(He died September 11, 1987, at age 72.) To celebrate his centennial, we rounded up some intriguing factoids about the late, great actor to offer a closer and more complete view of the man who portrayed the Ponderosa patriarch.
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Greene was born February 12, 1915, in Ottawa, Canada.
To the public, however, he was larger than life, a hero, yet someone with whom everyone felt a certain warm intimacy.” As Linda Greene Bennett notes in My Father’s Voice: The Biography of Lorne Greene (iUniverse, 2004), her affectionate in-depth portrait of her famous dad: “To me, he was a very private man with a public persona who happened to be extremely recognizable. Thanks to worldwide reruns of the enduringly popular series, Greene remains a beloved figure for millions of viewers - both longtime fans who were hooked from the start and recent converts who were not yet born when Bonanza premiered in 1959.
More than four decades after Bonanza ended its 14-year run as must-see TV on NBC, Lorne Greene continues to loom large in our collective pop-culture consciousness for his iconic performance as Ben Cartwright, proud owner of the vast Ponderosa ranch and sage father to three loyal sons - Adam (Pernell Roberts), Hoss (Dan Blocker), and Little Joe (Michael Landon). This February we celebrate the centennial of our favorite Ponderosa patriarch with some little-known factoids.