His wife Eleanor Criswell has reported that actor Pernell Roberts died 24 January 2010 of pancreatic cancer. Born 18 May 1928 in Wayrcross, Georgia, he will be best remembered as Adam Cartwright, the eldest son on the long-running television series Bonanza (later known as Ponderosa) and also as the title character in the M*A*S*H spinoff series, Trapper John MD, in which role he was nominated for an Emmy in 1981.
Roberts began his entertainment career while still in high school, singing in local USO shows. Later, he flunked out of both Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland, and served two years in the Marines, before deciding to pursue acting as a career. He started on the stage in the 1950s, eventually with the Arena Stage Company in Washington, DC. He debuted on Broadway in 1955 in Tonight in Samarkind. In 1956, he won the Drama Desk Best Actor Award for his role in Macbeth. In 1958, he moved to Hollywood, and almost immediately started picking up film and television roles.
In 1959, he found stardom, as Adam Cartwright, though he would be the first member of the family to permanently leave the series, and the last to survive (Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker, and Michael Landon all predeceased him). He was credited in 202 episodes between 1959 and 1965 (the series lasted until 1973). He got another chance to star in a television series as Trapper John (the character previously played by Wayne Rogers in the television series, and before him, Elliott Gould in the 1970 movie), and starred in the series for its entire 151-episode run (1979-86).
Roberts mostly retired from acting after 1990, though he appeared in two episodes of Diagnosis Murder in the late 1990s. His genre roles include: Around the World in 80 Days (1989), The Night Train to Kathmandu (1988), Man from Atlantis (1977), The Six Million Dollar Man (1976), Wide World Mystery (1975), Night Gallery (1972), The Wild Wild West (1967), Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond (1959), Shirley Temple’s Storybook (1958), and three episodes of Matinee Theatre (1958).