Pernell Roberts: Leaving The Ponderosa

Into the early 1970s, when his career had sputtered out, Pernell Roberts' leaving the career-making bonanza that was BONANZA was considered one of the greatest screw-ups in show-business history, and certainly the biggest in TV history. He was leaving a #1 rated show that made the three other stars incredbily wealthy. (It went on as #1 two years in a row after he left, and set a record for being in the top 10 nine times. In the early 1990s, a poll of Baby Boomers rated it as the #1 best remembered show.)

Pernell Roberts (1928-2010) was kind of like TV's version of the Marlon Brando of the 1960s, who just appeared in one awful or unsucessful movie after another and whose career sank into unbankability.

Hollywood columnists found it amazing that Roberts would just walk away from a bonanza that most actors never even came close to, and they used his subsequent "ruin" to show that spoiled actors (like Brando) were justly punished for their sins. (Roberts initally had good guest roles on other TV shows but by the early '70s, the prominence of his parts had declined. For instance, he appeared nearly every season as a guest on MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, until the final years. He had become a lesser Don Stroud -- another frequent guest star on TV series -- but Stroud had never tasted Pernell's success.)

I always wondered what he thought about his THE CRUCIBLE co-sstar Lee Marvin making the transition from series TV (M-SQUAD) to movie superstardom. Did it have any effect on that decision in 1965 to leave. ('65 was the year Marvin appeared in CAT BALLOU & SHIP OF FOOLS; he won the Oscar the next year and a year or two after that began a nice streak in the Top 10 of Box Office Stars.)

Lee Marvin had some kind of loopy, insane intensity (well used in THE CRUCIBLE, one of the best BONANZA episodes) that made him an ideal star for the 1960s.

The rate of TV stars trying to make the transition to the silver screen was very low in the 1960s. Steve McQueen did it, yet his TV show was short-lived and not nearly as popular as BONANZA. BONANZA was the most popular show if its time, and ebing type-cast as "Adam Cartwright" forever must have been on his mind.

But Pernell Roberts stepped out and nearly into career oblivion, until he was resurrected by the fates in TRAPPER JOHN, M.D. I was happy to see him back, though I rarely watched the show.

Here's an excellent summation of his struggle with BONANZA: The Restless Ballad of Pernell Roberts.