Lyon Himan Green

 Lyon Himan Green, OC, better known as Lorne Greene (February 12, 1915 – September 11, 1987)

Greene began acting while attending Queen's University in Kingston, where he also acquired a knack for broadcasting with the Radio Workshop of the university's Drama Guild on the campus radio station CFRC. He gave up on a career in chemical engineering and, upon graduation, found a job as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). During World War II Green served as a Flying Officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 1954 he made his Hollywood debut as Saint Peter in The Silver Chalice and made several more films and appearances on American television. The first of his continuing TV roles was as the patriarch Ben "Pa" Cartwright in Bonanza; the first one-hour western series filmed in color (1959–1973), making Greene a household name. He garnered the role after his performance as O'Brien in the CBS production of Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the 1960s, Greene capitalized on his image as Benjamin "Pa" Cartwright by recording several albums of country-western/folk songs, which Greene performed in a mixture of spoken word and singing. In 1964, Greene had a #1 single on the music charts with his spoken-word ballad, "Ringo" (which referred to the real-life Old West outlaw Johnny Ringo, not to Ringo Starr of the Beatles), and got a lot of play time from "Saga of the Ponderosa", which detailed the Cartwright founding of the famous ranch. Greene was also known for his role as Commander Adama, another patriarchal figure, in the science fiction television series Battlestar Galactica (1978–1979) and Galactica 1980 (1980). Lorne Greene died on September 11, 1987 at age 72 of complications from pneumonia, following ulcer surgery, in Santa Monica, California. He is interred at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City.