FILE - Actress Loretta Swit arrives at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' 3rd Annual Television Academy Honors in Beverly Hills, Calif., Wednesday, May 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Loretta Swit, who won two Emmy Awards playing Maj. Margaret Houlihan, the demanding head nurse of a behind-the-lines surgical unit during the Korean War on the pioneering hit TV series “M.A.S.H.,” has died. She was 87.

Publicist Harlan Boll says Swit died Friday at her home in New York City, likely from natural causes.

Swit and Alan Alda were the longest-serving cast members on “M.A.S.H.,” which was based on Robert Altman’s 1970 film, which was itself based on a novel by Richard Hooker, the pseudonym of H. Richard Hornberger.

The CBS show aired for 11 years from 1972 to 19

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