OT: Good-bye, Pernell Roberts
Sally
enlightening obituary by The NY Times:
Pernell Roberts, the outspoken actor who played Adam Cartwright, the
thoughtful eldest son on television’s seminal western series “Bonanza”
and who was the last surviving member of the show’s original family,
died Sunday at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 81.
The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his lawyer and friend Richard A.
Stone.
Dark-haired, handsome and athletically built, Mr. Roberts was a rising
theater actor — a busy Shakespearean, in fact — who had performed in a
number of classic plays Off Broadway and on before he landed, in 1959,
on the Ponderosa, the ranch that provided the setting for “Bonanza.”
Adam, the first-born son of Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene), a three-
time widower who had had a son with each of his wives, was the book-
smart one; Hoss (Dan Blocker) was the comic bruiser; Little Joe
(Michael Landon) was the adorable but impetuous youngster with a lot
to learn. When Mr. Landon died in 1991, Mr. Roberts was the only
Cartwright left. According to a statement provided by Mr. Stone, he
referred to himself jokingly as “Pernell the-Last-One Roberts.”
Though “Bonanza” stayed on the air until 1973, Mr. Roberts left after
the 1964-65 season. He had battled with the producers over the dearth
of nonwhite actors and crew members on the show, and complained that
the scripts were unchallenging for both actors and audiences.
Actually, his words were harsher than that: “Junk TV,” he called the
show, accusing NBC, the network that broadcast it, of “perpetuating
banality and contributing to the dehumanization of the industry.”
In subsequent years, he appeared in numerous movies and touring
theater productions, and made guest appearances on many television
series, including “The Rockford Files,” “The Paper Chase” and “Vega$,”
before landing in the title role on “Trapper John, M.D.” an hourlong
medical drama that was something of a spinoff from Robert Altman’s
1970 film, “M*A*S*H,” which was set behind the battle lines in the
Korean war.
A rollicking surgeon with a healthy disrespect for authority, Trapper
John McIntyre was played by Elliott Gould in the film and Wayne Rogers
in the popular television series; “Trapper John, M.D.,” which ran
seven seasons, beginning in 1979, relocated him as the chief of
surgery at a San Francisco hospital decades after his Army service.
Pernell Elven Roberts Jr. was born in Waycross, Ga., on May 18, 1928.
He briefly attended Georgia Tech before joining the Marines in 1948; a
musician who played baritone horn, sousaphone, tuba and percussion, he
was assigned to the Marine Corps Band. On the G.I. Bill, he attended
the University of Maryland, where he was drawn to acting, eventually
leaving school to work at the newly formed Arena Stage in Washington.
He moved to New York City in 1952.
Mr. Roberts was married four times and divorced three. A son,
Christopher, died in 1991. He is survived by his wife, Eleanor
Criswell.
In the burgeoning Off Broadway theater scene in New York in the
mid-1950s, Mr. Roberts gained some notoriety in Shakespearean roles.
He played Antonio in “Twelfth Night,” Mercutio in “Romeo and Juliet,”
and the title role in “Macbeth,” a performance The New York Times
critic Brooks Atkinson described as “thoroughly masculine — a ruffian
who bulls his way through the plot.” In 1956, he was cast by the
American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., as Petruchio in
“The Taming of the Shrew,” a production that reopened on Broadway the
following year.
Moving to Hollywood, Mr. Roberts appeared in films that included
“Desire Under the Elms,” which starred Sophia Loren and Burl Ives.
Perhaps it was his high-minded background that gave him reason to bite
the hand that fed him.
“I feel I am an aristocrat in my field of endeavor,” he said in a 1965
interview with The Times. “My being part of ‘Bonanza’ was like Isaac
Stern sitting in with Lawrence Welk.”
Lucy
> “Junk TV,” he called the
> show, accusing NBC, the network that broadcast it, of “perpetuating
> banality and contributing to the dehumanization of the industry.”
And they're STILL at it!
