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Sally Kellerman
Actor, Producer
Born June 2, 1937 in Long Beach, California, USA
Sally Kellerman arrived quite young on the late 1950s film and television scene with a fresh and distinctively weird, misfit presence. It is this same uniqueness that continued to make her such an attractively offbeat performer. The willowy, swan-necked, flaxen-haired actress shot to film comedy fame after toiling nearly a decade and a half in the business, and is still most brazenly remembered for her career-maker in the irreverent hit Korean War dramedy M*A*S*H (1970), for which she received supporting Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. From there, she went on to enjoy several other hallmark moments as both an actress and a vocalist. California native Sally Clare Kellerman was born in Long Beach on June 2, 1937, to Edith (née Vaughn), a piano teacher, and John Helm Kellerman, a Shell Oil Company executive. Raised along with her sister in the San Fernando Valley area, Sally was attracted to the performing arts after seeing Marlon Brando star in the film Viva Zapata! (1952). Attending the renowned Hollywood High School as a teenager, she sang in musical productions while there, including a version of "Meet Me in St. Louis." Following graduation, she enrolled at Los Angeles City College but left after a year when enticed by acting guru Jeff Corey's classes. Initially inhibited by her height (5'10"), noticeably gawky and slinky frame and wide slash of a mouth, Kellerman proved difficult to cast at first but finally found herself up for the lead role in Otto Preminger's "A"-level film Saint Joan (1957). She lost out in the end, however, when Preminger finally decided to give the role of Joan of Arc to fellow newcomer Jean Seberg. Hardly compensation, 20-year-old Sally made her film debut that same year as a girls' reformatory inmate who threatens the titular leading lady in the cult "C" juvenile delinquent drama Reform School Girl (1957) starring "good girl" Gloria Castillo and "bad guy" Edd Byrnes of "777 Sunset Strip" teen idol fame, an actor she met and was dating after attending Corey's workshops. Directed by infamous low-budget horror film Samuel Z. Arkoff, her secondary part in the film did little in the way of advancing her career. During the same period of time, Sally pursued a singing career and earned a recording contract with Verve Records. The 1960s was an uneventful but growing period for Kellerman, finding spurts of quirky TV roles in both comedies ("Bachelor Father," "My Three Sons," "Dobie Gillis" and "Ozzie and Harriet") and dramas ("Lock Up," "Surfside 6," "Cheyenne," "The Outer Limits," "The Rogues," "Slattery's People" and the second pilot of "Star Trek"). Sally's sophomore film was just as campy as the first, but her part was even smaller. As an ill-fated victim of the Hands of a Stranger (1962), the oft-told horror story of a concert pianist whose transplanted hands become deadly, the film came and went without much fanfare. Studying later at Los Angeles' Actors' Studio (West), Sally's roles increased toward the end of the 1960s with featured parts in more quality filming, including The Third Day (1965), The Boston Strangler (1968) (as a target for serial killer Tony Curtis) and The April Fools (1969). Sally's monumental break came, of course, via director Robert Altman when he hired her for, and she created a dusky-voiced sensation out of, the aggressively irritating character Major Margaret "'Hot Lips" Houlihan. Her highlighting naked-shower scene in the groundbreaking cinematic comedy M*A*S*H (1970) had audiences ultimately laughing and gasping at the same time. Both she and the film were a spectacular success with Sally the sole actor to earn an Oscar nomination for her marvelous work here. She lost that year to the overly spunky veteran Helen Hayes in Airport (1970). Becoming extremely good friends with Altman during the movie shoot, Sally went on to film a couple more of the famed director's more winning and prestigious films of the 1970s, beginning with her wildly crazed "angelic" role in Brewster McCloud (1970), and finishing up brilliantly as a man-hungry real estate agent in his Welcome to L.A. (1976), directed by Alan Rudolph. Sally later regretted not taking the Karen Black singing showcase role in one of Altman's best-embraced films, Nashville (1975), when originally offered. Still pursuing her singing interests, she put out her first album, "Roll with the Feelin'" for Decca Records in 1972. Films continued to be a priority and Sally was deemed a quirky comedy treasure in both co-star and top supporting roles of the 1970s. She was well cast neurotically opposite Alan Arkin in the Neil Simon comedy Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972) and again alongside ex-con James Caan as a sexy but loony delight in Slither (1973), a precursor to the Coen Bros.' darkly comic films. She also co-starred and contributed a song ("Reflections") to the Burt Bacharach/Hal David soundtrack of the Utopian film Lost Horizon (1973), a musical picture that proved lifeless at the box office. More impressive work came with