Read My Lips (15 page)

So we shot a scene of Hot Lips arriving at camp, exiting a helicopter, bending over and saluting—Hot Lips was always saluting. Chopper blades were whirring above my head as the updraft from the chopper blew up my skirt and showed off Leon’s precious garters.

Robert Duvall was a joy, so talented and a delight to work with—just an easy, breezy absolute doll. I had the privilege of making love to his hilariously pious Frank Burns, while screaming at him, “Kiss my hot lips!”—the inspiration for my character’s nickname. Tom Skerritt was a love and as enamored of Bob as I was. He was a dear—and another handsome fellow I got to romance on screen.

But my favorite castmate was the guy I spotted one day while waiting on the chow line. He was so darling, so androgynous looking that I had no idea what to make of him. The man was Bud Cort, who most people know from the cult classic
Harold and Maude,
had a small role in
M*A*S*H
as Private Boone. The first thing that popped into my head, looking at this fascinating creature in the mess tent, was, “Oh boy, we’re going to be best friends.” And we were. We still are.

For me the whole experience of making
M*A*S*H
was thrilling. But just as at real summer camp, there were mean kids. For
me, the mean kids were the two male leads, as much as there are leads in Bob’s films: Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould. They loved to pick on me.

Prior to filming, I didn’t know either one of them. Don had gotten some notice for his role in the
Dirty Dozen,
but at the time that was about it. Elliot had a little more buzz, having just appeared in
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
I too had been offered a role in
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,
but in one of my less-than-stellar career moves, I decided to pass. Why? Because I was an idiot.

The movie, exploring the very 1960s issue of spouse swapping, was a major hit. Boy, oh boy, did I have a crush on Elliott. Both Don and Elliott knew it. Throughout the shoot they kept themselves apart from the rest of the cast, which was perfect for their characters and the tight camaraderie they had in the film. But they were absolutely horrible to me.

Their favorite gag was to invite me out and then pretend that we’d never made plans. Don usually started it. He’d say, “Hey Sally, we were thinking of going to the movies tonight. Wanna come?”

“Sure!” I’d reply.

The end of the day would roll around, and I would see the two of them getting ready to leave the set. “Hey, Don, are we going to the movies?” I’d ask.

Don and Elliott would look at each other, confused. “No, I’m going to the game!” Don would say, and off they’d go, leaving me behind.

I fell for this more than once, I’m sorry to say.

We were almost two months into shooting when my thirty-second birthday rolled around. I was walking off set when the two of them drove up alongside me.

“Sally, it’s your birthday! Meet us at the Brown Derby,” they said.

“Just go away!” I told them. I’d learned my lesson by now.

“Oh, come on . . . It’s your birthday!”

So I gave in. I drove over to Beverly Hills, to the original Brown Derby restaurant at Beverly and Wilshire. The building itself was shaped just like an actual men’s brown derby hat. So sad they tore it down. Sometimes I think Los Angeles has no sense of its history. I took a seat in one of the booths and waited for what seemed like an hour. Alone in the dim light, I kept sitting there. I’d look at my watch. I’d look up at the door. I’d look at my watch again. Nothing. No one. I felt like a total idiot. They did it to me again, I thought. When would I ever learn?

Gathering the little self-respect I had left, I began to head for the door when I heard, “SURPRISE!”

Don and Elliott jumped out of the shadows. There they were, the two devils, chocolates in hand. Unbelievable. Even when they were doing something nice, they still had to torment me. Six months after the picture wrapped, we had a reunion lunch. We all kissed and made up, joking about how mean they were to me. I think I laughed. Maybe.

Because I didn’t mingle with the two of them, I didn’t know how disaffected they felt. Although I was an instant fan of Bob’s, Don and Elliott were not happy with the production. They even met with their agents to complain about Altman and discuss having him replaced; the two were concerned that Bob would not only ruin the movie but also their careers.

At the time Fox had two other war pictures in production—
Tora Tora Tora
starring Martin Balsam and Joseph Cotten among others, and
Patton,
starring George C. Scott. In a way this helped
M*A*S*H,
a third war picture, with its $3.5 million budget and unorthodox director, fly under the radar. The others were World War II movies. Although
M*A*S*H
was set in Korea, Bob worked hard to avoid references to the Korean War so that the film could just as readily evoke the current conflict in Vietnam.

But word was getting around—and it was obvious to anyone who saw the dailies—that the script was not being followed very closely. For some people, especially those of us coming from television, taking such liberties was amazing. In TV especially you
didn’t change one word. When I had worked with Rod Steiger a few years before on an episode of
Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre,
we used to joke that we were worried we’d get canned for changing “a” to “the.”

