Little House on the Prairie NBC TV Cast Information
Bonnie
Bartlett was born June 20, 1929. Bartlett's career spans over 50
years, with her first major role being on a 1950s daytime drama,
Love of Life. She is best known for her 1980s Emmy Award-winning
role as Ellen Craig on the popular medical drama series St.
Elsewhere. She and her husband, actor William Daniels, who played
her fictional husband Dr. Mark Craig, won 1986 Emmy Awards on the
same night, becoming the first married couple to accomplish the feat
since Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in 1965. Lunt and Fontanne were
the first to win Emmy Awards for a film, and Bartlett and Daniels
were the first couple to win for a series.
Bartlett was born in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, the daughter of Carrie and E.E. Bartlett, and raised in Moline, Illinois. Her father was an insurance salesman and a failed actor, and she was determined to live out his dream. Bartlett met her husband, actor William Daniels at Northwestern University. They were married on June 30, 1951. In 1961, she gave birth to a son, who died just 24 hours later. They later adopted two children: Michael, who became an assistant director and stage manager in Los Angeles, and Robert, who became an artist and computer graphics designer based in New York City.
Bartlett studied acting with Lee Strasberg, and
first got her start in television playing the heroine "Vanessa Dale
Raven" on the soap opera Love of Life from 1955 to 1959, replacing
actress Peggy McCay. She then moved on to nighttime roles in the
1960s. Her most widely known role was as Ellen Craig on St.
Elsewhere. Initially an infrequently recurring character, she took
on greater prominence in the 1984–1985 season when the storyline
included Ellen and Mark's marital problems. The storyline deepened
in the next season when their son was killed and they had to raise
their granddaughter. Bartlett won back-to-back Emmys, and was made a
contract player. Further difficult material included Ellen and
Mark's divorce and slow reconciliation following the loss of their
granddaughter in a custody dispute with her birth mother.
While her children were growing up, Bartlett was mostly a
stay-at-home mother, accepting only small guest appearances on such
programs as Gunsmoke, The Rockford Files, The Waltons as well as a
recurring role as Grace Snyder Edwards on Little House on the
Prairie from 1974 to 1977. Her acting career picked up considerably
in the 1980s, including the miniseries V and North and South: Part
II.
Bartlett and husband William Daniels made Emmy Awards history in
1986 when they became just the second real-life married couple to
win acting awards on the same night. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne
first accomplished the feat in 1965. Bartlett and Daniels won for
their portrayals of Dr. Mark and Mrs. Ellen Craig on the TV series
St. Elsewhere. They later acted together again when she played a
college dean in a season of Daniels' ABC series Boy Meets World.
When St. Elsewhere ended in 1988, Bartlett's career moved to a wide
variety of guest-starring appearances, including major roles on
Wiseguy as a tough and corrupt matriarch of a sewage business, as
Andrea Drey; Secretary General of the United Earth Oceans
Organization (UEO) on seaQuest DSV, on Home Improvement as Lucille
Taylor (Tim "The Tool-Man" Taylor's mother), and on ER (TV series)
as Ruth Katherine Greene (Dr. Mark Greene's mother).
In the fall of 2000, she was an honoree at Moline High School in
Moline, Illinois. Her plaque sits in a viewing window in the
auditorium lobby at the school. Bartlett is an active member of
Screen Actors Guild and currently serves on its National Board of
Directors.
Click here to read our
interview with Bonnie.
