He starred in a hit TV western but then decided to jump ship after the first few years. Two decades later, he returned to the small screen as the star of a medical series. He made periodic guest appearances and hosted another show. But then, in 2010, he died of cancer at age 81.
His name was Pernell Roberts. According to CBSNews.com, he “shocked Hollywood by leaving TV’s Bonanza at the height of its popularity, then found fame again years later on Trapper John, M.D.
As CBS News went on to document, Roberts “rocketed to fame in 1959 as Adam Cartwright, eldest son of a Nevada ranching family led by Lorne Greene’s patriarchal Ben Cartwright, Roberts chafed at the limitations he felt his Bonanza character was given.
“They told me the four characters (Greene, himself and Dan Blocker and Michael Landon as his brothers) would be carefully defined and the scripts carefully prepared,” he complained to The Associated Press in 1964. “None of it ever happened.”
Reportedly, Roberts was unsettled that his character, a man in his 30s, frequently deferred to the wishes of his widowed father. “Doesn’t it seem a bit silly for three adult males to get Father’s permission for everything they do?” he once asked a journalist.
As CBS News continued to chronicle, “Roberts agreed to fulfill his six-year contract but refused to extend it, and when he left the series in 1965, his character was eliminated with the explanation that he had simply moved away.
“For the next 14 years, [Roberts] mainly made appearances on TV shows and in miniseries, or toured with such theatrical productions as The King and I, Camelot, and The Music Man. His TV credits during that time included Hawaii Five-O, Mission Impossible, Marcus Welby, M.D., and Mannix, among others.
In 1979, Roberts was given the starring role in Trapper John, M.D., a sequel to M*A*S*H. As fate would have it, Roberts was playing the same part that Wayne Rogers played on M*A*S*H”; a series that Rogers left.
In 1991, Roberts served as host and narrator of FBI: The Untold Stories, the third and final TV series he worked on in a regular capacity.
As a young man, he once said, “I distinguished myself by flunking out of college three times.”
As CBS News concluded, “After pursuing occupations that ranged from tombstone maker to railroad riveter, he decided to become an actor. Three of Roberts’ marriages ended in divorce. His first, to Vera Mowry, produced a son, Jonathan, who died in 1989 at age 37.”