Pernell Roberts born 18 May 1928

Pernell Elven Roberts Jr. (May 18, 1928 – January 24, 2010) was an American stage, film, and television actor, activist, and singer. In addition to guest-starring in over 60 television series, he was best known for his roles as Ben Cartwright's eldest son Adam Cartwright on the Western television series Bonanza (1959–1965), and as chief surgeon John McIntyre, the title character on Trapper John, M.D. (1979–1986).

Roberts was born in Waycross, Georgia, and showed an early singing talent while still at high school. He attended both Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland, but dropped out of both before joining the Marine Corps for two years. After a series of odd jobs, he started to get some stage work in the early 1950s. This gave Roberts a background in the classics, especially as a member of the Arena Stage Company in Washington, DC, where he played Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and appeared in The Playboy of the Western World, The Glass Menagerie, The Importance of Being Earnest and Twelfth Night.

Among his Broadway appearances were his reprise of Petruchio, opposite Nina Foch as Katarina (1957), and, in the same year, in a role that suited his serious nature, Daniel de Borsola, the murderous malcontented Gentleman of the Horse to Jacqueline Brookes in the title role of The Duchess of Malfi. Leaving the classics behind him, Roberts headed for Los Angeles in 1958, where he got supporting roles in three quality films, the first being a rather theatrical adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms (1958). Ironically, in retrospect, Roberts portrayed one of three sons of Ephraim Cabot (Burl Ives), the unbending Puritan patriarch farmer. The "60 acres of dirt" farm was not exactly the Ponderosa, but there were echoes of Bonanza. Roberts, who lustily played the loutish Peter Cabot, unlike the more gentlemanly Adam Cartwright, had the temerity, on his first Hollywood film, to complain about the way Anthony Perkins, already a major star, kept holding up the shoot by continually asking Method-driven questions.

                                   

Roberts, who had no truck with the Method, then appeared in two westerns, The Sheepman (1958), as a villain who tangles with Glenn Ford, and Budd Boetticher's Ride Lonesome (1959), as Randolph Scott's outlaw sidekick. From there, he immediately went into Bonanza, joining "Hoss" (Dan Blocker) and "Little Joe" (Michael Landon) as sons of the thrice-widowed, cruel-to-be-kind Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene, 13 years Roberts's senior). At one stage in the series, the all-male family was temporarily threatened by giving Adam a fiancée, but when the producers were overwhelmed with protests from (mostly) female fans, they dropped the idea of marriage. 

Roberts, played Adam Cartwright in Bonanza for 202 episodes from 1959 until 1965, but thought himself capable of far greater things and chafed at the limitations he felt his "Bonanza" character was given. Roberts agreed to fulfil his six-year contract but refused to extend it, and when he left the series in 1965, at the height of his, and the show's, popularity. his character was eliminated with the explanation that he had simply moved away.

In 1963, during his Bonanza years, he recorded Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies, a folk music album, which AllMusic calls "...the softer, lyrical side of folk music — pleasant and not challenging, but quite rewarding in its unassuming way." The album, was released by RCA Victor and arranged by Dick Rosmini. When Roberts left Bonanza, the general feeling in Hollywood was that he had foolishly doomed his career and turned his back on a fortune in "Bonanza" earnings. During the 60's Roberts was an outspoken supporter of civil rights – he took part in demonstrations and campaigned against racism and sexism, especially on television.

Pernell in Gunsmoke

Indeed, for the next 14 years, apart from a few minor feature films, Roberts spent much of the rest of his career in television, making dozens of guest appearances in series such as Gunsmoke, The Big Valley and Mission: Impossible. In between, he used his powerful singing voice in touring musicals including Camelot and The King and I, and starred opposite Ingrid Bergman on Broadway in the title role in Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1972). His TV credits during that time included "The Virginian," ''Hawaii Five-O," ''Mission Impossible," ''Marcus Welby, M.D.," ''Banacek," ''Ironside" and "Mannix."

Then, in 1979, he landed another series, "Trapper John, M.D.," in which he played the title role. In "Trapper John, M.D.," the Korean War was nearly 30 years past and Roberts' character was now a balding, middle-aged chief of surgery at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. He no longer fought the establishment, having learned how to deal with it with patience and wry humour. The series, praised for its serious treatment of the surgical world, aired until 1986. Rogers had left that series after just three seasons. Roberts' other venture into series TV was "FBI: The Untold Stories" (1991-1993), in which he acted as host and narrator. He made his last TV appearance in 1997 on an episode of Diagnosis: Murder, updating a Mannix character he had portrayed decades before.

Roberts married four times, first in 1951 to Vera Mowry — a professor of theatre history at Washington State University and subsequently Hunter College, as well as professor emerita of the PhD program in theatre at City University of New York, with whom he had his only child. Roberts and his first wife later divorced. His son died in a motorcycle accident in 1989. Roberts married Judith Anna LeBrecque on October 15, 1962; they divorced in 1971. He subsequently married Kara Knack in 1972, divorcing in 1996. At the time of his death Roberts was married to Eleanor Criswell.

When the 21st century arrived, Roberts appeared to retire altogether from screen acting. His name and image, however, were frequently referenced in tributes and reports on "Bonanza," which fixated with some degree on the fact that at the time he was the last surviving member of the original cast. Sadly, he passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 81 in Malibu, CA., on January 24, 2010.

(Edited from Wikipedia, Legacy, TV Insider & The Guardian)

Here's a clip of Pernell Roberts and Hoyt Axton singing Endless Road on Bonanza.