the movies A Little Romance (1979) as young Diane Lane's quirky mom; Foxes (1980) as Jodie Foster's confronting mother; Serial (1980), a California comedy satire starring Martin Mull; That's Life! (1986), a social comedy with Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrews; and Back to School (1986), comic Rodney Dangerfield's raucous vehicle hit. Sally's films from the 1980s on were a mixed bag. While some, such as the low-grade Moving Violations (1985), Meatballs III: Summer Job (1986), Doppelganger (1993), American Virgin (1999) and Women of the Night (2001) were beneath her considerable talents, her presence in others were, at the very least, catchy such as her Natasha Fatale opposite Dave Thomas' Boris Badenov in Boris and Natasha (1991); director Percy Adlon's inventive Younger and Younger (1993), which reunited her with MASH co-star Donald Sutherland, and in Robert Altman's rather disjointed, ill-received all-star effort Ready to Wear (1994) in which she played a fashion magazine editor. When her film output waned in later years, Sally lent a fine focus back to her singing career and made a musical dent as a deep-voiced blues and jazz artist. She started hitting the Los Angeles and New York club circuits with solo acts. In 2009, Kellerman released her first album since "Roll with The Feelin'" simply titled "Sally," a jazz and blues-fused album. Along those same lines, Sally played a nightclub singer in the comedy Limit Up (1989) Kellerman's seductively throaty voice has also put her in good standing as a voice-over artist of commercials, feature films, and television. Among her offbeat output in millennium films were prime/featured roles in the soft-core thriller Women of the Night (2001), written and director by Zalman King, in which she played a lady deejay (she also gets to sing); the real estate musical Open House (2004) in which she played an agent (who gets to sing again); the Florida senior citizens' romantic comedy Boynton Beach Club (2005); the comedy Night Club (2011) where friends and residents start a club in a retirement home; the social dramas A Place for Heroes (2014) and A Timeless Love (2016); and the family dramedy The Remake (2016). Divorced from Rick Edelstein, Kellerman married Jonathan D. Krane in 1980 and the couple adopted twins, Jack and Hanna. Sally was also the adoptive mother of her niece, Claire Graham. Her husband died unexpectedly in August 2016; less than three months later, daughter Hanna died from heroin and methamphetamine use. Sally died on February 24, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Imdb
Top titles
Arrow
Arrow
Mash
Back to School
A Little Romance
Animal Odd Couples
Ken Burns: American Lives
The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson - Show Date: 09/26/74
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
Star Trek: The Original Series - Fan Favorites, Volume 1
Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version
Decker Season 1
Workaholics Season 1
The Outer Limits Season 1
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, Season 1
Arrow
Arrow
Filmography
Latest
Caret Down
Arrow
Arrow
2016
The Remake
2014
Decker Season 1
Reach Me
When Bette Met Mae
2013
Maron Season 1
High School USA! Season 1
2012
Unsupervised Season 1
Annoying Orange
Comedy Bang! Bang! Season 1
2011
Workaholics Season 1
2010
Law & Order: Los Angeles Season 1
2008
Season 1
2007
Masters of Science Fiction Season 1
The Prince And The Pauper
I Could Never Be Your Woman
2005
Boynton Beach Club
2000
Kill Shot
1999
Payback
Not for Ourselves Alone: The Story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony, Season 1
1997
Ken Burns: American Lives
Gun
1994
Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dance
Touched By An Angel Season 1
1993
Doppelganger
Younger & Younger
1992
The Player
1991
Boris And Natasha: The Movie
Dinosaurs
1989
Secret Of The Ice Cave
1988
You Can't Hurry Love
1987
Someone to Love
1986
Back to School
1985
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird
The Ray Bradbury Theater
1984
Murder, She Wrote Season 1
1982
Animal Odd Couples
1980
Serial
1979
A Little Romance
1976
The Big Bus
Welcome to L.A.
1975
Rafferty & The Gold Dust Twins
1973
The Young and the Restless - Season 51
Slither (1973)
Lost Horizon
1972
Last of the Red Hot Lovers
1971
Michael Bublé - Caught In The Act
1970
Brewster McCloud
Mash
1969
The April Fools
1968
Hawaii Five-O (Classic) Season 1
The Boston Strangler
1967
Mannix Season 1
1966
Star Trek: The Original Series - Fan Favorites, Volume 1
That Girl
1965
I Spy
Third Day
1963
The Outer Limits Season 1
1962
Hands of a Stranger
The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson - Show Date: 09/26/74
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
1959
The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis: Season One
Lorne Greene's Holiday Special - A Bonanza Of Christmas Cheer
Lock Up
1957
Reform School Girl
1956
Days Of Wine & Roses - Cliff Robertson & Piper Laurie, "Playhouse 90" Original TV Version
1955
Cheyenne - Season 1
1952
A Classic TV Christmas with Bing Crosby and Betty White
Arrow
Arrow
Connections
Craig Anton
Lynne Alana Delaney
Genres
