Loretta Swit, the Emmy-winning M*A*S*H actress, dies at 87
TRIVIA: Did you know … Loretta Swit was the first actress to play Cagney in Cagney and Lacey.
M*A*S*H debuted more than 50 years ago. The final episode aired 42 years ago. It remains the all-time most-watched U.S. television episode (and so far, the only single television episode in American history to be watched by at least 100 million viewers for a single telecast).
The most U.S. viewers for any type of program was the estimated 150 million that watched the moon landing, which was on every major channel. That’s approximately equal to the entire population of Russia. The most viewers watching a show on a single network was the 133.5 million that watched this year’s Super Bowl.
The most for a single show in a single country was probably the first Chinese broadcast of The Legend of Bruce Lee (2008), which was watched by more than 400 million viewers in China. That is more than the combined population of the U.S. and Canada.
RIP indeed. I probably watched every episode of MASH back in the day, or almost every one. I liked her role. She, and the writers, made something more out of her character than the way that it was originally written.