Miss Michael Learned

At an awards show, Barbra Streisand announced her name as Michelle Learned.

R1 here she is looking stunning at The Emmys. And it was the gorgeous guy who mispronounced her name.

i always loved her name for some reason

Has she ever been on Broadway?

R2 That gorgeous guy was James Franciscus. He showed off his hot body in a lot of movies, most notably in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes."

He died of emphysema when he was just 57.

Stop... you’re embarrassing me!

Worked with one brother, made out with another. I’m a chick.

R7, the actors who played two of the Waltons brothers?

Any goss on Livvie?

Why does she have a mans name? What's that about?

Never understood that about her.

Great actress though.

I had a crush on her when I was a kid

Michael Learned comes across as bit of a bitch IMHO. "I didn't know", " I didn't want", "it was my fault in retrospect"...

Television series "Nurse" was based on a huge bestselling book by Mary Benjamin, R.N. which was basically an autobiography of a nurse working in a large urban hospital.

Tagline was "Doctors don't keep you alive, I do...", . Book was one of the first to break down many of the old stereotypes of nurses being doctor's handmaidens in starched whites and caps totally obedient and so forth.

By the 1980's nearly universally across the USA there was a serious shortage of professional nurses. Experienced nurses were leaving the profession in droves, and young women weren't going to nursing schools either. The latter so much so that many nursing programs began shutting down for want of students.

Much of this had to do with equal rights/anti discrimination laws passed in previous decades. Young women simply had other career opportunities opened to them than just "nurse, teacher or nun". Women who wanted to be doctors were (or could) no longer be flubbed off by being shoved into nursing because medicine was a "man's profession".

The book and television series "Nurse" showed that professional nurses weren't just a bunch of females fluttering around in white dresses and funny hat; but actually were the ones who kept you alive in hospital including keeping your doctor from killing or otherwise causing you harm. In short professional nurses were a self-autonomous profession with their own hierarchy and so on.

Thanks so much for the insights R12! Did you watch the series?

R13

My mom did which was tantamount to us kids and anyone else watching television that evening watching the same thing. *LOL*

There was a smaller set down in the rumpus room, but the living room had one of those big ole console color television jobs. It was sort of a trade off; we kids often had to watch what are parents did during "prime time", but we got the main set to ourselves on Saturday mornings, and for an hour or so after school.

What is with the Frauen here and their fucking "LOL" shit?

KNOCK IT OFF or go back to Facebook. Twats and twat-adjacent illiterates.

I love Miss Michael. Great stage actress as well.

I heard she killed two of her six husbands.

I always found her portrayal of Olivia Walton far too cold. I much preferred Patricia Neal's portrayal in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, which was essentially the pilot for The Waltons.

R5, He was also Jane Fonda's first serious boyfriend and he took her virginity.

She played Kay Chancellor on Y&R during Jeanne Cooper's illness.

Agree that her acting style was very cold. She was running neck and neck with Sada Thompson of "Family" in the Chilly Matriarch of '70s TV Families sweepstakes.

I thought she was very warm with just a touch of reserve.

She was a terrific bitch in her episode of Murder She Wrote

I like her. There's clip from an old ( 2000?) Graham Norton show where she's the guest. She comes across well. She says, in retrospect that she was "a jerk" for not appreciating her great good luck, starring in a hit show like The Waltons. Something like that. I think it's on YouTube, i'm too lazy to look for it.

Good comparison, R21. My mother was very loving and affectionate. My brother and I always said we were glad our mother wasn't either Olivia Walton from The Waltons or Kate Lawrence. from Family. They were positively glacial!

R24, I've heard Michael Learned say that in many different interviews. Age has given her great perspective. I remember in one interview she talked about how Will Geer would tell her and the rest of the cast how lucky they all were to be on a successful and well-written TV series, especially as Will had been blacklisted in the 1950s. She said she wished she had listened to him and enjoyed it more. She's very candid that she was difficult to work with when she was younger.

I thought she was a very gentle and caring mother on The Waltons, didn't find her cold at all. Was she playing a similar character on "Nurse"?

Is she in the Will and Ellen Club ?

I think a lot of viewers also compared her to Karen Grassle's sunny, open, smiling Caroline Ingalls on LHotP. Michael Learned couldn't give the camera a wide smile like Grassle's even if she wanted to. Some people's faces just don't work that way.

Op is old!!!

She got some hideous plastic surgery done to her face. I didn't recognize her.

And this is a good photo.

Michael Learned's son married Helen Reddy's daughter.

r31 I'm waiting for the punchline.

She had the chicken cutlets put in, R30. Dear God, why???

Nurse!

Starring Michael "Overpaid Diva" Learned

and

Robert "Perm Queen" Reed!

Thursdays on CBS!

Here it is R24. I'm guessing it's from 2014 (the date on the post).

The lady at 1:56 tells the funniest story that I've heard in ages =

Part 2 (possibly taped in the year 2000?) =

R35 R36 thank you! She comes across really well in thar interview, pity she never got another great show after Nurse.