Known across the world as Ponderosa Patriarch Ben Cartwright in the smash hit television series "Bonanza" (1959-1973) Canadian actor Lorne Greene has had a most prolific career in radio, movies, and television. Although a book-length biography of Lorne Greene is not available at this time, "Current Biography" published the following extensive biography on Lorne in 1967.

"Known across the world as
Ben Cartwright
On the Canadian and American stage, in motion pictures, and on radio and television, Lorne Greene has portrayed over a hundred characters, but only one has made him world famous. He is known, reportedly, to more than a quarter of a billion television viewers in fifty-seven countries as Ben Cartwright, the stern but kind father in the phenomenally popular NBC-TV series, "Bonanza". Since its inception in 1959 "Bonanza" has demanded most of Greene's attention, but he finds time to tell stories to music on hit records, to make personal appearances as Ben Cartwright, and to perform a nightclub act and a rodeo routine.

"Ben Cartwright is Lorne's father"
Lorne Greene was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on February 12, 1915, the son of Daniel and Dora Greene. His father had been apprenticed to a saddlemaker, but struck out on his own and set up a shop to make orthopedic boots and shoes to prescription. Lorne, whose older brother had died in infancy, grew up as an only child. He enjoyed a happy relationship with his parents and has said in interviews that he based his interpretation of his role in "Bonanza" on his father. "I don't know whether I could ever match my father as a person," he told Sally Hammond of the "New York Post" (April 26, 1964), "but as an actor I try to be like him." At his mother's insistence he took violin lessons for several years, but he much preferred playing baseball to practicing.

"Lorne and drama"
In high school Greene got his first taste of audience applause when his French teacher cast him in a play as one of two deaf characters who had to shout at each other. "Even then," he has remarked, "I had a pretty big voice." At Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, which he attended from 1932 to 1937, he joined the Drama Guild and produced, directed, and acted in the group's plays. He changed his major subject from chemical engineering to languages (French and German) in the hope of having more time for the theater. After his graduation with the B.A. degree he accepted a fellowship to the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. His training as an actor also included lessons at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance to learn stage movement.

"The Voice of Canada"
When Greene returned to Canada in 1939 after two years of study in New York, he found that there was little opportunity for actors, especially after the outbreak of World War II. His strong baritone voice, however, enabled him to find work with the Canadian Broadcasting Cooperation, which hired him to read the national news every night. News of the war was so important that his broadcasts were heard even in motion picture theaters, where managers used to tune into Greene's program as a service to anxious patrons, and he became known as "The Voice of Canada". His voice, once described by the Canadian columnist Dennis Braithewaite as "surely one of the finest ever wrought by nature." also brought him parts in radio plays. In 1942 he won the National Broadcasting Company's radio award for announcing, becoming the only Canadian to be accorded this honor.

Founder of the Academy of Radio Arts
Later in the war Greene served abroad with the Canadian Army. Then resuming his career in radio in Toronto, he founded the "Academy of Radio Arts" to train students in the fundamentals of broadcasting. His school had some 400 graduates. He was also one of the founders of the Jupiter Theatre, Inc., a repertory group with with which he worked as director or actor in more than fifty productions. Occasionally he had a dramatic role in a television play, but in most of his early appearances on TV he was an announcer for commercials or a commentator for documentaries.

Lorne on stage
During his years of experience in radio, Greene had become well aware of the difficulties that announcers have in quickly figuring out the amount of time remaining to them towards the close of a program. His solution to the problem was a stopwatch that ran backward, reading clockwise from sixty to zero. Eventually the watch was produced and widely used. To demonstrate his model to an executive of NBC, Greene flew down to New York City in the spring of 1953. By chance, while at Rockefeller Center, he met Fletcher Markle, a Canadian producer who had taught at Greene's academy. Markle, who was then producing "Studio One", engaged Greene for a performance on that top-rated dramatic program of the Columbia Broadcasting System.
In his first "Studio One" play, "Arietta", he portrayed an ailing orchestra conductor, appearing opposite the Metropolitan Opera soprano, Jarmila Novotna. Later in 1953 he was the Thought Police Official in "Studio One's" adaptation of George Orwell's "1984". According to Jack Gould of the "New York Times" (September 23, 1953), "Lorne Greene, as O'Brien, who breaks the will of Smith, was superb, alternately friendly, understanding, and deadly sinister."
Hollywood and Broadway producers were also impressed. Greene had a choice of offers and decided upon a role in "The Prescott Proposals", starring Katharine Cornell.
"The Prescott Proposals", the Howard Lindsay-Russell Crouse melodrama about delegates to the United Nations, ran for 125 performances at the Broadhurst Theater in New York, from December 16, 1953 to April 3, 1954. Greene, cast as a suave radio journalist, won the approval of many Broadway critics, including William Hawkins, who commented in the "New York World- Telegram and Sun" (December 17, 1953), "Lorne Greene has refreshing directness as the commentator. His long and subtle love scene in Act 2 with the star is a rare example of actors holding an audience breathless by playing moods behind their words."
The two plays in which he was later seen on Broadway - "Speaking of Murder" in 1956-57 and "Edwin Booth" in 1958 - had less successful runs.

