Karen Grassle

Karen Trust Grassle (/ɡræsliː/ GRASS-LEE; born February 25, 1942) is an American actress, known for her role as Caroline Ingalls, the wife of Michael Landon's character and the mother of Melissa Sue Anderson’s and Melissa Gilbert's characters as well as the character of Carrie in the NBC television drama series Little House on the Prairie.[1]

Karen Grassle
Gil Gerard and Karen Grassle in Little House on the Prairie (1977)
Born	Karen Trust Grassle (1942-02-25) February 25, 1942 Berkeley, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1966–present
Spouse(s)	Leon Russom ​ ( m. 1966; div. 1970) James Allen Radford ​ ( m. 1982; div. 1987) Dr. Scott Sutherland ​ ( m. 1991; div. 1997)

Early life

Karen Trust Grassle was born in Berkeley, California to Frae Ella (née Berry; 1907–2002) and Eugene Frederick Grassle (1906–1977) on February 25, 1942. She is the elder of two daughters. Her mother was a school teacher, and her father owned and operated a small realty business in Ventura. As a teenager, she studied ballet, acted in school plays, sang in the Baptist choir, and was vice president of the student body her senior year. She graduated from Ventura High School in 1959. She attended H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College (Tulane University, 1959–60) and then transferred to the University of California, Berkeley.[1] She graduated with BA degrees in 1965 in English and in Dramatic Art. She received a Fulbright Fellowship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in London.[1] She apprenticed at the Actor's Workshop of San Francisco in 1961-62.

Career

After summers at the Stanford Contemporary Workshop playing leads and two summers at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival playing classical roles, her first professional engagement was a season at the Front Street Theatre, Memphis, TN. upon return from London. While living in New York City, she worked at resident and stock theatres throughout the country, also appearing on PBS in original works and on networks in three soap operas. She made her Broadway debut in the short-lived 1968 play The Gingham Dog. Grassle played in Butterflies Are Free on Broadway (as stand-by with Gloria Swanson, Rosemary Murphy, etc.) as well as at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado, in June 1972, along with Maureen O'Sullivan and Brandon deWilde, who was killed before leaving town after the performances ended.[2]Grassle starred in the Shakespeare in the Park "Cymbeline." with Christopher Walken, Sam Waterston, and Bill Devane.

Grassle auditioned for the role of the mother, Caroline Ingalls, in the Little House on the Prairie TV series and won the part. The series ran for nine seasons, from 1974 to 1983. After making the pilot for Little House on the Prairie, Grassle appeared in one episode of Gunsmoke titled "The Wiving" as Fran, one of several saloon girls kidnapped. Subsequently, she acted in the features Harry's War, a 1981 American film where she played Kathy, the wife of Edward Herrmann's title character, and Wyatt Earp, a 1994 film starring Kevin Costner. On television, she starred in and co-wrote the NBC-TV film Battered. Other TV movies include Cocaine: One Man's Seduction, Crisis in MidAir, and Between the Darkness and the Dawn. In episodic TV, she starred in Hotel, Love Boat, and Murder She Wrote (twice.) She also appeared on Hollywood Squares and numerous talk shows such as Dinah, Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and John Davidson. During this period, she lobbied for federal funding for shelters for battered women and appeared in many events to support the Equal Rights Amendment[3].

After the series ended, she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and became co-founder and artistic director of Santa Fe’s Resource Theater Company. Later she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where she performed with the company of actors at Actors Theatre of Louisville.[4]

Grassle continues to perform in productions in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Palo Alto as well as tours and productions such as Driving Miss Daisy in the starring role of Miss Daisy at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in a co-production with Rubicon Theatre and at the Riverside Center for the Performing Arts in Fredericksburg, Virginia. In 2008, she was awarded a prize for her performance in Cabaret at the San Francisco Playhouse. Over the years, she has appeared in commercials such as the promotional face for Premier Bathrooms, a supplier of bathing products for the elderly and infirm.

Teaching

• LAMDA: Voice Department Chair
• College of Santa Fe: Acting for the Camera
• Independent Voice Teacher: Stella Adler Studio, Linklater Studio, Los Angeles, and Shakespeare and Co., England
• Film Acting Workshop: University of California at Berkeley

Directing

• Keely and Du Marshall University
• Rain Actors Theatre of Louisville Apprentice Showcase
• Cow Actors Theatre of Louisville Apprentice Showcase
• Waiting for Godot Equity Production, Resource Theatre Co., Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune Resource Theatre Co., Santa Fe, New Mexico

Filmography

Film and television roles

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1974–82	Little House on the Prairie	Caroline Ingalls	182 episodes
1974	Gunsmoke	Fran	Episode: "The Wiving"
1977	Emily, Emily	Terry	TV film
1978	The President's Mistress	Donna Morton	TV film
1978	Battered	Susannah Hawks	Also writer
1979	Crisis in Mid-air	Betsy Culver	TV film
1979	The Little House Years	Caroline Ingalls	TV special of Little House on the Prairie
1981	Harry's War	Kathy	Feature film
1981	The Love Boat	Paula	Episode: "Maid for Each Other/Lost and Found/Then There Were Two"
1983	Cocaine: One Man's Seduction	Barbara Gant	TV film
1983	Hotel	Susan Walker	Episode: "Christmas"
1984	Little House: The Last Farewell	Caroline Ingalls	TV film
1985	Between the Darkness and the Dawn	Ellen Foster Holland	TV film
1987	Murder, She Wrote	Christine Stoneham	Episode: "Murder in a Minor Key"
1988	Murder, She Wrote	Fay Hewitt	Episode: "Harbinger of Death"
1994	Wyatt Earp	Mrs. Sutherland	Feature film
2012	Tales of Everyday Magic	Aunt Dorothy	Feature film
2012	My Greatest Teacher	Aunt Dorothy	Feature film
2017	Lasso	Lillian	Feature film
2017	Where's Roman?	Mysterious Woman	Short film

References

1. Karen Grassle Biography, Biography Channel
2. Remembering Brandon.net/A Word on the Elitch Theatre While contracted by Butterflies Are Free, she continued to do experimental work with artists such as JoAnne Akalaitis and at the Public Theatre. Archived January 16, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
3. Allen, Kathleen (January 12, 2001). "A fearless and funny 'Wit'". Arizona Daily Star.
4. Austen, Greg (April 20, 1990). "Karen Grassle Bucks the Odds For A Successful Acting Career". The New Mexican.

External links

• Official website
• Karen Grassle on IMDb
• Karen Grassle at the Internet Broadway Database
• Karen Grassle at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• The Carolyn Jackson Collection, No.52-Interview with Karen Grassle from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image
• About Karen Grassle