The screenwriter Ring Lardner and lots of folks at Fox were increasingly bothered that people were improvising and, worse, constantly talking over each other. You just didn’t do that in movies then. Bob liked to have cameras and mics all over the place, always hot to pick up whatever we did or said. But Ingo Preminger, one of the producers, loved what he was seeing in the dailies. If Bob hinted that something hadn’t come out the way he wanted, Ingo would say, “So reshoot! I’m a happy man.”

If Bob knew about all the behind-the-scenes grumbling, he didn’t let on. He was so relaxed on the set. Few of us understood the kind of movie he was making, but he exuded confidence, no matter what. After shooting, we’d smoke a little grass, and some would have a drink. We’d all go to the dailies together. There was always a big crowd sitting there in the dark: actors, crew, agents, managers, and the occasional studio reps. The place was packed. If people hated what they saw, Bob didn’t seem to care, and if anyone had a good suggestion, he had no problem using it.

The first time I had ever seen dailies, for
The Outer Limits,
I’d been ready to hang myself. If I ever doubted that Bob understood me, he kept reminding me of it during the dailies for
M*A*S*H.
I would appear onscreen, and his voice would come out of the darkness.

“Oh, I bet you hate yourself there, Sally . . . I bet you think you’re looking ugly there . . .”

Then, one night, after the dailies were done and the drinks and the smokes were gone, Bob came up to me and said, “You know, you’re going to get nominated for an Academy Award for this.”

What do you say to something like that? I had no idea. I loved hearing that, especially from Bob, someone I loved and admired.

O
N
J
UNE
11,1969,
SHOOTING WAS COMPLETE.
R
OBERT
A
LTMAN
brought
M*A*S*H
in three days ahead of schedule and nearly a half-a-million under budget. For directing the picture, he was paid a mere $75,000. Bob’s son Mike, who wrote the lyrics to
M*A*S*H
’s theme song, “Suicide Is Painless,” ended up making more money than Bob did on the picture.

But the war that had started on the set continued into the editing room. Bringing all of this footage together was going to be challenge; the studio didn’t even want to release the film at first because they didn’t know what to make of it.

In many ways
M*A*S*H
changed filmmaking. Bob brought a new fearlessness to the screen, a new juxtaposition of blood and gore with comedy and pathos. Horror movies always showed some carnage, which we have certainly taken to the max now, whether in slasher films or on cop shows. We show blood, livers, hearts pounding. But Bob was the first to depict gore in a realistic light, showing us the bloody hands of doctors working over an operating table while blithely talking about the game. Back then those scenes were scarier than a horror film’s because they were just too darn real.

M*A*S*H
WENT ON TO BECOME A MEGAHIT, EVEN A CLASSIC.
All the fears about its controversial nature had gone out the window. Two hours before a preview screening in San Francisco there were lines around the block to get in. Elliott and Don, who had wanted Bob fired, were just as thrilled as the rest of us. Elliott later worked with Bob in
The Long Goodbye
and, to this day, raves about him, as I do. But not everyone was happy with the movie’s outcome. The screenwriter, Ring Lardner, was furious the first time he saw the completed film.

“What have you done to my script?!” he supposedly demanded of Bob. “Not a word of what I wrote is in there!”

But in the end the $3.5 million production brought in more
than $80 million at the box office and garnered countless award nominations, including five Oscar nods. One of them, as Bob had predicted, was for me.

M*A*S*H
WAS THE GREATEST EXPERIENCE OF MY ENTIRE CAREER
, and I’ve had a lot of great ones. Still, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t push a button or two every time someone calls me Hot Lips. I’ve been working for more than fifty years and made at least fifty movies, but for better or worse, I’m most notably remembered as Hot Lips Houlihan. Recently, as I walked through New York City, a truck driver leaned out the window and yelled, “Hey, Hot Lips!” That put a big crooked smile on my face. Anything that keeps me connected to Bob Altman makes me happy.

Bob’s was a world most of us hadn’t seen—not in the movies, and certainly not on TV. But so much was to about to change—in Hollywood, in our culture, and in my own life.

I
WAS NOW WORKING ENOUGH TO BE COMFORTABLE FINANCIALLY
and got my own place. No roommates—that was progress. I loved my new apartment on Shoreham Drive in West Hollywood, just above Sunset and Doheny. At the intersection of Sunset and Doheny was Turner’s Liquor Store, which was convenient when I wanted cookies and candy. The neighborhood was so peaceful, so beautiful, so sunny, and traffic-free.

But then the hippies arrived.

My beautiful white sidewalks were suddenly covered in gum. Kids, thousands it seemed, were all over Sunset Boulevard, with long hair and raggedy clothes, smoking joints on the street or wiped out on harder drugs.