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| Richard Bull in THOMAS CROWNE AFFAIR |
A good percentage of LITTLE HOUSE AND THE PRAIRIE fanatics will tell you the most intriguing
characters aren't the hard-working, focal point Ingalls clan, but the peripheral Oleson family...
While Katherine MacGregor's Harriet Oleson gets most of the memorable lines, she'd be
nothing without her patient, kindhearted hubbie Nels, played
by character-actor RICHARD BULL, who appeared as a bank booth guard in the Steve McQueen
heist film THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR a few years prior...
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| On LITTLE HOUSE |
And in the photo to the left, Richard's vacant, foiled expression, motivated by a loaded gun to his head, isn't much different than whenever he dealt with Harriet's perpetual bickering on LITTLE HOUSE. Nels Oleson epitomized the henpecked victim of a marriage that seemed to have lasted forever, and ever and ever and ever... And although he tried his very best to tame those two spoiled kids, Nellie and Willie, his punishments were short lived: Harriet might have been an antagonizing bully to the townsfolk, but to her children she was always the "good cop" during times of much-needed discipline.
Even though the husband/wife duo, who ran Walnut Grove's mercantile... that would continue to prosper even while the farmers struggled... were always at each other's throats, there was a unique, lived-in quality that gave the impression, through better or worse, the couple would remain together till the end.
You know, as difficult as Harriet Oleson could be, deep down, they loved one another very much. Richard and Scottie did a wonderful job together as Nels and Harriet...and in the end, they stand out just as much as the Ingalls themselves.
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