Lorne and Shakespeare
Already known in Canada as a Shakespearean actor, Lorne Greene portrayed the Prince of Morocco in "The Merchant of Venice" and Brutus in "Julius Ceaser" in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival productions in Ontario during the summer of 1955. Brooks Atkinson voiced some disappointment in his review of the latter play in the "New York Times" (June 20, 1955): "Although Lorne Greene's Brutus is a man with a big voice and a massive presence, he is dull. His death in the last scene is not tragic. It is hardly more than the collapse of a ponderous career." It has been suggested that Greene's commanding presence onstage - he is more than a big man with an imposing voice - has tended at times to overpower its owner.

From theater to movie
Motion pictures and television were gradually becoming more important, economically, to Greene than the theater. His first movie was "The Silver Chalice" (Warner Brothers, 1954), a lavish production in which he had the role of of the Apostle Peter. Critics in general found the film more spectacular than exciting, and a "New York Times" reviewer called Greene's characterization manufactured. He grace perhaps more convincing performances as a big shot racketeer in "Tight Spot" (Columbia, 1955), as a lecherous father in "Autumn Leaves" (Columbia, 1956), and as the prosecuting attorney in "Peyton Place" (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957).
Among the other films in which he had featured roles at "The Gift of Love" (Twentieth Century Fox, 1958), "The Buccaneer" (Paramount, 1959), and the westerns "Hard Man" (Columbia, 1957), and "The Trap" (Paramount, 1959).

Lorne and television
On TV, meanwhile, Greene appeared in dozens of leading dramatic programs, including "Driftwood" on the "Elgin Hour" (ABC-TV, 1955); "Yellow Jack" on "Producer's Showcase" (NBC-TV, 1955); "Othello" (CBLT-TV, 1955); "Mayerling on Producer's Showcase" (NBC-TV, 1957); and "The Unburied Dead" on "Folio" (CBS-TV, 1957).
He performed also on productions of "You Are There", "Omnibus", "Danger", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," and "Playhouse 90" - all CBS-TV presentations.
During the mid-1950's he went to England to appear in a television series called "Sailor of Fortune", in which he portrayed a former intelligence officer in the United States Marines. When it became apparent to him that the series was not a success, Greene quit the show. As he explained to Sally Harmond, "The script began getting lousy and there was no hope of their getting better."
Greene has always been careful about his scripts and this was to make a difference to "Bonanza".

Ben Cartwright in "Bonanza"
The break in Greene's pattern of alternating engagements in the theater, motion pictures, and television came in 1959 through his performance in an episode of the western series "Wagon Train".
"I first spotted him on the set of "Wagon Train"," the producer David Dortort told Lloyd Shearer ("Parade," January 31, 1965). "He was scheduled to play the part of a character who could dominate Ward Bond. Now Bond was not an easy man to dominate....Lorne not only dominated Bond; he made him look, by contrast, a weak, indecisive man."
Recognizing Greene as the authoritative figure he wanted for his projected new western, Dortort asked him to read the first script. Greene, looking for a starring role that would also be both interesting and lucrative, realized that his answer was Ben Cartwright, the father of three sons, whose separate mothers had died. The show was titled "Bonanza". NBC officials envisioned the show as a color spectacular that would help to sell the color television sets made by RCA. They also wanted, according to Greene's account in "Maculae's Magazine" (April 23, 1960), "a strong father-and-son relationship because they were concerned that American soldiers' defections in Korea had been traced by some psychologists to Momism, the strong identity of U.S. kids with their mothers."
The father was conceived as a stern, Bible-reading, if gun-toting, patriarch. Greene gradually changed him to a character with which the audience could more easily identify. He went to Dortort, as he related to Shearer, and told him: "We've got to make him a loving father who commands respect through the force of his own personality, a good man, a strong man, a decent man."
His age was also reduced from sixty-five to one nearer Greene's own.
The three Cartwright sons are Hoss, the buffoon, played by Dan Blocker; Little Joe, the charmer, played by Michael Landon; and Adam, the intellectual, formerly played by Pernell Roberts. All are guided, ordered about, and rescued from trouble by their father. Roberts became bored with his part, which he considered juvenile, and left the show in 1965. The reason given in the story for Adam's absence is that he is studying in the East; the producers felt that the vast audience would react badly to his being killed off.
The episodes have tended to feature only one or two members of the family at a time and to give considerable attention to guest stars.
The family lives on a cattle ranch, the "Ponderosa", although little attempt is apparently made to work it.
At first the name "Bonanza" did not seem especially apt. Audiences were not immediately impressed by the new show. TV viewers, if they did not have a color set, in general preferred "Perry Mason", then being broadcast at the same time, a program that usually brought death to competitors. There was even a doubt that "Bonanza" would be renewed for a second season. But after it was moved to a Sunday night hour in 1961, it rapidly picked up ratings, until by 1964, it was the leader among all shows. "President Johnson," reported Jack Gould in the "New York Times" (July 21, 1965), "reputedly has enough respect for the "Bonanza" popularity not the schedule a speech that could clash with such decisions as might be simultaneously reached at the Ponderosa." Its' popularity has apparently been nearly as great in every country where it is shown.
Some TV critics have not been so enthusiastic. John Horn of the "New York Herald Tribune" (December 6, 1964) found the show to be prettied up nonsense, consisting of "interpersonal dramas dear to the hearts of soap-opera fans."

