap “The Younger and the Restless” as the mysterious Constance Bingham.
In 2011 Kellerman played a girl with dementia in a retirement dwelling in the movie “Night Club,” which also starred Mickey Rooney and Ernest Borgnine in 2014 the actress was aspect of the massive ensemble cast of “Reach Me,” about the outcome of an inspirational ebook on a extensive variety of persons.
In the 1990s and 2000s the actress guested on Television set sequence which includes “Evening Shade,” “Murder, She Wrote,” HBO’s “Dream On,” Tea Leoni collection “The Naked Fact,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Diagnosis Murder,” “Columbo,” “Providence” and “90210.” A lot more a short while ago she recurred on IFC collection “Maron” as Marc Maron’s bohemian mother.
Specified her hot, intriguing voice, the actress by natural means did voicework: Her credits included 1985 element “Sesame Avenue Offers: Abide by that Bird” (Skip Finch), 1990 animated aspect “Happily Ever Just after,” ABC collection “Dinosaurs” and Forex sequence “Unsupervised” she was also the voice powering Hidden Valley ranch dressing, Mercedes-Benz and Revlon.
Kellerman was also a singer, who signed a recording agreement with Verve Documents when she 18, even though her very first album, “Roll With the Feelin ’,” was not recorded until 1972. Her second album, “Sally,” was launched in 2009. The actress also contributed songs to the soundtracks for “Brewster McCloud,” “Lost Horizon,” “Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins” and “Boris and Natasha: The Motion picture,” amid other folks.
Sally Claire Kellerman was born in Extensive Seaside, Calif. She began her showbiz vocation by taking Jeff Corey’s performing class, before long right after which she appeared in a Corey-staged production of “Look Back again in Anger” that also featured her classmates Shirley Knight, Jack Nicholson, Dean Stockwell and Robert Blake. In the late 1950s, Kellerman joined the newly opened Actors Studio West.
She built her element debut in 1957’s “Reform School Girls” and next appeared on the bigscreen in 1962’s “Hands of a Stranger,”1965’s “The 3rd Day” and “The Lollipop Deal with.” Her to start with high-profile movie was 1968’s “The Boston Stranger,” starring Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda, in which she experienced a supporting role as a sufferer of the strangler who survives his assault but does not recall anything at all about him. She also had a supporting part in the 1969 film “The April Fools” as the spouse of Jack Lemmon, who has an affair with Catherine Deneuve, before breaking out the future yr in “M*A*S*H” the following 12 months.
The actress labored primarily in television through the 1960s, appearing notably as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in an episode of authentic “Star Trek” sequence named “Where No Male Has Absent Right before.” Other Tv credits for the duration of the period involve “Twilight Zone,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “The Numerous Enjoys of Dobie Gillis,” “My 3 Sons,” “The Outer Limitations,” “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “I Spy,” “That Female,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “Mannix.”
Kellerman’s memoir, “Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Daily life,” was posted in 2013.
She was married to Television writer-director Rick Edelstein for two several years in the early 1970s. Kellerman married author-producer Jonathan D. Krane in 1980 and he died in 2016.
