"Bonanza" and "Trapper John, M.D" star Pernell Roberts died Sunday in his Malibu home after a battle with cancer, his wife, Eleanor Criswell, told the Los Angeles Times
An American television actor, singer and Activism which included participation in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, and pressuring NBC to refrain from hiring whites to portray minority characters Pernell Roberts shot to fame in the role of Adam Cartwright on the long-running western, though he left the show to pursue a film career after six seasons - an arguably premature move that Entertainment Weekly recently counted among the 50 worst TV blunders of all time. After 15 years out of the limelight, Roberts took on the starring role of 'Trapper John, MD,' for all seven seasons of its run.
Pernell Roberts married four times. His first marriage was in 1951 to Vera Mowry, a professor at Washington State University, with whom he had his only child (Jonathan Christopher Roberts); they later divorced. Pernell Roberts married Judith Anna LeBreque on October 15, 1962; they divorced in 1971. Pernell Roberts third marriage was to Kara Knack, whom he married in 1972; they divorced in 1996. Jonathan Roberts died in a motorcycle accident in 1989 at age 38. He was married to Eleanor Criswell at the time of his death.
