Richard Bull was an actor best known for the role of Nels Oleson on the long-running television series Little House on the Prairie, and also appeared in dozens of other film and TV productions over the course of a career that spaned more than half a century.
Richard Bull was an actor best known for the role of Nels Oleson on the long-running television series Little House on the Prairie, and also appeared in dozens of other film and TV productions over the course of a career that spaned more than half a century.
Born in Zion, Illinois, Bull got his start as a stage actor at Chicago’s renowned Goodman Theatre. He broke into television in the 1950s with roles in such programs as Medic, Panic! and Perry Mason. In the decades that followed he was seen in numerous others, including Highway Patrol, The Virginian, The Dick Powell Theatre, Ben Casey, The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, I Spy, My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, Bewitched, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Nichols, Mannix, Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones, Gomer Pyle, Hill Street Blues, Highway to Heaven, ER, Boss and many, many others.
He appeared in 147 episodes of Little House on the Prairie during the show's run from 1974 to 1983. His character was a shopkeeper who ran Oleson's Mercantile in the frontier burg of Walnut Grove, Minnesota.
His feature films included The Thomas Crown Affair, The Andromeda Strain, Ulzana's Raid, High Plains Drifter, Breezy and The Parallax View.
Bull died February 3, 2014, in Calabasas, California. He was 89.
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