Sally Clare Kellerman (June 2, 1937 – February 24, 2022) was an American actress whose acting career spanned 60 years. Her role as Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in Robert Altman's film M*A*S*H (1970) earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After M*A*S*H, she appeared in a number of the director's projects, namely the films Brewster McCloud (1970), Welcome to L.A. (1976) (produced by Altman, directed by his protégé, Alan Rudolph), The Player (1992), and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), and the short-lived anthology TV series Gun (1997). In addition to her work with Altman, Kellerman appeared in films such as Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972), Back to School (1986), plus many television series such as The Twilight Zone (1963), The Outer Limits (1963 and 1965), Star Trek (1966), Bonanza (1966, 1970), The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman (2006), 90210 (2008), Chemistry (2011), and Maron (2013). She also voiced Miss Finch in Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird (1985), which went on to become one of her most significant voice roles.
At age 18, Kellerman signed a recording contract with Verve Records, but her first album (Roll with the Feelin' on the Decca label) was not recorded until 1972. A second album Sally was released in 2009. Kellerman also contributed songs to the soundtracks for Brewster McCloud (1970), Lost Horizon (1973), Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975), and Boris and Natasha: The Movie (1992).
Kellerman did commercial voiceover work for Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, Mercedes-Benz, and Revlon. Kellerman's voice acting work included The Mouse and His Child (1977), Happily Ever After (1990), Dinosaurs (1992), Unsupervised (2012), and The High Fructose Adventures of Annoying Orange (2013). In 2013, she released her memoir Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life, describing her trials and tribulations in the entertainment business.
Kellerman was born in Long Beach, California, on June 2, 1937 to Edith Baine (née Vaughn), a piano teacher from Portland, Arkansas, and John Helm "Jack" Kellerman, a Shell Oil executive from St. Louis. She had an older sister; her younger sister died in infancy. Edith was a Christian Scientist and raised her daughters in this faith.
When Kellerman was in fifth grade, the family moved from Long Beach to the San Fernando Valley. She spent her early life in then-rural Granada Hills in a largely unpopulated area surrounded by orange and eucalyptus groves. During her sophomore year of high school, the Kellermans moved from San Fernando to Park La Brea, Los Angeles, where she attended Hollywood High School. She grew to stand 5 ft 10+1⁄2 in (179.1 cm). Due to her shyness, she made few friends and received poor grades (except in choir and physical education) but appeared in a school production of Meet Me in St. Louis.
With the help of a high-school friend, Kellerman submitted a recording demo to Verve Records founder and head Norman Granz. After signing a contract with Verve, however, she was daunted by the task of becoming a recording artist and walked away.
Kellerman attended Los Angeles City College for a year, and enrolled in Jeff Corey's acting class. Within a year, she appeared in a production of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger staged by Corey and featuring classmates Shirley Knight, Jack Nicholson, Dean Stockwell, and Robert Blake. Towards the end of the 1950s, Kellerman joined the newly opened Actors Studio West and debuted before the camera in the film, Reform School Girl (1957). To pay Corey's instruction fees, among other employment, Kellerman worked as a waitress at the Chez Paulette coffee house that film stars frequented.
Kellerman made a number of television-series appearances. She was in an episode of the western Cheyenne, as well as a role as a waitress in the John Forsythe sitcom Bachelor Father. Struggling for parts in television and films, Kellerman acted on stage. She debuted in Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, followed by parts in a Pasadena Playhouse production of Leslie Stevens's The Marriage-Go-Round and Michael Shurtleff's Call Me by My Rightful Name (1962).
Kellerman appeared in two episodes of The Outer Limits, first in 1963 in the episode "The Human Factor", and then in 1964 in the episode "The Bellero Shield" in which she played Judith Bellero, the manipulative and ruthless wife of Richard Bellero (played by Martin Landau). In between her two Outer Limits appearances, she was a guest in an episode of My Three Sons. A role as Holly Mitchell, perverted mistress of George Peppard's character in The Third Day (1965), followed. She played leading lady to David Niven in his television series The Rogues in 1965 for an episode titled "God Bless You, G. Carter Huntington" which revolved around her striking beauty to a large degree, and appeared in a 1965 Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode titled "Thou Still Unravished Bride".
A year later, in 1966, Kellerman played psychiatrist "Dr. Elizabeth Dehner" (who studied the long-term effects of space on a crew) in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (S01 E03 P02), the second pilot for Star Trek, which would ultimately be broadcast as the third episode of the first season. Three months after that, Kellerman played Mag Wildwood in the original Broadway production of Breakfast at Tiffany's, directed by Joseph Anthony and produced by David Merrick, which closed after four preview performances. Before the closing the musical numbers were recorded live, and she recorded three songs which appeared on the original cast recording.
Near the end of the decade, Kellerman guest-starred in The Invaders in the episode "Labyrinth" (1968). She also had turns as the severely beaten (and only surviving) victim of Albert DeSalvo in The Boston Strangler (1968), and Phyllis Brubaker (Jack Lemmon's materialistic wife) in the romantic comedy The April Fools (1969). She turned down a role in Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). She played Eleanor in the Hawaii Five-O episode "The Big Kahuna" (1969).
In a 1971 Life magazine interview, Kellerman remembered her television years: "It took me eight years to get into TV — and six years to get out. Frigid women, alcoholics they gave me. I got beat up, raped, and never played comedy."
Kellerman received her breakthrough role (Major Margaret "Hot Lips" O’Houlihan in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H) in 1970. Her performance received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations, winning the Kansas City Film Critics Circle (KCFCC) Award for Best Supporting Actress, the Golden Laurel for Best Comedy Performance (Female), and a second-place National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) Award for Best Supporting Actress. Kellerman was featured in Life magazine. She again collaborated with Altman in Brewster McCloud as Louise, guardian angel to Bud Cort, and recorded "Rock-a-Bye Baby" for the film's soundtrack.
Her next role was as a hostile, chain-smoking, sex-addicted woman who was trying to have an afternoon affair with Alan Arkin's character in Gene Saks' film adaptation of Neil Simon's comedy Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972). In Manhattan after the film, Kellerman declined an offer for a ten-page spread in Vogue from the then editor-in-chief Grace Mirabella. When she refused the part of Linda Rogo in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Stella Stevens got the role. Shortly afterwards, she recorded her first demo with Lou Adler, and Roll with the Feelin for Decca Records with producer-arranger Gene Page. After filming Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Kellerman passed up a role in another Altman film:
I had just finished filming Last of the Red Hot Lovers when Bob called me one day at home. "Sally, do you want to be in my picture after next?" he asked. "Only if it's a good part," I said. He hung up on me. Bob was as stubborn and arrogant as I was at the time, but the sad thing is that I cheated myself out of working with someone I loved so much, someone who made acting both fun and easy and who trusted his actors. Stars would line up to work for nothing for Bob Altman.