Loretta Swit was born on November 4, 1937,[1] in Passaic, New Jersey, to Lester and Nellie Szwed (née Kassack), who were both of Polish descent.

[3] She graduated from Pope Pius XII High School in Passaic in 1955, where she had been a cheerleader, had taken part in theatrical productions, and was co-captain of the women's basketball team.

[4][5] She graduated from Katharine Gibbs School in Montclair, New Jersey, in June 1957, then was employed at a variety of clerical jobs, including as a stenographer in Bloomfield, New Jersey; personal secretary to Elsa Maxwell; secretary to the ambassador from Ghana to the United Nations; and at the American Rocket Society in New York City while being trained to dance by a classmate, Elizabeth Parent-Barber, a Rockette and student at the New York School of Ballet.

In 1961, Swit landed a role in the Circle in the Square production of "The Balcony", written by Jean Genet and produced by José Quintero.

[11] In August–September 2010, Swit starred in the world premiere of the Mark Miller play Amorous Crossings at the Alhambra Dinner Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida, directed by Tod Booth.

[citation needed] When Swit arrived in Hollywood in 1969, she performed guest roles in various television series, including Hawaii Five-O (her first TV credit), Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, and Mannix.

Starting in 1972, Swit played the extremely capable head nurse Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the television series M*A*S*H, a comedy set in a US Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War.

In the first few seasons, her character was single and blindly patriotic, and she had no friends among the camp surgeons and nurses, with the notable exception of her married lover, Major Frank Burns, portrayed by Larry Linville.

Swit received two Emmy Awards for her work on M*A*S*H. Her favorite episodes are "Hot Lips and Empty Arms", "Margaret's Engagement", and "The Nurses".

In one episode of Match Game, Swit wrote the Polish greeting "Dzień dobry" (even with the diacritical mark) on her card during the introduction.

[citation needed] Swit guest-starred with Mike Connors in Mannix, Episode 78, Season 4, "Figures in a Landscape", written by Paul Krasny and directed by Donn Mullally, originally airing on October 10, 1970.