Pa Cartwright and his sons Hoss and Little Joe

Jack could believes that "Bonanza" is a success because it is not really a western: "It is a family involvement show with strong narrative values and emotional situations." It is also, in his opinion, "eminently professional.". Greene once said in defending the show, as John Poppy quoted him in "Look magazine" (December 3, 1964): "Look, nobody claims that every script we do is great. If we get eight or ten good copies out of 34 in a year, that is lot more good theater than there would be without "Bonanza"."
In January 1966 the United States Congress and the Post Office, cited "Bonanza" for maintaining consistently high standards.

For millions of people the archtypical father
"Bonanza", which paid him $20,000 an episode in 1965-66, has made Lorne Greene a millionaire and has had other important effects on his life. Ever since the first year of the show he has tended to identify himself with Ben Cartwright. He is said to be a friend and guide to Blocker and Landon off the screen as well as on and to supervise their joint business activities. He has built a replica of the Ponderosa, which, for complete authenticity, even has a staircase leading nowhere. As his fan mail indicates, Greene has become for millions the archtypical father. Many of his letters are from boys who tell him that they want to be like him when they become fathers or that they wish he was their father. Much of the admiration of viewers for their, idol, Cartwright, is transferred to Greene himself.

Besides "Bonanza"
Although "Bonanza", with its thirty-four episodes a year, takes up an enormous amount of his time, Greene has made hundreds of personal appearances, mainly at rodeos. On these occasions - beside just appearing as Ben Cartwright, with or without Hoss and Little Joe - he usually does a short act. He may combine light, family-type entertainment with an occasional touch of nondenominational reverence, such as singing "This Place Where I Worship". Immensely successful in these performances, at the San Francisco Cow Palace in 1965 he set new records of attendance at the Grand National Horse Show and Rodeo and made about 20,000 in doing so. But he often appears free of charge, at fund-raising affairs and Boy Scout events, and in October 1964 he served without fee as master of ceremonies at the Canadian Royal Variety Performance for Queen Elizabeth II on Prince Edward Island.
On one of his rare TV excursions from Bonanza, he introduced the London Palladium Show in May 1966.

Lorne singing
Since 1962 Greene has also created a stir in recording, with such hits as "Ringo", "Destiny", and "Five Card Stud"
"Ringo" is the story of a sheriff who nurses a gunman back to life only to have a gun duel with him. Most of his songs are based on traditions of the Old West. "He can talk a song," wrote Dennis Braithwaite, "with such professional skill and natural feeling as to make singing seem old-fashioned."

Lorne and his family
Lorne Greene married Rita Hands, of Toronto, in 1940. Their children are twins, Belinda Susan (now Mrs. Richard Bennet) and Charles, born in 1945.
Greene's first marriage ended in divorce in 1960, and in December 1961 he married Nancy Anne Deale.
His home is a twelve-room house in Beverly Hills.
An imposing, broad-chested man, Greene stands six feet one and weighs about 200 pounds. He has a rugged, expressive, face, white hair, brown eyes, and bushy black eyebrows. Unlike his TV counterpart, he has an excellent sense of humor and is always joking on the set. He is a good businessman who manages his own real estate investments.
A Canadian citizen, he was Canada's Man of the Year in 1965.

Ben Cartwright to the end
Sadly, Lorne Greene passed away on September 11, 1987.
Plans to appear in a new TV film "Bonanza: The Next Generation" were put on hold when Lorne was hospitalized for surgery of a perforated ulcer. While in the hospital he developed pneumonia, and although the doctor's had hope that he would respond to treatment, Lorne suffered respiratory arrest followd by cardiac arrest, dying whith his wife and children at his side. "He was Ben Cartwright to the end," commented a mournful Michael Landon (Little Joe), "I took his hand in mine and held it. He looked at me and slowly started to arm wrestle like we used to. The he broke into a smile and nodded. And everything was ok. I think he wanted me to know everything was ok."

For Michael and millions of "Bonanza" fans the world over, the loss of television's favorite "Pa" was a crushing blow. Fortunately for us all Lorne's memory lives on in re-runs of "Bonanza" and at the Ponderosa Ranch at Incline Village, Nevada, where fans can visit the home of televison's Ben Cartwright and see his desk with the famous burning map. Even from beyond the grave, Lorne Greene continues to be a father to all who tune in to Bonanza across the globe.

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