The Real Reason Pernell Roberts Left Bonanza

Television Drama Shows

It bears repeating that, in the olden days, back when televisions where 4x3 boxes beaming mostly black-and-white images into the living rooms of Americans, landing a regular role on a sitcom or hour-long drama wasn't considered a career coup in Hollywood. Making it in movies was still just about every working actor's goal, while television was a step down — lucrative, steady, but hardly prestigious.

And worst of all, if you hung around one series for too long, you ran the risk of getting typecast.

This was very much on Pernell Roberts' mind when the Shakespearian trained actor was cast as Adam Cartwright, the oldest son of wealthy rancher Ben Cartwright (future Commander Adama and Alpo pitchman Lorne Greene), on "Bonanza." Handsome, eloquent and quite at home in front of a camera, Roberts had earned rave reviews as a stage performer (he won a Drama Desk Award in 1955 for his Off-Broadway portrayal of Macbeth). Movies appeared to be calling, and he made a decent impression in Delbert Mann's critically reviled "Desire Under the Elms." He was even better in Budd Boeticcher's "Ride Lonesome," but no one was taking the filmmaker's B Westerns seriously back then, so it passed without much notice.

Working actors work, and sometimes you have to take what's available. The second lead on NBC's "Bonanza" wasn't "Hamlet," but it promised to get Roberts wider exposure. The trick would be to keep from getting so closely identified as Adam that viewers couldn't buy him as anything else.

Fretting about this and other matters got Roberts worked up into a real lather, and ultimately drove him off the Ponderosa.

The crushing burden of being Adam Cartwright

In an interview with Virgina's The Daily News Leader (via MeTV), Roberts once opened up about his struggle with playing Adam for six of the long-running series' 14 seasons. "The thing became a real crusher, mentally, for me," he said. "I even went to a doctor for help."

Roberts took the blame for his unhappiness on set while bluntly stating why he left the show. As he told The Daily News Leader:

"I left 'Bonanza' because I wanted to expand as an actor. Playing the same character week after week no longer was a challenge to me. The money, was great, sure, but I had to decide if I wanted just the money or a chance to prove myself as an actor. I chose the latter and found that almost everyone thought I was crazy."

Upon leaving the series in 1967, Roberts quickly returned to the theater, where he found himself cast in Vincente Minnelli's Broadway production of "Mata Hari." Despite positive notices for Roberts, the show was a flop. Film-wise, he fared poorly, getting cast in forgettable movies unworthy of his talent.

Roberts finally caught a break by returning to his bête noir of television. As the titular character on the "M*A*S*H" spinoff "Trapper John, M.D.," Roberts was much happier this time. The balance between performing on a hit series (which lasted seven seasons, much longer than the more ballyhooed "AfterMASH") and getting to do theater during hiatus kept Roberts creatively fulfilled. He was never as big a star as some thought he should've been, but work is work. He retired from television and film acting in 1997, and passed away at the age of 81 in 2010.