The “Little House on the Prairie” actress was 78 years old – The Hollywood Reporter

Hersha Parady

NBCUniversal via Getty Image

Hersha Parady, which ran for three seasons as Walnut Grove schoolteacher Alice Garvey Little house on the prairie It came to a dark, unforgettable ending for fans of the beloved NBC drama. She was 78 years old.

He said Parady died on Wednesday in Norfolk, Virginia, the home of her son, Jonathan Beverall Hollywood Reporter. She was suffering from a brain tumor, and he set up for her GoFundMe page to help with expenses.

Paradis and former NFL star Merlin Olsen are introduced as the wife and husband of Alice and Jonathan Garvey in the film created by Michael Landon. Little house on the prairie During the Season 4 opening episode “Castoffs” in September 1977.

In the Season 6 episode “Let’s Make Them Proud”, which aired as a two-hour episode during the sweeping ratings period in February 1980, Alice races to the School for the Blind, which is on fire, to rescue some of the children inside. , including Mary and Adam’s infant son (Melissa Sue Anderson, Lynwood Bomer).

Alice finds the baby and tries to break through the upstairs bedroom window to escape, but they both end up perishing in the fire.

Some viewers believed that Paradis used the dummy that represented the infant as a “ram”.

“They don’t set windows up to break easily,” Paradis once said in a magazine interview, “and I’m not, as Michael Landon has often pointed out, a meek, delicate woman, so when I try to break something, I usually succeed.” The Little House at Prairie Memories tribute site.

It was Michael himself who was the first to mention that it looked as if I was trying to use Mary’s baby as a battering ram to break the window! So because they had forgotten to ‘break’ the windows, I resolved to get out at all costs! And despite the imminent doom it would bring, at least I got out. A roar, not a whimper!

“Working with special effects guys and the Los Angeles Fire Department was a first for me, and because I was surrounded by ‘controlled’ fires and fire extinguishers at the ready, I was ready to raise a storm. I loved every minute of it.”

Paradis Betty Sandhoff was born May 25, 1945 in Berea, Ohio. In a 1975 interview with Cleveland Plain DealerShe said that she was destined to become an actress. “I was always a kid living in the pretend world,” she said. “Even when I was very young, I’d rather believe than play with dolls.”

She graduated from Berea High School in 1963, acted in the Cleveland Playhouse and in regional theater, then came to Los Angeles, where she landed the role of Stella opposite Jon Voight in a road production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Paradis made her screen debut in an episode of the TV series Bears cats! And then he showed up Mannix, And Tunisia And in pilot’s Gunsmoke Spinoff, which was not picked up to series.

She was prepared for the role of Caroline Ingalls little house Karen Grassle accepted the appointment but made her first appearance on the show during the third season in 1976 as Eliza Ingalls, the sister-in-law of Charles Ingalls of Landon. She ended up playing Alice in 35 episodes.

after little houseParadis has appeared in films Raw guts (1984) and Stop (1995) and on a series thereof Unsolved mysteries, Noah II And Kenan agentWhere she played Principal Dimley.

Paradis was married to producer John Beverall, who shared the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1979 for his work on Deer hunter. In addition to her son, the survivors include her brothers, Patty, Kenny and Bobby.