-- Lucy
Clifford T. Newsome
was nuts. I read elsewhere that one of his main beefs (so to speak) about
Bonanza was how three grown men (two of them in their thirties) could still
be living at home and taking orders from their Pa!
R H Draney
Which standup comic was it that described Bonanza as "the story of a
fifty-year-old man and his three forty-five-year-old sons"?...r
--
A pessimist sees the glass as half empty.
An optometrist asks whether you see the glass
more full like this?...or like this?
Banacek
> Bonanza was how three grown men (two of them in their thirties) could still
> be living at home and taking orders from their Pa!
Since Pa was born in 1915 and he (and Michael Landon) were born in
1928, there was some 'splaining to do. At least Ben waited until he
was 21 to have Hoss. Or could have been that every time one of them
fell in love, the woman died of leukemia or a gunshot. Who was the
comic that said about Bonanza..nice show about a 50 year old man and
his three 40 year old sons....
Still I always like Pernell..sorry to hear of his passing.
Banacek
Sorry RH..you had the same line as me, but you beat me to the punch.
R H Draney
>
>
>Sorry RH..you had the same line as me, but you beat me to the punch.
It was even closer than you think...I had "forty-year-old" and changed it to
"forty-five-year-old" before sending....
May have been the same comedian or a different one who wondered what the three
(different?) mothers of the Cartwright boys were like...looking at Ben, you
could only assume that Hoss's mom was some big Swedish behemoth of a woman....r
Diner
> Clifford T. Newsome filted:
> >His quitting a hit show was unprecedented at that time. Everyone thought he
> >was nuts. I read elsewhere that one of his main beefs (so to speak) about
> >Bonanza was how three grown men (two of them in their thirties) could still
> >be living at home and taking orders from their Pa!
>
> Which standup comic was it that described Bonanza as "the story of a
> fifty-year-old man and his three forty-five-year-old sons"?...r
That was Danny DeVito's line in the movie "Tin Men" (1987), written
and directed by Barry Levinson. There are two scenes in which DeVito
and his salesman friends dissect "Bonanza."
Some more quotes are at http://farm.imdb.com/title/tt0094155/quotes
-Tim
Sally
Looking at Hoss, we know that at least one wife must have died in
childbirth. Maybe the other two ate the poisoned mushrooms. (Old
joke...you had to have heard it.)
Sally
Twibil
>
>
> Looking at Hoss, we know that at least one wife must have died in
> childbirth.
Yes, I know that's a joke, but Dan probably wasn't all that big at
birth.
I met him a few times at Riverside Raceway back during the 1960s when
he and I were both racing sportscars, and he was only a little taller
than my 6'2". (He was quite a bit wider, though.)
I think the public's perception of him as being huge was caused by his
mass, intentional camera angles, and the foot-tall hat.
~Pete
DTSmith
>
> Yes, I know that's a joke, but Dan probably wasn't all that big at
> birth.
>
According to this, and I remember reading the same many years ago, he
weighed 14 pounds at birth.
http://movies.msn.com/celebrities/celebrity-biography/dan-blocker/
R H Draney
Have you seen his kid?...check out the movie "Midnight Madness" for a teenage
Michael Fox (not yet using the J), a pre-PeeWee Paul Rubens, David "I'm a
Pepper" Naughton as a leading man, Eddie Deezen on a motorscooter, and yes, Dirk
Blocker as part of the MEAT MACHINE!!!...r
Twibil
>
>
> > Yes, I know that's a joke, but Dan probably wasn't all that big at
> > birth.
>
> According to this, and I remember reading the same many years ago, he
> weighed 14 pounds at birth.
>
> http://movies.msn.com/celebrities/celebrity-biography/dan-blocker/
Courtesy of Google : "The heaviest baby born to a healthy mother was a
boy weighing 10.2 kg (22 lb 8 oz) who was born to Sig. Carmelina
Fedele (Italy) at Aversa, Italy in September 1955."
That being the case, Dan was large but nowhere *near* a record catch.